Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol 7.djvu/104

 60 THE WINTER TROUBLES. CHAP, conditions which could scarce be remembered ' by generous Englishmen without a feeling like shame ; for the ' bitter end ' more than once showed that they had been kindling insurrections which they could not keep alive, and must leave their Eoyalist friends — men but yesterday their companions in arms — to the mercy of frenzied Republicans. Of the lesser expeditions which England from time to time undertook, it may almost be said that their failure, one after another, was too often assured beforehand by the want of sufficing preparation, and this, too, so visibly that they did not even serve to distract a keen-witted foe, who, well knowing the slightness of the means employed in each effort, could generally foresee its collapse.(^^) The second Pitt, as all know, was so far from being by nature a desultory or a volatile man that, along with the support of the nation, the dominion of the seas, and the command of vast treasure, his lofty, resolute nature, deriving from an illustrious sire, was what in truth made him the Titan — the baffled, yet unconquered Titan — still wildly remembered by France ; yet, not having, to guide him, that oracle which rulers now commonly find in some well-ordered office of State, he fought, as it were, in the dark, or under a dim, fitful light ; and seemed year after year to be wielding the land-service strength of these islands as though their happy immunity from perils then rife on the Continent had — not merely enabled, but — tempted him to trifle with