Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol 7.djvu/307

 TJIE DEMEANOUK OF ENGLAND. 263 people, we saw, were raging with tbe rage that chap. must needs have a victim, and ah^eady the '. _ Duke had begun to undergo the sensation of falling-C-i^) He was not a man wlio would have con- sciously and wilfully suffered himself to be drawn from the right course by a selfish motive ; but what mortal can say that, when he feels the ground sinking from under his foot, he will be strong enough to resist the instinct which moves, which almost constrains him to clutch at some other for safety ? The Duke was honestly con- scious of having administered his Department with untiring zeal, and, upon the whole, with great ability ; and now that his wrong, hasty judgment had really turned him against Lord Eaglan and the Headquarter Staff, was not jus- tice, he perhaps might imagine, was not justice after all, on his side ? By blaming Lord Eaglan, and condemning, nay, roughly displacing the chief officers of the Headquarter Staff, might he not disengage himself from the cruel fate of a Minister held answerable for the sufferings of our army ? (^^) And again, if he were to act with a little audacity upon what had now suddenly come to be his real opinion, might he not bring about such a blissful accord between himself and the angry people, that — at least for a while — they might travel together on the same road, with the great journal cheering them forward ? The country at large would shrink perhaps from the notion of recalling its victorious general from the