Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol 7.djvu/414

 370 THE WINTER TROUBLES. CHAP, and wise enough to be docile, came easily unde" ^^- the sway of her natural ascendant. If Burgoyne, when he passed through the Bosphorus, received and harboured impressions unfavourable to her manner of ruling at Scutari, this was only, as I gather, because he had no conversation with her, and did not fall under the spell. (2^) With another of our veterans it fared otherwise. The most unbending opponent of innovations was Sir George Brown. For him of all men — for him to have to acknowledge that the mascu- line rulers, between them, had contrived to make utter default in one of the branches of military administration, and that, failing their competence, a woman, proving abler than all of them, was hailed as the welcome dictatress — this, many who knew Sir George Brown would have judged to be more than he could bear ; but the dicta- tress spoke, and he listened, becoming at once a believer — an even enthusiastic believer — in the worth — the unspeakable worth — of what she had already achieved ; nay, going the length of declaring — and tliis before the end of Decem- ber — that something little short of perfection had even then been attained in the hospital under her sway.(2^) It used even to be said in those days, that the soundness of judgment disclosed by the Lady-in- Chief upon questions needing rapid decision, and the apt, ready knowledge with which she always seemed armed, might be traced to the power she had over men in authority ; the theory being, it seems, that —