Page:The invasion of the Crimea vol. 1.djvu/25

 THE SOURCES OF THE NARRATIVE. XXI with men propounding wild schemes ; with dear and faithful friends.* Circumstances had previously made me acquainted with a good deal of the more important information thus laid before me ; but there is a com- pleteness in this body of authentic records which en- ables me to tread with more confidence than would have been right or possible if I had had a less perfect survey of the knowledge which belonged to Head- quarters. And so methodical was Lord Raglan, and so well was he served by Colonel Steele, his military secretary, that all this mass of authentic matter lies ranged in perfect order. The strategic plans of the much-contriving Emperor — still carrying the odour of the havannahs which aid the ingenuity of the Tuileries — are ranged with all due care, and can be got at in a few moments ; but, not less carefully ranged, and equally easy to find, is the rival scheme of the en- thusiastic nosologist who advised that the Eussians should be destroyed by the action of malaria, and the elaborate proposal of the English general who sub- mitted a plan for taking Sebastopol with bows and arrows. Here and there, the neatness of the arranging hand is in strange contrast with the fiery contents of the papers arranged ; for, along with reports and re- turns, and things precise, the most hurried scrawl of the commander who writes to his chief under stress of the letter which Mr Sidney Herbert addressed to Lord Raglan in the ■winter of the first campaign was the very ideal of what, in such cir- cumstances, might be written by an English statesman who dearly loved his friend, but who loved his country yet more.
 * I have never looked at it since 1S56, but it struck me then, that