Page:The invasion of the Crimea vol. 1.djvu/466

 424 APPENDIX. I will repeat that there may, and there must he, numbers of printed challenges upon questions of fact with which I have not become acquainted ; and there may be others which I have heard of and forgotten ; but the above, 1 believe, are the only corrections supplied by the periodical press which I have hitherto seen fit to adopt. What then did I do with all the rest of those charges of error in matter of fact which were brought against me by the press] Well, I looked through the book, and where I observed a statement which I knew at the time to have been denied, I did this : By a note at the foot of the page where a challenged assertion occurred, I supplied a sufficing portion of the proofs by which I supported my statement. (Jf the soundness and cogency of the proofs thus produced. it will be for the public to judge. They are all, or nearly all, documentary. But, besides the unnumbered strangers and friends who have addressed to me private communications on the con tents of the book, and besides the whole host of those who speak to the public through the medium of the periodical press, there is one persistent scrutiniser who (so far as concerns all questions of dry fact) has hitherto proved more formidable than all. He alone iias succeeded in proving that, here and there, there is a mistake — slight enough perhaps in itself, but — occurring in a place where, to point to it, is to fix upon the part of the narrative in which it appears, a small, yet ugly blemish. For some years this caviller took an interest in the progress of the book, and it is believed that he still wishes well to it ; but in his determination to insist upon strict accuracy without the least regard for the flow of the narrative, he is steadfast pointed out by the correspondent of the newspaper acting at Con- stantinople. The other misspellings of names were indicated in oi.e of the many reviews of the hook which appeared in the same jour-^ nal.