128 THE BATTLE OF BALACLAVA. chap, stances which must needs be of rare occurrence
- • in modern times, the descendants of the Cove-
nanters had come upon an hour when troopers could once more be striving in that kind of close fight which marked the period of our religious wars — in that kind of close fight which with- draws the individual soldier from his fractional state of existence, and exalts him into a self- depending power. A Scots Grey, in the middle of our own century, might have no enraging cause to inflame him ; but he was of the blood of those who are warriors by temperament, and not be- cause of mere reasons. And he, too, had read his Bible. Men who saw the Scots Greys in this close fight of Scarlett's, travel out of humanity's range to find beings with which to compare him His long-pent-up fire, as they say, had so burst forth as to turn him into a demon of warlike wrath ; but it must not be inferred from such speech that he was under the power of that ' blood frenzy ' of which we shall afterwards see an example ; and the truth can be satisfied by acknowledging that, as his fathers before him had ever been accustomed to rage in battle, so he too, in this later time, was seized and governed by the passion of fight. When numbers upon numbers of docile, obedient Russians crowded round a Scot of this quality, and beset him on all sides, it did not of necessity result that they had the ascendant, Whilst his right arm was busy with the labour of sword against swords, he could so use hi? bridle-hand as to be fastening its grip
