Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 5.djvu/190

168 THE BATTLE OF BALACLAVA. chap, deposited for the most part in layers or strata, ■ disclosing the periods of the several formations ; and if the nature of the comments which were uttered could be inferred from known habits of thought and of speech, it might be found that the theory put forward by any French officer as serv- ing to account for the phenomenon was adopted in general by his comrades of the same age, and repudiated by such of them as were either much older or much younger ; but whether, with their grey-headed colonel, the more aged officers of a regiment made sure that the Count of Cardigan was a great feudal chief, with a brigade composed of his serfs and retainers, who, for some cause or other, had taken dire umbrage, and resolved, like Achilles, that his myrmidons should be withheld from the fight ; or whether, on the authority of the major — less aged, though equally confident — they held that the feudal system in England had been recently mitigated, and that the true solution of the enigma was to be found in the law of ' Le ' Box ' — the law making it criminal for an Eng- lishman to interrupt a good fight, and enjoining that singular formation which Albion called ' a ' ring ; ' — whatever, in short, might be the variety of special theories which these French observers adopted, there was one proposition at least in which all would be sure to agree. All, all would take part in the chorus which asserted that the English were a heap of 'originals.' Yet, amongst the French officers thus striving to solve the enigma, one at least was inclined to