Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 5.djvu/37

THI BATTLE OF BALACLAVA. 15 digan (whose mind worked always in grooves) to chap. discover and seize the right moment for undertak- '_ ing a cavalry charge. Yet without the attributes of a commander, a man may be a resolute, faith- ful, heroic soldier ; and that surely is the kind of glory — it is glory of no mean kind — which can best be claimed for Lord Cardigan. In despite of all the faults which he had manifested to the world when appointed to the command of the Light Brigade, there still remained good grounds for trusting that, as long as he should be acting in the performance of what he might clearly un- derstand to be his duty, he would perform it with precision, with valour, and, if need be, with un- sparing devotion. If between Lord Lucan and Lord Cardigan LordLucan there could be discovered any points of resem- cardigan • i regarded blance, these were not of such a kind as to be conjointly. conducive to harmony. They were, both of them, contentious ; and whether from natural gifts, or from long habits of disputation, they had both of them powers of a kind which are commonly de- veloped in lawyers, though not certainly in law- yers of the same quality. Lord Lucan was the able, the cogent, the strenuous, the daring advo- cate, whose opponents (especially if they hap- pened to be in the right) were to be not merely answered but crushed. Lord Cardigan, in his forensic aspect, was of the species which repeats a hundred times over in the same words the same version of the same facts, persistently ignores the whole strength of the adversary's argument, and