Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol 7.djvu/299

THE DEMEANOUK OF ENGLAND. 255 gable men, each devoting his whole care and energy to the work in hand. After the 10th of April (when Lord Raglan left England) the com- munications between the Minister and the Gen- eral were necessarily in writing, and thenceforth the despatches and letters from time to time passing between them became, of course, a full record of the vast amount of public business which the two were transacting in concert. A critic, of what men call ' style,' would be apt, I imagine, to say that the smooth, unobstructed flow of the Duke of Newcastle's sentences was hardly so admirable as the simple grace of Lord Eaglan's diction ; but the Minister and the Gen- eral alike wrote with ease, with precision, and in words transparently clear. The recipient of our Minister's instructions being one who — then Lord Fitzroy Somerset — had toiled at the side of Wellington in all his European campaigns, and had afterwards become deeply versed in the busi- ness of our army administration, his experience, of course, carried with it a weight of author- ity which in one sense, perhaps, might seem tending to invert the ostensible positions, and make Lord Eaglan the master of his official chief. But — far indeed from desiring autonomy — Lord Eaglan truly liked to acknowledge and feel that he was the loyal servant of the State, or, as he would express it, of ' the Queen ; ' whilst, more- over, his fine taste and high breeding so governed every sentence he framed that, without ever seeming to have the air of a teachei-, he always knew how to teach.