Page:The invasion of the Crimea vol. 2.djvu/128

98 CAUSES INVOLVING FRANCE AND ENGLAI4D CHAP, with any great store of preconceived opinions, but L he wrote so strenuously — he always, they say, wrote standing — and was apt to be so much struck with the cogency of his own arguments, that by the mere process of framing despatches he wrought himself into strong convictions, or rather perhaps into strong resolves ; and he clung to these with such a lasting tenacity that, if lie had been a solemn, austere personage, the world would have accused him of pedantry. Like most gifted men who evolve their thoughts with a pen, he was very clear, very accurate. Of every subject which he handled gravely, he had a tight, iron grasp. Without being inflexible, his will, it has been already said, was powerful, and it swung with a great momentum in one direction until, for some good and sound reason, it turned and swung in another. He pursued one object at a time with- out being distracted by other game. All that was fanciful, or for any reason unpractical — all that was the least bit too Iiigh for him or the least bit too tleep for him — all that lay, though only l)y a little, beyond the immediate future with which ho was dealing — ho utterly drove from out of his mind ; and his energies, condensed for the time upon some object to which they could be applied with effect, were brought to bear upon it with all their full volume and power. So, during the whole period of his reign at the Foreign Office, Lord Talmerston's method had been to be very strenuous in the pursuit of the object which might be needing care at any given time without suffer-