Page:The invasion of the Crimea vol. 2.djvu/275

ATTACK ON SEBASTOPOL. 245 compensated by the vigour of private enterprise, chap. Nasmyth has passed away from us. I knew ^^^' him in the Crimea. He was a man of quiet and gentle manners, and so free from vanity — so free from all idea of self-gratulation — that he always seemed as though he were unconscious of having stood as he did in the path of the Czar, and had really omitted to think of the share which he had had in changing the course of events; but it chanced that he had gone to the seat of war in the service of 'The Times,' and naturally the lustre of his achievement was in some degree shed upon the keen, watchful Company which liad had the foresight to send him at the right moment into the midst of events on which the fate of Eussia was hanging ; for whilst the State armies of France and England were as yet only gathering their strength, 'The Times' was able to say that its own officer had confronted the enemy upon the very ground he most needed to win, and helped to drive him back from the Danube in great discomfiture. Thus, day after day in that month of June, the xiieoovere- authority of the Newspaper kept gaining and "'*'"* ^^^^"' gaining upon the Queen's Government; and if Lord Aberdeen had any remaining unwillingness to renew the war by undertaking an invasion of Russia, his power of controlling the course of the Government seems to have come to its end in the interval between the 23d and the 28th of June. He continued to be the Prime Minister. His personal honour stood so high that no man at-