of a most remarkable legend. The endowments given to the damsels belong to the distributory function, though I cannot explain the intervention of two other goddesses. When we come finally to the instances to which I have already referred, in which Herê exercises special powers over Nature, I do not exclude from view the principle of reflection of function from Zeus upon Herê. In such a case as that of the thunder ("Iliad," xi. 40), this would seem to be the proper, if not the only, explanation. For the air functions of Zeus are somewhat jealously guarded by the poet, and thundering is the most special of them all, and is nowhere invaded except by Athenê, who has it on grounds wholly apart from the present discussion. But the province of Poseidon is under no such careful rule for the prevention of trespass, and the deliverance of Agamemnon from peril of the sea may belong to that power of ordering which appears to be allied with the producing power. The remaining cases deserve special remark.

Herê does not give command to the gods in general, and we are therefore prompted to look for a reason why she commands or employs certain gods. In the case of Athenê the reason is obvious. They work systematically for a common purpose, on a footing which, with some admixture of give and take, is on the whole a footing of equality. The other cases are those of Iris, Hephaistos, and Helios. Now if Herê represents jurisdiction over Nature, which orders as well as produces, then in ordering the Sun to repair to rest she is in the discharge of her proper duty; for the Sun in the "Iliad" is wholly shorn of sovereignty, and is a merely ministerial power.

When we take the case of Hephaistos, we have to remember that as a son he may obey his mother. But it is also to be borne in mind that he is a god of elemental associations, and that his name has not escaped from the elemental scene of fire; so that the order for his interference, as well as the eventual interposition of Herê to prevent the River Xanthos from utter absorption, may be due to the office inherited by Herê from her predecessor Gaia, as the working head governess of Nature.

The same remark applies to Iris. There is hardly a more beautiful conception in Homer, and there is not one more strictly Achaian and Olympian. But behind the Iris of the poet there is always the gleaming of the rainbow. She is idealized from and based upon a purely natural phenomenon, the butterfly of the skies, born if not to "flutter and decay," yet to exhibit colours which as soon as exhibited are withdrawn. It may therefore be that Iris is the messenger of Herê, not simply as the queen of the Olympian Court, but as her subject by an older title, the title of the Mother of all that lives in the external world, possessed in that capacity of a parental authority to give command in relation to the functions severally assigned them.

W. E. GLADSTONE.

MR. KINGLAKE'S CRIMEAN WAR.

"MA

ANY know-and some envy-the blissful look of content that lights on the face of a soldier when slain by a gun-shot wound. But the toils of a commander are toils of the mind-of the heart. The expression which fastened on Lord Raglan's countenance in the moment of death, seemed to tell of—not pain, but-'Care.'" These are the words of the simple and pathetic account of Lord Raglan's last moments, in the eighth and last volume of the "Invasion of the Crimea." Care indeed! Well might it be so. An old man borne down by a weight placed carelessly on his shoulders by an incapable administration! More than thirty years ago Lady Raglan confided to Mr. Kinglake the papers of the deceased commander, with one request only that he would publish the letter which her husband addressed to her immediately after the repulse of our troops at the assault on the Redan it appears in 1887, in the last volume. : Seven years elapsed before the first volume was given to the world, with a characteristic preface. Mr. Kinglake accounted for the delay. "His knowledge," he told his readers, "of what he undertook to narrate, had been growing more and more complete. But far from gathering assurance at the sight of the progress thus made, I am," said he, "rather led to infer that approaches which continued so long, might continue still longer, and it is not without a kind of reluctance that I pass from the tranquil state of one who is absorbing the truth to that of a man who at last stands up and declares it. The time is now come."

The work of thirty years is now complete. The composition is so large that there is difficulty at first in taking in all the details, but gradually there arises before us a conception of great beauty—the ideal of a perfect man, combining gentleness and tenderness with adaman

tine firmness. It is a representation of the principle of good, displaying the same careful treatment as that of its terrible antithesis, the principle of evil, on the same canvas. The other figures, with the exception of those of Lord Stratford de Redcliffe and of Todleben, may say of themselves, in the words of Cassius:

"We petty men creep under his huge legs,

And seek about to find ourselves dishonourable graves."

In the central figure we have before us a labour of love from the hand of an artist, inspired by feelings like those which animated the breast of a Fra Angelico, in depicting the agony of some martyred saint. There is the want of perspective and proportion which characterizes the work of the early ecclesiastical painters, and the canvas is filled here and there by pictorial episodes as they may be called, such as are to be seen in the tryptichs of the earliest Florentine masters, which, perfect though they be in execution and finish, distract the attention and mar the effect. Shapes of demons and monsters are seen side by side with the saint and the angels; they are introduced apparently to give effect by contrast to the beauty of the principal figure.

It was owing to the merest accident that Mr. Kinglake became acquainted with Lord Raglan (the circumstance is recorded in the first edition of the "Letters of a Staff Officer "), just before the battle of the Alma, and that he was enabled to accompany headquarters; but he left the camp immediately after the opening of the first bombardment. The circumstances and the surroundings of the introduction created a lasting impression on a susceptible nature. From the moment of his return to England, Mr. Kinglake became the champion of the much assailed, and often unjustly assailed General; devoting thirty years and more of his life to the laborious vindication, now completed and given to the world. For an account of the termination of the campaign, the student must look to other authorities. It was, however, announced on the title-page, that the history would end with the death of Lord Raglan. Mr. Kinglake has not "left untold the story of" his "Cambuscan bold," but he has not finished the history of the war, and he concludes what he has to say at one of the most eventful, if least satisfactory epochs, of the siege of Sebastopol.

It would seem as if he was animated throughout by a most violent dislike to the policy as well as to the person of the French Emperor. Doubtless he rejoiced over the happy accident which delayed his seventh and eighth volumes till after the appearance of M. Camille Rousset's work-a work written by a staunch Republican and anti-Imperialistwhich enabled him to revel in the demonstration it afforded to him of "the revolting disloyalty" of the Emperor towards Lord Raglan and his allies. "Chortling in his joy," Mr. Kinglake gives several long chapters to a description of the character-from his point of view-and of the

early career of his pet aversion, the Emperor, and of his associates, and inserts in the first volume an account of the coup d'état, which had as much to do with the invasion of the Crimea as it had with the siege of Troy itself. The Emperor's misfortunes serve as feathers to the arrows discharged at his prostrate form; but it is only just to say that while he was "towering in his pride of place," he was a mark for the ridicule and contempt of Mr. Kinglake. A poor dreaming impostor, a masquerading adventurer, destitute of courage or counsel, "turning of a pale sea-green colour in the moment of danger"; "a man with the bearing and countenance of a weaver-a weaver oppressed by long hours of monotonous indoor work, which makes the body stoop and keeps the eyes downcast"-" his features were opaque," his figure and port mean; in him there was no good thing from beginning to close of his troubled life-" plotting brain and weak meddlesome hand." The end of the Empire may be pointed at as one vindication of the judgment of the historian. But the Empire gave France eighteen years of prosperity, and in some sense, of rest, such as she never enjoyed for many decades before. After the Crimean war the Emperor humbled Austria in the dust, and gave to Sardinia the strong arm and the victorious sword which enabled her to realize the dream of a united Italy. An Englishman must confess that Louis Napoleon was a constant and faithful ally.

The controversies and passions which raged during the war have long since died out, with most of the actors in it, and there is now a general impression in the public mind that the war itself was a mistake—an impression which will be confirmed by an attentive perusal of Mr. Kinglake's pages. From the very beginning it ought to have been evident to any one, who made even a superficial examination of the situation, that in a joint expedition by France and Great Britain the English commander could not hope to have always at his disposal a force equal to that under the orders of his French colleague. If, indeed, he were a Marlborough or a Wellington, he might aim at and maintain an ascendancy in the counsels of the allied Generals. To show that Lord Raglan had those qualities, Mr. Kinglake devoted himself. And he has egregiously failed. In proportion as he has brought into relief the loveable traits of his hero, has he established the absence of the commanding qualities which were needed to enable an officer in his position to make way against adverse influences. The historian indeed seems to have been conscious that a man who had been from boyhood, and for more than thirty years, under the weight of the Duke of Wellington's influence was not altogether the most fit General for the command of an army. "The gain of being with the Duke for so many years was not without its drawback." "To have been administering the current business of a military office in peace time was a kind of experience which was far from being a good pre

Lord Raglan

parative for the command of an army in the field." was sixty-six years of age. Nearly forty years had elapsed since he saw the last shot fired in anger; his experience had been that of a subordinate-trusted indeed, but still a subordinatein the Peninsula, where probably he did not learn to regard the soldiers of France with great liking. The late Duke of Wellington, speaking of his appointment to me in 1856, said: "Had my father been alive, he would never have allowed such a thing! He would have laughed at the idea of Fitzroy Somerset commanding an army! -an excellent office-man, a capital military secretary, but he knew nothing of handling troops." Why he was selected is a secret, buried somewhere in Whitehall or in Downing Street. He spoke French fluently, which was not a universal accomplishment amongst our English generals. As he had fought against the French when in the field, it was considered wise to give him the control of an army which was to work against a common enemy with the troops of France. To put a finishing touch to his qualifications, it was known that Lord Raglan viewed, with an unfavourable eye, the new régime in France. A Bourbon or an Orleanist, yes! But a Napoleon on an imperial throne could not be admired by the old aide-de-camp and military secretary of the Duke of Wellington.

What the truth Mr. Kinglake had to declare in 1863 was, is not easily ascertained. There is the one very obvious fact which greatly mars the value of his laborious record as history, and which afforded occasion to a grave French historian, quoted in his pages with respect, to express his regret that Lord Raglan's papers had been entrusted to one who-in striking and painful contrast to Todleben, who has written of France and her soldiers as a generous rival, not as an enemy-had made such an unworthy use of them-" il est facheux que les papiers de Lord Raglan soient tombés entre des mains qui ont en fait une si triste usage." And that judgment is, I think, well founded. With the exception of the first volume, which is devoted to a piquant account of the "transactions which brought on the war," in which the beauties of the writer's style, his sarcasm, his humour, his imagery, are conspicuous, the history may be described, in effect, as a "glorification" of a single hero, in which accounts of feats of arms and incidents of battle are introduced as accessories.

The preliminary selections for the conduct of the English army followed the inscrutable method indicated in the choice of the General-in-Chief. A noble lord, who had not seen any service except that which he witnessed as an amateur with the Russian headquarters in the war against Turkey in 1829, was chosen as Divisional General of cavalry.* His brother-in-law, who had never seen any service at

Lord Lucan proved himself vigilant, capable, and he claims with reason the credit of the Heavy Cavalry charge.