from his orders that he meant this, but, in his directions to General Soimonoff, he assumed that his lieutenant had orders to march up the left bank of the ravine, and instructed him accordingly, but he did not expressly annul either the original orders of Prince Menschikoff or his penultimate modification of them, nor did Dannenberg annul or approve or remark upon the arrangements of Soimonoff, which that general had communicated to him. Under these circumstances Soimonoff decided to carry out his original plan. The consequence was that the battle was begun before Pauloff had got his regiments on to the ground. Thus none of the pre-arranged plans were executed, and although he does not say so in as many words, General Todleben evidently regards General Dannenberg's want of precision and decision as one of the causes of the Russian failure. Perhaps the other principal reason, apart from the obstinacy of the English troops, and their admirable weapons, was the futile demonstration of Prince Gortschakoff against Balaklava and the French works on Mount Sapoune.

Although the allies won the victory, won it (pace Todleben) out of the hands of nearly three times their numbers engaged, won it by that stubbornness and refusal to give up, which has characterised British troops for so many centuries, we quite agree with Todleben that the Russians gained even when defeated. We believe it is not true that there was as he states, even a momentary thought of raising the siege, but it is quite true that the assault on the Flagstaff bastion was adjourned sine die, and that from the morrow of the 5th of November the operations of the deeply-stricken allies gradually assumed a defensive character. Todleben carries us through the winter, but we must reserve further comments for the present. An opportunity will come with the publication of his next volume. The military lesson impressed upon us so far by this history, is one the British nation should take to heart. The story of the war in the Crimea affords a perfect demonstration of the almost incalculable evils, moral and material, which spring from a divided command. There is every reason to believe that had the invading host been in the hands of one chief, with full control over both the land and sea forces, that chief would have carried out the original design, and have stood master of Sebastopol and its ships and stores, forts and guns, by the middle of October. Before the allies quitted Bulgaria the evils we speak of were less visible, but, from the moment the fleets were at sea, those evils sprang up like weeds, and General Todleben should have reckoned them among the advantages on the side of his master. We see them at the very debarkation, for the story of the

buoys is true, and was not told by Mr. Kinglake for the first time, although told by him with point and circumstance. We see them at the Alma, in an imperfectly conducted battle, in a truncated victory; we see them in the hesitations of the double-headed host, whether on the shaggy heights of the Belbek, or the rocky wastes of the Chersonesus; we see them in the choice of the point of attack, in the neglect to seize that favourable moment for an assault when the Redan had been crushed into ruin by our fire; and we see them in that distribution of forces which left the Inkerman flank without entrenchments and almost without defenders. To this divided command, more than to any other cause, may be traced the failure of the enterprise as originally planned, a failure which brought with it such a train of dreadful suffering, and which led to a situation wherein our troops figured as the British Contingent of a French Army. Finally, we see the British people wrongfully holding the British Government and British General responsible for the whole conduct of the war, an evil in itself of no small magnitude; and an evil flowing from that divided command which not only marred a great enterprise, but degraded England in the eyes of Europe, and, at that time, revived and exalted the reputation of the new ally whom she had found in her ancient foe.

STATESMANSHIP IN CONSTITUTIONAL COUNTRIES.

It is a common complaint that STATESMANSHIP is at a low ebb in England just now. What we have is of a poor kind, and there is very little of it. Among our public men there is abundance of political ability, of clever parliamentary strategy, of practical knowledge, of debating skill and eloquence, and a fair amount of administrative capacity. But the views and action of our public men, even the best of them, lack width, steadiness, and persistent harmony;-and it is the union of these three characteristics in an adequate degree that gives to politics the quality and dignity of statesmanship. We miss men gifted with the faculty of taking a wide survey of the present or the future, a true perception of the enduring elements of a nation's greatness, a clear comprehension and an unswerving pursuit of those measures by which the objects thus distinctly seen can be as certainly attained. In place of such men we have two distinct classes, who rather caricature

true statesmanship than imitate or approach it. There are some who have wonderful skill in gaining party victories—that is, in adapting immediate means to immediate ends;—and there are others who are fanatically devoted to one object or one principle, and who pursue it as persistently as any statesman of any country, but they are doctrinaires, not statesmen. They are irrational devotees. They are not so much thinkers, as men possessed with an idea. We have two admirable illustrations of this among living celebrities, in the case of two men, of whom it is as impossible to speak without respect and gratitude as without regret and censure. Lord John Russell became eminent and powerful by identifying himself with the cause of parliamentary reform, at a time when reform was, of all measures, perhaps the one most essential to the wellbeing and progress of the country. He adhered to his object through long, disastrous, and disheartening years; and when the tide turned and the victory was at last won, he rode into power with the flowing wave of popular strength, and as a just and appropriate reward became the prominent idol of the hour. His name was for ever associated with his cause, not only in the minds of the people, but, unfortunately, in his own too. The question became in a manner his possession, his hobby, idée fixé. It haunted him, so to speak. He grew to feel that he owed it the homage of constant attention-perpetual, fidgety, fussy petits soins. From being the aim of a sound mind, it grew to be the crotchet of an infirm one. He seemed to be startled from his sounder condition by the clamour which greeted some unfortunate remarks which he once made about finality." He took an opportunity not long afterwards of astonishing the soberer portion of the nation by announcing that he had been an advocate of parliamentary reform when he entered public life, that he was its advocate still, and that he trusted he should always remain so :-in fact, that at one time before dinner he had felt very hungry, which was natural enough; that he had had a plentiful dinner, of his own ordering, and that now he felt more hungry than before, -which did not sound very natural or healthy; and that he trusted his appetite would always continue as robust and insatiable as ever, which sounded hardly like good sense or sound morality. Since that memorable declaration he has been pertinaciously waving the old banner and crying the old watchword, without perceiving that his face was set in a precisely opposite direction, and that he was confronting an entirely different set of antagonists from those whom he routed in his youth; and has, in fact, been steadily, though happily unsuccessfully, endeavouring to undo his own work, under the

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delusion that he was completing it. At first he toiled to transfer political preponderance from the aristocratic to the middle classes-i.e., from a fraction of the propertied and educated classes to the whole of them. Since then he has been trying to transfer political preponderance from the middle classes to the ignorant and the working classes,―and he calls both proceedings by the name of "Parliamentary Reform."

Our other persistent politician is Mr. Cobden. His consistency is far more real than Earl Russell's, and his errors and deficiencies are of a different order. It was given to him to gain a victory, perhaps even greater than that of parliamentary reform, and against a phalanx of foes even more formidable to begin with. He stood upon a simple truth, he fought for a distinct and definable purpose, he conquered by the pure force of demonstration. He was truly grand when he was fighting that battle; he has never been truly grand since. He saw that peace, the wealth and prosperity of the country, and the physical welfare of the masses, depended on liberating trade and industry from the shackles with which selfish aims and unwise fondness had bound them. He succeeded. The commercial, financial, and industrial results of the free commercial policy which he persuaded the country to adopt, have not only justified but far surpassed, not only his, but all other anticipations. No wonder that he should have felt that it was impossible to exaggerate the value of the principle he had proclaimed. His error has lain in seeing it alone, or in looking at it so exclusively and so intently as to see it out of its due proportions; in deeming that free trade would inevitably entail all other political blessings; in judging men and sovereigns according to their faith in his own creed. His intellect was a clear and powerful, but not a wide or philosophic one. He saw one side of human nature so vividly, that he forgot it was only one side. He would have sacrificed, or risked sacrificing, every other public aim to freedom of commerce, believing, we doubt not, in his heart, that all other things would inevitably follow in its train. In his exclusive devotion to one object he has endangered many blessings and outraged many cherished sentiments. He has been blinded by the very concentration of his vision. He has forgotten, too, that there are national objects nobler and dearer than peace, richer and more prolific than commercial wealth, more essential even at times than cheap food or light taxation for the poor. Hence, though about the most acute, vigorous, and honest intellect among our public men, he is perhaps the least statesmanlike of them all; because width and mellowness

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of mind, as well as consistency and force, are needed to constitute a statesman.

The fact is undeniable: whether we look to other countries or to other times, whether we compare France with England, ancient with modern days, the reign of Victoria with the reign of Elizabeth, the race of statesmen seems to have died out among us, and we have seldom been more painfully reminded of it than of late. "There were giants in those days," there are none now. Not only can we find no Pericles in this age; not only do we see no one like Ximenes or Alberoni, who governed Spain so long, or like Richelieu or Sully who ruled France for half a life time, and through her ruled Europe, or like Barnevelt or De Witt, who for years contrived to govern and make great even their turbulent republic; but we see no analogies to Cecil and Walsingham, who held power through a whole reign, under a most capricious and unworthy mistress. Our modern history can offer no rivals to such men as Napoleon I. or Frederick the Great, scarcely even to such men as Metternich or Nesselrode, or Cavour, or Napoleon III. The only ministers who could pretend to the name of statesmen in recent days in England, were Walpole, Pitt, and Canning, and the last, the feeblest of the three, died upwards of a generation since.

Granted, however, the fact, two questions at once suggest themselves for consideration:-why we have now no such statesmen as those of other countries and of former days; and how far their absence is to be deplored.

Now, in reference to the first point, a little reflection will serve to show that the current ideas on the subject are of a nature to render us habitually, though unconsciously, unjust to the public men of England: not that we under-estimate their actual capacity and merits, but that, in mentally measuring them with the Richelieus, Cecils, De Witts, and Napoleons, we are trying them by a standard which it is simply impossible they should ever reach. We complain, and with perfect truth, that their political ability never attains, and seldom approaches, to the height of statesmanship, without pausing to inquire whether, under a parliamentary system of government, there is any scope or field for the development of statesmanship, properly so called. In comparing the ministers and politicians of constitutional England with those of despotic France, Austria, and Russia-as in comparing the ministers and politicians of the England of Queen Victoria with those of the England of Queen Elizabeth-we lose sight of the consideration that the conditions, and therefore the possibilities, of the several ages and countries, are altogether dissimilar. We