at England and France would do eight
hundred years later when such a crisis arrived! While the Sultan in the
name of the Prophet was appealing to all the passions of a mad fanaticism
to arise and "drive out the foreign infidels who were assailing their
holy faith"--there was in England an enthusiasm for his defense as
splendid as if the cause were a righteous one.

It is not a simple thing to carry a bark deeply loaded with treasure
safely through swift and tortuous currents. England was loaded to the
water's edge with treasure. Her hope was in that sunken wreck of an
empire which fate had moored at the gateway leading to her Eastern
dominions, and what she most feared in this world was its removal. As a
matter of state policy, she may have followed the only course which was
open to her; but viewed from a loftier standpoint, it was a compromise
with unrighteousness when she joined Hands with the "Great Assassin" and
poured out the blood of her sons to keep him unharmed. For fifty years
that compromise has embarrassed her policy, and still continues to soil
her fair name. In the War of the Crimea, England, no less than Russia,
was fighting, not for the avowed, but unavowed object. But frankness is
not one of the virtues required by diplomacy, so perhaps of that we have
no right to complain.

On the 4th of January, 1854, the allied fleets entered the Black Sea.
The Emperor Nicholas, from his palace in St. Petersburg, watched the
progress of events. He saw Menschikof vainly measuring swords with Lord
Raglan at Odessa (April 22); then the overwhelming defeat at the Alma
(September 20); then the sinking of the Russian fleet to protect
Sebastopol, about which the battle was to rage until the end of the war.
He saw the invincible courage of his foe in that immortal act of valor,
the cavalry charge at Balaklava (November 5), in obedience to an order
wise when it was given, but useless and fatal when it was received--of
which someone made the oft-repeated criticism--"_C'est magnifique--mais
ce n'est pas la guerre_." And then he saw the power to endure during
that awful winter, when the elements and official mismanagement were
fighting for him, and when more English troops were perishing from cold
and neglect than had been killed by Russian shot and shell.

But the immense superiority of the armies of the allies could not be
doubted. His troops, vanquished at every point, were hopelessly
beleagured in Sebastopol. The