ning
Post," on the 21st of September, "permit me to say that success could
not have attended the operations of ships against stone batteries firing
red-hot shot, however easily unresisting walls may be leisurely
demolished. There is but one means to place these parties on an equal
footing, and that I confidentially laid before the Government."

"The unreasoning portion of the public," he wrote to Sir James Graham on
the 11th of November, "have made an outcry against old admirals, as if
it were essential that they should be able to clear their way with a
broadsword. But, my dear Sir James, were it necessary--which it is
not--that I should place myself in an arm-chair on the poop, with each
leg on a cushion, I will undertake to subdue every insular fortification
at Cronstadt within four hours from the commencement of the attack." And
Sebastopol, he urged, could be as easily captured, if he were only
allowed to put his plans in operation. But it was not allowed. "Nothing
new can be attempted at the present moment," answered Sir James Graham.
"Winter will put an end to all active operations in the Baltic; and I
still venture to hope that at Sebastopol our arms will be triumphant."

Lord Dundonald, though pained, not so much on his own account as in the
interests of the nation, at the way in which his offers were treated,
persevered in making them. It was now too late in the season to effect
anything in the Baltic; but the siege of Sebastopol was being carried on
without any immediate prospect of success; and he yearned, with all the
ardour that he had displayed half a century before, for an opportunity
of rendering success both certain and immediate.

To this end he wrote again to Sir James Graham, and also for the first
time to the Earl of Aberdeen, on the 30th of December. "The pertinacious
resistance made at Sebastopol, and the possibility of events that may
still further disappoint expectation," he said to Sir James, "have
induced me to address Lord Aberdeen, saying that 'if it is the opinion
of the Cabinet, or of those whom they consult on military affairs, that,
failing the early capture of Sebastopol, the British army may be in
danger, I offer to the discernment of the Cabinet my still secret plans
of attack,' whereby the garrisons would be expelled from the forts or
annihilated, in defiance of numerical force, and possession obtained, at
least during sufficient time to enable the chief defences to be blown up
and