XXIX. CHAP. him an unwelcome truth. Indeed, after the death of the Duke of Wellington, the proudest Englishman, if only he had intellect and a little knowledge of his country's latter history, had generally the grace to understand that, unless he too were a soldier who had taken his orders from the lips of Sir Arthur Wellesley, he could hardly be the equal of one whose mere presence was a record of England's great days. Thence it followed that, without pretension on the one side or servility on the other, men who were with him had a tendency to become courtiers. It was in vain that, so far as it had to do with their personal contentment, his manner placed men at their ease; there was some quality in him, or else some outward circumstance - it was partly, perhaps, the historic appeal of his maimed sword-arm which was always enforcing remembrance, and preventing his fusion with other -- men. In truth, Lord Raglan's manner was of such a kind as to be, not simply ornament, but a real engine of power. It swayed events. There was no mere gloss in it. By some gift of imagination he divined. the feelings of all sorts and conditions of men; and whether he talked to a statesman or a schoolboy, his hearer went away captive. I knew a shy, thoughtful, sensitive youth, just gazetted to a regiment of the Guards, who had to render his visit of thanks to the military secretary at the Horse Guards. He went in trepidation; he came back radiant with joy and wholesome confidence. Lord Fitzroy, instead XXIX. of receiving him in solemn form and ceremony, had CHAP walked forward to meet him, had put his hand kindly on the boy's shoulder, and had said a few words so cheering, so interesting, and so free from the vice of being commonplace, that the impression clung to the lad, shaping his career for years, and helped to make him the man he was when he was out with his battalion in the winter of the first campaign. From the same presence the foremost statesman of the time once came away saying, that the man in England most fitted by nature to be at the head of the Government was Lord Fitzroy Somerset; and he who so judged was himself a Prime Minister. the notion that torment to those St Arnaud brought at the The enemies of the Imperial Government in Marshal France had long made it a reproach against the and Lord English that they were joining in close alliance with Raglan the midnight destroyers of law and freedom; but together when Lord Raglan came to Paris- when he went Tuileries. to the Tuileries when he was presented by the Emperor to Marshal St Arnaud, such things could be was a very of the Parisian malcontents who chanced to know something of the English General: "You English "are a robust, stirring people, and perhaps every "man of you imagines that he covers himself with "dignity and grandeur by trampling upon the feelings. "of the rest of mankind; but surely those men wrong "you who call you a proud people. Pride causes men to stand aloof, as we do, from that which "is base; and if ever again we call you haughty แ XXIX. CHAP. “islanders, you may silence the calumny by remind"ing us of this 13th day of April in the year of "grace 1854. It was not enough that, for the sake "of this silly war, you should ally yourselves body "and soul to 'Monsieur de Morny's Lawgiver,' and "that you should suffer him to drag you down into "close intercourse with persons whom the humblest "of us here decline, to know; but now, as though "you really wished that your dishonour should be "made signal in Europe, you send hither your Ge"neral to be presented by this 'French Emperor,' "as you call him, to his henchman, Mr Le Roy St "Arnaud, and the man whom you choose out for this "great public sacrifice is Fitzroy Somerset, the friend "and the companion-in-arms of your Wellington. "You say that Lord Raglan cares not with whom "he associates, so that he is under the orders of the "Queen whom he serves, and in the performance of "a public duty; but because he, in the loyalty, in "the high-bred simplicity of his nature, is careless "and forgetful of self-is that a reason why you "should fail to be proud for him-why you should "forget to be careful on his behalf? If the modesty "of his nature hindered him from seeing the mo"mentous significance of his contact with the people "who have got into our palaces, ought you not to "have interposed to prevent him from incurring the "scene of to-day? We imagined that you knew "how to honour the memory of your Wellington, "and that, after his death, when you looked towards - "Fitzroy Somerset, or spoke to him, or listened to For Lord Raglan, all unconscious of exciting this kind of sympathy in the heart of the angry Faubourg, had left England on the 10th of April 1854; and on the following day both he and His Royal High CHAP. XXIX. CHAP. ness the Duke of Cambridge were received in state at the Tuileries. The presence of a member of our Royal Family was welcome to the new Emperor: he understood its significance. The Parisians love to see a momentous idea so impersonated as to be visible to the eyes of the body; and when their monarch attained to be seen riding between the near kinsman of the English Queen and the appointed commander of her army in the field when, on a bright spring day, he showed his guests some thirty thousand of his best troops in the Champ de Mars, and the scarlet of the ancient enemy sparkled gaily by the side of the blue and the gold the people seemed to accept the scene as a fitting picture of the great alliance of the West. Almost for the first time in the history of France, the accustomed cheers given to the Head of the State were mingled with cheers for England. But now the time for concerted action had come; and though France and England were already allied by such bonds as are made with parchment and wax, it remained to be seen whether the great rivals could act together in arms. The conjuncture, indeed, drew them towards each other; but it was certain that the coherence of the union would greatly depend on one man. It might seem that he who had first sworn to maintain the French Republic, and had afterwards destroyed it by stealth in the night-time, would not be much trusted again by his fellow-creatures; but the alliance rested upon ground more firm than the |