" None of the later volumes, though highly
prized as battle narratives, quite came up to these. The political
and military conclusions drawn provoked no small bitterness; his
cousin, Mrs. Serjeant Kinglake, used to say that she met sometimes
with almost affronting coldness in society at the time, under the
impression that she was A. W. Kinglake's wife. Russians were,
perhaps unfairly, dissatisfied. Todleben, who knew and loved
Kinglake well, pronounced the book a charming romance, not a
history of the war. Individuals were aggrieved by its notice of
themselves or of their regiments; statesmen chafed under the
scientific analysis of their characters, or at the publication of
official letters which they had intended but not required to be
looked upon as confidential, and which the recipients had in all
innocence communicated to the historian. Palmerstonians, accepting
with their chief the Man of December, were furious at the exposure
of his basenesses. Lucas in "The Times" pronounced the work
perverse and mischievous; the "Westminster Review" branded it as
reactionary. "The Quarterly," in an article ascribed to A.
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