Every
modern commander, down certainly to the present moment, must have
envied him. Kinglake's mordant pen depicts with felicity and
compression the men of Downing Street, who without military
experience or definite political aim, thwarted, criticised, over-
ruled, tormented, their much-enduring General. We have Aberdeen,
deficient in mental clearness and propelling force, by his horror
of war bringing war to pass; Gladstone, of too subtle intellect and
too lively conscience, "a good man in the worst sense of the term";
Palmerston, above both in keenness of instinct and in strength of
will, meaning war from the first, and biding his time to insure it;
Newcastle, sanguine to the verge of rashness, loyally adherent to
Lord Raglan while governed by his own judgment, distrustful under
stress of popular clamour; Panmure, ungenerous, rough-tongued,
violent, churlish, yet not malevolent--"a rhinoceros rather than a
tiger"--hurried by subservience to the newspaper Press into
injustice which he afterwards recognized, yet did but sullenly
repair. We see finally that dominant Press itself, personified in
the all-powerful Delane, a potentate with convictions at once
flexible and vehement; forceful without spite and merciless without
malignity; writing no articles, but evoking, shaping, revising all.
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