ch to be blamed for growing old, and liberal-minded people were
fast coming to the conclusion, that years, on the whole, were not
dishonorable, when the breaking out of a great war led to the return of
youth to consideration. The English found themselves at war with Russia,
much to their surprise; and, still more to their surprise, their part in
that war was made subordinate to that of the French, who acted with
them, in the world's estimate of the deeds of the members of the new
Grand Alliance. This is not the place to discuss the question whether
that estimate was a just one. We have to do only with the facts that
England was made to stand in the background and that she seemed at first
disposed to accept the general verdict. There was, too, much
mismanagement in the conduct of the war, some of which might easily have
been avoided; and there was not a little suffering, as the consequence
of that mismanagement. John Bull must have his scape-goat, like the rest
of us; and, looking over the field, he discovered that all his leaders
were old men, and forthwith, though the oldest of old fellows himself,
he laid all his mishaps to the account of the years of his upper
servants. Sir Charles Napier, who never got into St. Petersburg, was
old, and had been a dashing sailor forty years before. Admiral Dundas,
who did not destroy Sweaborg, but only burned a lot of corded wood there
in summer time, was another old sailor. Lord Raglan, who never saw the
inside of Sebastopol, was well stricken in years, having served in
Wellington's military family during the Peninsular War. General Simpson,
Sir C. Campbell, General Codrington, Sir G. Brown, Sir G. Cathcart, and
others of the leaders of the English army in the Crimea, were of the
class of gentlemen who might, upon meeting, furnish matter for a
paragraph on "united ages." What more natural than to attribute all that
was unpleasant in the war to the stagnated blood of men who had heard
the music of that musketry before which Napoleon I.'s empire had gone
down? The world went mad on the subject, and it was voted that old
generals were nuisances, and that no man had any business in active war
who was old enough to have much experience. Age might be venerable, but
it was necessarily weak; and the last place in which it should show
itself was the field.

It was not strange that the English should have come to the conclusion
that the fogies were unfit to lead armies. They were in want of an