arrel between the Emperor Nicholas, France, and England. We went to
war with Russia. A magnificent squadron of British first-rates was
despatched to the Black Sea with the avowed object of destroying the
Russian Fleet, which had characteristically annihilated the Turkish
Fleet in the harbour of Sinope. We did not do much in the Black Sea
beyond running the Tiger on shore, where her crew were captured by the
Muscovites. We bombarded Odessa perfunctorily, and precisely in that
portion of the city where our shot and shell could do the least harm. We
did not destroy the Russian Fleet, for the sufficing reason that the
Russian Commander-in-Chief sank all his three-deckers full fathom five
in the harbour of Sebastopol.

'In the Baltic, however, there was a little more fighting to show for
the many millions sterling wrung from the British taxpayer. To the
coasts of Finland was sent a splendid Armada, commanded by one of the
bravest seamen that ever adorned the glorious muster-roll of the Royal
Navy of England, Admiral Sir Charles Napier. Under his orders was
Captain Augustus Hobart, in command of Her Majesty's ship Driver. "Lads,
sharpen your cutlasses!" thus began the memorable manifesto addressed by
the hero of St. Jean d'Acre to the gallant tars. The Baltic fleet was to
do wonders. The lads, with their cutlasses very well sharpened, went
aboard the Russian war-ships before Cronstadt, stormed the seven forts
which guard the entrance to that harbour, and sailed up the Neva even to
St. Petersburg itself. It is true that ere the war was over a spy
informed Lord Augustus Loftus, then Her Majesty's Ambassador at Berlin,
that a certain channel or waterway existed unguarded by any fort at all,
by which a British flotilla with muffled oars could have got quietly
into the Neva without taking the trouble to destroy the Russian fleet or
to blow the seven forts of Cronstadt into the air. The revelations of
the spy went for nothing; and, after the cutlasses of the lads in
blue-jackets had been sharpened to a razor-like degree of keenness,
those blades, for some occult reason, were not allowed to cut deep
enough; the only cutting--and running into the bargain--being done by
the Russian fleet, which, safely ensconced in the harbour of Cronstadt,
defied us from behind the walls of fortresses which we did not care to
bombard. Still, the Baltic fleet was not wholly idle. There was some
fighting and some advantage gained over the Russians at He