such as that
of Sir Colin Campbell and Sir George Brown--that it has been not
unfrequently asked, whether we had in reality the 'right men in the
right places,' and whether there might not, after all, have been
generalship enough in the Crimea had it been but rightly arranged. But
the leading generalship was certainly _not_ brilliant. The criticism
upon it, on the other hand, has been singularly so. The ages of
Marlborough and Wellington did not produce a tithe of the brilliant
military criticism which has appeared in England in newspapers,
magazines, and reviews during the last two years. And yet it is
possible that, had the very cleverest of these critics been appointed
to the chief command, he would have got on as ill as any of his
predecessors. In truth, the power of originating and the power of
criticising are essentially different powers in the worlds both of
thought and of action. Talent accumulates the materials of criticism
from the experience of the past; and thus, as the world gets older,
the critical ability grows, and becomes at length formidably
complete;--whereas the power of originating, or, what is the same
thing, of acting wisely, and on the spur of the moment, in new and
untried circumstances, is an incommunicable faculty, which genius, and
genius only, can possess. And genius is as rare now as it ever was.
Any man of talent can be converted, by dint of study and painstaking,
into a good military critic; but a Wellington or a Napoleon had as
certainly to be born what they were, as a Dante or a Milton.

But by far the most pleasing feature of the war--of at least the part
taken in it by Britain--is to be found in that humanity, the best
evidence of a civilisation truly Christian, which has characterized it
in all its stages. Generous regard for the safety and respect for the
feelings of a brave enemy, when conquered, have marked our countrymen
for centuries. But we owe it to the peculiar philanthropy of the time,
that, in the midst of much official neglect, our own sick and wounded
soldiers have been cared for after a fashion in which British soldiers
were never cared for before. The 'lady nurses,' with Miss Nightingale
at their head, imparted its most distinctive character to the war. We
have now before us a deeply interesting volume,{1} the production of
one of these devoted females, a native of the north country, or, as
she was introduced by an old French officer to some Zouaves, her
fellow-passeng