Notwithstanding the very cold weather which prevailed, numbers of our officers and men descended to the Tchernaya every day to communicate with the Russians, to examine the new race-course, or to wade after the wild-fowl which abound in the marshes. There was nothing new in these interviews, except that the Russians grew more cordial, or less sullen. The number of officers who came down to our side bore a very small proportion to that of the allied officers who attended these réunions. The men seemed never to tire of looking on each other. French, English, and Sardinians swarmed down to the banks of the Tchernaya, in spite of the cold and bitter winds, to confabulate with the Ruskis, to exchange money with them, and to stare at their dogged, and, it must be added, rather dirty-looking enemies, who were not quite so eager or so active in their curiosity as the allied soldiery, and who needed the stimulus of turning a dishonest penny in the exchange of small coins to tempt them from grass cutting, and the pursuit of wild ducks and hares by the flats beneath Mackenzie's Farm to the banks of the stream. The men I saw on the warm 20th of September on the slopes of the Alma seemed repeated and multiplied in every direction across the Tchernaya. There was a wonderful family likeness among the common soldiers. The small round bullet-head, the straight light hair, high cheek-bones, grey keen eyes, rather deeply set beneath straight and slightly defined eye-brows, undemonstrative noses, with wide nostrils, large straight mouths, square jaws, and sharp chins, were common to the great majority of them. Their frames seemed spare and strongly built; but neither in stature nor breadth of shoulder did they equal the men of our old army of 1854. Many of the officers could scarcely be distinguished from the men in air, bearing, or dress, except by the plain, ill-made, and slight swords, which they carried from an unornamented shoulder-belt; but now and then one met with a young fellow with the appearance of a gentleman, in spite of his coarse long coat; occasionally a great tall lumbering fellow, who seemed to be of a different race from the men around him, slouched along in his heavy boots. The clothing of the troops appeared to be good. Their boots, into which they tucked their loose trousers, were easy and well-made, and the great-coats worn by the men fitted them better than our own fitted the English infantry. The colour, not so much a grey as a dunnish drab, is admirably suited{465} not only to conceal the wearers in an open country, but to defy dust, mud, or rain to alter its appearance.
It was but natural that the two armies should be interested in each other's condition. The better-informed Russian officers were of course aware of the nature of our purchase system, but to most of them, that system was incomprehensible as novel. Its anomalies were, however, so strongly felt that the debates in Parliament which took place about this time on the subject were read with deep interest, and repeated and re-argued over and over again in camp. The friends of the system took it for granted that the arguments used against it must emanate from men of democratical and unconstitutional tendencies, and from enemies to the army and to the aristocracy, and Captain Figgs or Colonel Cottontwist were as fierce in their denunciations of Lord Goderich, Sir De Lacy Evans, and even Lord Palmerston, because he made some theoretical admissions against the system, as Lord Plantagenet or the Earl of Saxo-Grammaticus. They protested loudly that the object of these innovators was to drive "gentlemen" out of the army; while their opponents declared that the effect of the system was to keep "gentlemen" — those fiery cadets of old families who in other times were the true soldiers of fortune, the descendants of the gentry cavaliers — out of the army. If the ex-Sergeant Jones, holding a commission in one of our corps or regiments, was noisy in his cups and over-elated with his good fortune, his peccadilloes were the subject of rejoicings, and were regarded as sufficiently conclusive evidence that we could not open our commissions to the rank and file; and if he happened to be brought to a court-martial and reprimanded or cashiered, the demonstration was complete.