Captain Peel of the Diamond stands out in bold relief amongst these amphibious heroes, whose hearts, however, he won so completely, by a courage almost bordering on rashness, and by an exhibition of qualities the most congenial to their own, that no enterprise, however desperate, would have had terrors for them under his auspices. Our loss during this bombardment was surprisingly small, when recalled in connexion with its long duration, and the severe fire to which our men were exposed; and this fact reflects the highest credit on the engineering of the Allies. It was long before it was accurately known to what extent the enemy had sufiered, but it has since been confidently stated that their casualties during this period amounted to 8000, and this assertion has never been disputed. Sickness, however, was beginning already to make great ravages among our troops, and about this time a constant drain on their numbers commenced, which increased in an alarming ratio as winter set in, and which no reinforcements were able to make head against, until the improved condition of the men, and the return of a more genial season, checked and finally terminated it. More pressing cares even than these now demanded the attention and taxed the energies and skill of the commanders, while they gave fresh opportunities to the Armies for the display of that devoted courage and unshaken constancy, which wiU cast an immortal halo around the history of this expedition. The acts of the terrible drama succeed each other with a rapidity that even at this short distance of time is startling, and the incidents rise in a progression of tragic and solemn grandeur till they reach their climax in the deadly struggle at Inkermann. Scarcely six weeks had elapsed from the landing in the Crimea, and yet how many stirring events had been crowded into the interval: battles lost and won, reputations made and destroyed, boys turned into old campaigners; hearts once beating high with hope and with the excitement of the strife stilled for ever; restless fears and heart-sickening anxieties quelled in hopeless certainty; prayers fervently offered up in the far-off sanctuary of home, while their object lay stiff and stark with his face to the sky, yet answered in their highest meaning — confidence gained, illusions dispelled, victory alternating with disappointment, sorrow with joy, life with death.
For Aveeks one thought had been in every mind, one topic in every mouth, and, as mail after mail arrived with its varying intelligence and ever constant theme, pale faces, which had watched for news of the absent and the loved, grew paler with the pangs of hope deferred, or became fixed and rigid with despair, while others flushed with rapture as the one loved name came coupled with heroic deeds in the present, and brightest promise for the future. One vast electric chain of sympathy, admiration, and love connected, throughout the broad expanse of the three kingdoms, palace and cottage, peasant and peer, and when the news of the unparalleled selfsacrifice consummated on the plains of Balaklava on the 25th of October flew through its links, it conveyed a shock to the great heart of the nation which will never be forgotten. " The Light Cavalry are destroyed!" such was the horror-stricken exclamation which burst from myriads of lips, coupled with the firmly-expressed conviction, long ere details could be known, that the fate of her most gallant sons had been such as weeping England would enshrine among her proudest and most glorious memories.
For some days previous to the 25 th October, a large Russian force had been observed among the hills on the right front of the Allied position protecting Balaklava, or, as it is frequently called, the rear of the position before Sebastopol. This position, naturally of immense strength, had been fortified with great care by the French, who had thrown up formidable intrenchments, armed at suitable points with powerful batteries, and was considered by competent authorities as all but impregnable. The intrenchments, starting from a point above the head of the harbour of Balaklava, skirted the edge of the plateau of the Chersonesus in a direction nearly due south, with the exception of a re-entering angle, which they formed in following the sides of a valley which runs into the hills shortly beyond the village of Kadikoi. Standing with the back to Kadikoi, and looking across the valley of Balaklava, the eye rests on four conical-shaped hillocks, the one on the extreme right, known as Canrobert's Hill (from the fact of that General having met Lord Raglan there after the flank march), being within a short distance of the small hamlet of Kamara, which it overlooks. On each of these hills the Turks had thrown up a powerful earthen redoubt, armed with heavy guns, lent to them from our ships; and in the camp they were known as Nos. 1, 2, 3, and 4, counting from