The Winter months of 1854-55, chequered as they were by disaster, disease, and death, and branded, as the corresponding period of every year in such a climate must inevitably be, with the stigma of inaction, were not destitute of their share in preparing the brilliant successes of the Spring. " The slow sad hours that bring us all things evil, and all good things from evil," brought not only the golden fruit of a salutary experience, sown in necessary ignorance and blind routine, and reaped amidst the chaos of an exploded system; their course was marked through every moment of its tedious duration by a steady and constant tendency to the accomplishment of the first great end of the expedition. This end was never lost sight of even in the gloomiest period of the season, and when the strength of the British Army was reduced to its lowest exponent. Few indeed were the days on which some addition, however small, was not made to the park of the siege train, and to the accumulation of munitions of war, in readiness for the renewal of operations. These almost imperceptible instalments gradually swelled into a respectable aggregate, increased still more rapidly as finer weather, better roads, reinforcements, and finally the railway, multiplied the means of transport in a progressive ratio, which in April enabled the Allies to open the second bombardment. Prior, however, to that important operation, the virtual commencement of the second campaign, several events had occurred to which an overwhelming interest attached at the time, and a brief retrospective glance at which is essential to the completeness of our narrative. Whilst the Army in the Crimea was contending with cold, and rain, and mud — with exposure, and want, and overwork, on the bleak plateau of the Chersonese, a salutary change had gradually been worked in public opinion at home. The overweening confidence in the power and prestige of the
Allies With which the starting of the expedition was regarded, and which the brilliant victory of the Alma, following so closely upon it, served only to augment, had given place to a calmer and more rational appreciation of the gigantic nature of the contest, and of the courage, the obstinacy, and the resources of the foe. This change of views, instead of daunting or discouraging the nation, imparted a sterner resolution, a more earnest depth, to its unswerving determination to prosecute to the end the serious war, in which the honour as well as the interests of England were now inextricably involved. The immediate result was the fall of a ministry, whose original constitution, however well adapted to the complicated exigencies and clashing interests of a state of peace, was fatally deficient in that directness of purpose and unity of will which are indispensably requisite to the successful conduct of a great war. The subsequent course of those members of the Cabinet who have not returned to office has justified the national prescience; and their advocacy of a peace impossible both in time and terms has proved that, when they had exhausted every eflbrt to avoid a collision, they had accomplished their mission, and reached the limits of their capacity. The universal voice had long distinguished one of their colleagues as eminently fitted to guide the helm of state through the region of storm and danger; and, when Lord Palmerston assumed the direction of afiairs, it was with the full benefit of a chart of the shoals and sunken rocks where his predecessors had made shipwreck. Of that shipwreck we have already hinted the cause; and it would be unfair to cast blame individually on the members of the late Government, of whom, one who has been perhaps the most unsparingly censured, devoted, we firmly believe, no ordinary energy and no common talents to the honest and faithful performance of duties, which, owing to a faulty system, were beyond the powers of any single individual. The advent of the new Cabinet to power was marked by reforms, which the heterogeneous composition of the old had rendered impossible. Departments, whose divided responsibility and independent action were the fruitful causes of embarrassment and delay, were simplified or amalgamated; the administration of the War Office was centralized, and its anomalous branches placed under the direct control of one supreme chief; and the ministry, weeded of lukewarm friends and disguised foes, became every day more in unison with the declared policy of the nation. The result has been that steady improvement in the whole conduct of the war, to which the successes of the campaign which has just closed are mainly due, and which justify still more sanguine anticipations as to the operations of next spring.
N THE CRIMEA. d