followers cleaving the Russian trunk column at the barrier; Waddy's
dash at the retreating artillery train, foiled only by the presence
and the readiness of Todleben. One marvels in reading how the
English held their own; their victory against so tremendous odds is
ascribed by the historian to three conditions; the hampering of the
enemy by his crowded masses; the slaughter amongst his officers
early in the fight, which deprived their men of leadership; above
all, the dense mist which obscured from him the fewness of his
opponents. If Canrobert with his fresh troops had followed in
pursuit, the Russian's retreat must have been turned into a rout
and his artillery captured; if on the following day he had
assaulted the Flagstaff Bastion, Sebastopol, Todleben owned, must
have fallen. He would do neither; his hesitancy and apparent
feebleness have already been explained; but to it, and to the
sinister influence which held his hand, were due the subsequent
miseries of the Crimean winter.

But the epic muse exacted from Kinglake, as from Virgil long
before, the portrayal not only of generals and of battles, but of
two great monarchs, each in his own day conspicuously and
absolutely prominent--the Czar Nicholas and the Emperor Napoleon:


"dicam horrida belia,
Dicam acies, actosque animis in funera REGES."


His handling of them is characteristic. Few men living then could
have approached either without a certain awe, their "genius"
rebuked,--like Mark Antony's, in the presence of Caesars so