than an armistice for burying tiie dead. Brought face to face with each other while employed in rendering the same pious offices to comrades who have fallen in a cause which both alike deem sacred, the most inveterate foes must for a while recognise the common humanity which clothes them all — must feel that, after all, those whom they met in the death-struggle yesterday, and those with whom they shall strive for life itself to-morrow, are men of like form and passions with themselves; that the stiff, cold clay which once answered with an equal hatred to their own defiance, and which is not now more unconscious of hostility or love than they themselves may be or ere another sun, once in life and energy gladdened a home perchance as dear and happy as their own; where a sister will mourn the hero of her day-dreams — where a mother's gray hairs may go down with sorrow to the grave — where one dearer than all else on earth may never smile again.
And men, in whom, however faintly, such thoughts as these have been aroused, will not, even when the blood is up and the sword is flashed, forget them — -will not refuse the cry for quarter, nor deny the hand of succour nor the voice of comfort to a wounded foe.
Nothing perhaps excited the interest and curiosity of our own officers so much as the opportunity afforded them on this occasion of meeting and passing in review those of a corresponding rank in the Kussian service. The high bearing and the courteous demeanour of these gentlemen were the theme of universal remark in camp, whenever the incidents of the armistice were discussed; nor were these qualities matter of surprise to those acquainted with the Eussian military system. Drawn for the most part from the higher classes, and uniting to the special training required by his profession that mental cultivation and those more graceful accomplishments which, whatever may be said to the contrary, are not inconsistent with the most thorough technical knowledge, nor with the most reckless personal daring — the Eussian officer is pre-eminently to his men what the human soul is to the human body. The soldiers, drawn in masses from the extremities of the empire, and submitted, from the moment in which they are torn from their homes, to an iron discipline enforced by a harsh and unrestrained use of corporal punishments, become speedily but parts in one vast system, and wheels of one enormous machine, imposing from its bulk and admirable in its adaptation to certain exigencies, but deficient in plasticity and in originative power. It is the officers who breathe the spirit of life into this inanimate form, call forth its latent energies, direct its secret springs, and guide and control its action; it is the officers who change the vis incrtue, the passive obstinacy of the Eussian soldier, into a still more dogged and obstinate attack, and convince him, in spite of defeat, that he is not defeated. If the defence of Sebastopol was, as history will undoubtedly pronounce it to have been, most ably planned,
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cu most energetically carried out, most resolutely — nay, sternly — protracted, the largest share of the merit is undoubtedly due to the ofificers of the garrison, who had established such a moral ascendency over the troops under their command that no labour seemed irksome, no enterprise impracticable, if undertaken under their auspices. If, in every battle which has taken place in the Crimea, the Kussian columns, mown down, crushed, and shattered by a hellish fire of artillery, have returned to the attack long after success became an impossibility, and have retired with a solidity and an organisation which have awed pursuit, it is because their commanders were the first to brave danger and the last to shun it. Their conduct to those prisoners of war who have fallen into their hands has been, on the whole, remarkable for gentleness and humanity; and on more than one occasion those highest in command have not denied the tribute of a generous admiration to the gallant deeds and the high qualifications of their powerful enemies. The destruction of the Tif/er, slaughter of Sinope, and massacre at Hango, are the dark spots which deface this picture, and will probably be urged in contradiction of its accuracy; but, sad and disgraceful to the Russian arms as these reminiscences undoubtedly are, the blame due to them attaches more justly to the vices of a barbarous system than to the character of individuals.
To those gallant sons of France and England whose chivalry will forbid them to do injustice to the enemy in contending with whom they have reaped their own unfading laurels, we must appeal for confirmation of this perhaps unpopular view of the Eussian officer, and by them we feel confident that confirmation will not be withheld.