Excerpt from Biographical and Critical Essays, Vol. 2 of 2: Reprinted From Reviews, With Additions and Corrections

As is almost necessarily the case, the disappoint ment Of extravagant hopes led to the temporary prevalence Of an equally extravagant spirit Of self depreciation. We started with the persuasion that everything must go right Of its own accord; and the first reverse brought us to the conviction that every thing had gone wrong through ignorance, negligence, incapacity, or mismanagement Of some sort. Neither in anticipation nor retrospection was due allowance made for circumstances - for the reduced state of our military establishments - for the limited and conflicting powers of the war departments - for the many adverse chances in the most perilous of games nor for that chapter Of accidents by which human events are more frequently controlled than by the wisest contrivance or the most inventive foresight. When the news arrived that our gallant army was undergoing a fearful amount of suffering from cold, hunger and overwork, it was at once taken for granted by the most influential portion of the press, that some high functionary, or class of functionaries, must be Offered up as a holocaust. The Secretary of lvar was natu rally the first victim. A fierce onslaught was next made on Lord Raglan, who, we were assured, after leading his soldiers into unprecedented difficulties and privations, coolly left them to their own resources, and from his own comfortable quarters looked on com placently, whilst they were perishing from disease and exposure, at the rapidly accelerating ratio Of two hundred a day.

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