XXX BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 



besides, the Turkish music, the most sickly wretched kind of tunc, and to which the men have 

 put the words : — 



' Going to die ! going to die ! 

 Wc, poor devils, going to die ! ' " 



In another letter we find Lord Arthur complaining of the ennui attendant on inactivity, 

 but in raptures with the loveliness of the flowers that strew the ground in profusion, and the 

 immense number of beetles and splendid butterflies, which made him calmly consider whether 

 his lot in life would not be far happier as a naturalist than as a soldier. " As a soldier 

 there is only one position which in any way recompenses for the drudgery of the life ; and that 

 is command. The excitement of a soldier's life is very great ; but excitement alone does not 



satisfy me. I like reasoning upon the causes of things. I like a man such as M , who, 



under the sharpest fire, and with shells bursting around him, sits coolly smoking a cigar and 

 calculating the reasons why some one of the enemy's shells went somewhere other than he thought 

 it ought : in that light a soldier's life is tolerable, because it is intellectual." 



In a very interesting letter, 19th of April, there is a long account of the state of the place, 

 in which he speaks in high terms of the enemy. He refers to an ofier he had made to superintend 

 and systematize the sharp-shooting in our advanced trenches, which was declined by Lord Raglan, 

 on the ground that it would be invidious to the field-officers in command of the trenches. 

 " In the meantime," he writes, " the Russian riflemen are so emboldened, that it is not 

 safe to walk in the rearmost of our works. One officer and seven men were hit the 

 other day in one battery by rifle-bullets." 



A curious circumstance on one of the days durmg the second bombardment opened every 

 one's eyes to the real position of affairs, " The Russians had not responded with any ngour to 

 our fire ; we were firing three and five guns to their one. All of us were cock-a-hoop ; the 

 enemy were gradually getting silenced, and so on. In the afternoon, however, a lumping shell 

 exploded the magazine in our 8-gun battery, and immediately the enemy opened a tremendous 

 fire from all points ujion the scene of the explosion. There could be no further doubt that 

 they were not silenced, but that they did not choose to expose men and guns, and expend 

 ammunition. "We stopped firing the following day from want of ammunition; and the enemy 

 kept up a slow steady fire, just as they have done all along ; and so affairs are situated, ^^'e are 

 fairly beaten." And so far as the contest between artillery was concerned, no doubt the 

 Russians had not been reduced to silence ; but the naval supremacy and the resources of the four 

 Allied Powers were gradually asserting their power outside the Crimea and beyond the limits of 

 the actual siege. 



Under date the 21st of May, 1855, he mentions the intention of the Allied Generals to 



