what an earnest mind will experience everywhere in English life;
if his soul rise at all above cotton and scrip, a man has to
pronounce it all a _Balaklava_ these many years. A Balaklava now
_yielding,_ under the pressure of rains and unexpected transit of
heavy wagons; champing itself down into mere mud-gulfs,--towards
the bottomless Pool, if some flooring be not found. To me it is
not intrinsically a new phenomenon, only an extremely hideous
one. _Altum Silentium,_ what else can I reply to it at present?
The Turk War, undertaken under pressure of the mere mobility,
seemed to me an enterprise worthy of Bedlam from the first; and
this method of carrying it on, _without_ any general, or with a
mere sash and cocked-hat for one, is of the same block of stuff.
_Ach Gott!_ Is not Anarchy, and parliamentary eloquence instead
of work, continued for half a century everywhere, a beautiful
piece of business? We are in alliance with Louis Napoleon (a
gentleman who has shown only _housebreaker_ qualities hitherto,
and is required now to show heroic ones, _or_ go to the Devil);
and under Marechal Saint-Arnaud (who was once a dancing-master in
this city, and continued a _thief_ in all cities), a Commander of
the Playactor-Pirate description, resembling a _General_ as
Alexander Dumas does Dante Alighieri,--we have got into a very
strange problem indeed!--But there is something almost grand in
the stubborn thickside patience and persistence of this English
People; and I do not question but they will work themselves
through in one fashion or another; nay probably, get a great
deal of benefit out of this astonishing slap on the nose to their
self-complacency before all the world. They have not _done_ yet,
I calculate, by any manner of means: they are, however,
admonished in an ignominious and convincing manner, amid the
laughter of nations, that they are altogether on the wrong road