Seven years ago, when the war with Russia was about to end—was, in fact, already virtually ended—and when the war-fever of the English had been abated by copious blood-letting, and by the absence of further stimulant to hostility since Sebastopol had ceased to resist, people were already talking about the future history of the strife. It seemed to be agreed that the public, which had so eagerly swallowed all the information it could get, and snapped at all the opinions which floated so thickly on the stream of current history, was for the present glutted with the subject, and that to offer it any more Crimean information, however cunningly dressed, would be like fishing with a May-fly for a July trout. On the other hand, the subject seemed to be essentially one of contemporary importance. It had not the elements which gave lasting interest to the Peninsular war. It had developed no great reputations in which the nation could for the future undoubtingly confide. It had left us victorious over no great conqueror. Its memorials were not such as we should choose to dwell on; for though the nation was very proud of the early triumphs of the Alma and Inkermann, still the later course of the struggle had been, though successful in its end, yet disastrous and gloomy in its progress, and had left, partly through the more brilliant share which our allies took in the final action, but principally through the forebodings of our own press, a sense of comparative failure. Mr Kinglake comes upon the stage at a fortunate time. The weariness of the subject, once felt, has disappeared, while the strong contemporary interest in the actors remains. That interest is national in the sense of being fixed, not on a few great objects, but on a great number of inferior objects connected with the war. It is not so much patriotic as domestic. The graves of Cathcart’s Hill, the trenches filled with dead, the burial-grounds of Scutari, have a strong though softened hold on innumerable hearts. Everywhere in England—in remote parishes, in small communities, in humble households—remembrance of the great features of the struggle is kept alive by the presence of those who survived it. A strong conviction that French manœuvring was not entirely directed against the enemy, and that a fair scrutiny would leave us more reason for self-satisfaction than at first appeared, has long been afloat. And a succession of great conflicts in which we have been strongly interested has schooled us in military doctrines, and has rendered us better able to appreciate the operations of armies than we were either at the beginning or the end of the Crimean war.