It must not be inferred that the French escaped sickness and mortality. On the contrary, our allies suffered to a degree which would have been considered excessive, had it not been compared with our own unfortunate standard of disease and death, and to the diminution caused by illness, must be added that from the nightly sorties of the Russians and the heavy fire from the batteries. According to what I heard from people, I was honoured by a good deal of abuse for telling the truth. I really would have put on my Claude Lorraine glass, if I could. I would have clothed skeletons with flesh, breathed life into the occupants of the charnel-house, subverted the succession of the seasons, and restored the legions which had been lost; but I could not tell lies to "make things pleasant." Any statements I had made I have chapter, and book, and verse, and witness for. Many, very many, that I did _not_ make I could prove to be true with equal ease, and could make public, if the public interest required it. The only thing the partisans of misrule could allege was, that I did not "make things pleasant" to the authorities, and that, amid the filth and starvation, and deadly stagnation of the camp, I did not go about "babbling of green fields," of present abundance, and of prospects of victory. Suppose we come to "facts." Do people at home know how many bayonets the British army could muster? Do they believe we had 25,000, after all our reinforcements? They might have been told--nay, it might have been proved to them by figures at home--that the British army consisted of 55,000 men. From the 1st of December, 1854, to the 20th of January, 1855, 8,000 sick and wounded were sent down from camp to Balaklava, and thence on shipboard! Shall I state how many returned? Yet people at home told us it was "croaking" to state the facts, or even to allude to them! The man who could have sat calmly down and written home that our troops were healthy, that there was only an average mortality, that every one was confident of success, that our works were advancing, that we were nearer to the capture of Sebastopol than we were on the 17th of October, that transport was abundant, and the labours of our army light, might be an agreeable correspondent, but assuredly he would not have enabled the public to form a very accurate opinion on the real state of affairs in the camp before Sebastopol. The wretched boys sent out to us were not even fit for powder. They died ere a shot was fired against them. Sometimes a good draught was received; but they could not endure long vigil and exposure in the trenches.