The expression of _'perfide Albion'_ had long been current in France, and then indeed it would be well deserved and would become a perpetual term of reproach against us. These rebuffs did not prevent Evans going on board ship and there giving out that the army would in a few days be obliged to embark, and Captain Dacres came to Lyons and told him he heard this was going to happen. Lyons asked him where he had heard this, and he said Evans had announced it, and talked of it unreservedly as certain to happen. Lyons said, 'It is false; the army will not go away, and Sebastopol will be taken. It is very mischievous that such reports should circulate, and I order you not to allow such a thing to be said by anybody on board your ship, and to contradict it in the most positive manner.' Everything that Lyons said, and it may be added all one hears in every way, tends to the honour and the credit of Raglan, and I am glad to record this because I have always had an impression that much of the difficulty and distress of the army in 1854 was owing to his want of energy and management. He was not a Wellington certainly, and probably he might have done more and better than he did, but he was unquestionably, on the whole, the first man in the army, and if he had not been continually thwarted by the French, would have done more. While many here were crying out for placing our army under the command of French generals, and recalling Raglan (and I must confess I had myself a considerable leaning that way), he was struggling against the shortcomings or the inactivity of Canrobert and Pélissier. Canrobert acknowledged that he had not nerves sufficient for the duties of his station, and he never could be got to agree to adopt the bold offensive movements which Raglan was continually urging upon him, especially after the battle of Inkerman, when Raglan entreated him to follow up the discomfited Russians, his whole army being ready and not above 1,500 of them having been engaged. With Pélissier, Raglan had very little to do, for his death occurred soon after Pélissier took the command. [Sidenote: LYONS DEFENDS LORD RAGLAN.]