After we had had sufficient time to peruse the man (so far as it could be
done with one pair of very attentive eyes), the General rode off,
followed by his cavalcade, and was lost to sight among the troops. They
received him with loud shouts, by the eager uproar of which--now near,
now in the centre, now on the outskirts of the division, and now sweeping
back towards us in a great volume of sound--we could trace his progress
through the ranks. If he is a coward, or a traitor, or a humbug, or
anything less than a brave, true, and able man, that mass of intelligent
soldiers, whose lives and honor he had in charge, were utterly deceived,
and so was this present writer; for they believed in him, and so did I;
and had I stood in the ranks, should have shouted with the lustiest of
them. Of course I may be mistaken; my opinion on such a point is worth
nothing, although my impression may be worth a little more; neither do I
consider the General's antecedents as bearing very decided testimony to
his practical soldiership. A thorough knowledge of the science of war
seems to be conceded to him; he is allowed to be a good military critic;
but all this is possible without his possessing any positive qualities of
a great general, just as a literary critic may show the profoundest
acquaintance with the principles of epic poetry without being able to
produce a single stanza of an epic poem.
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