232 THE WINTER TROUBLES. CHAP, calamities to subordinate causes, the great journal ' devoted itself with untiring power and skill. Its gifted writers inveighed against the civil, mili- tary, and naval administration, both at home and abroad, making out in some of their moods that the calamity had resulted from want of System, and sometimes maintaining that System — they commonly called it ' Eoutine ' — was the very, very root of the evil. Between In the facc of a prospect then already over- 18th and 23d i -n i i • ^ n i ,i December, cast and still darkcnmg, we saw how hrmly the change in will of a United and resolute people was voiced the spirit of -^ , . , . , i • r> i the 'Times.' by our great Jbnghsh journal; and, it the time of trial had compassed no more than that month which ended on the 18 th of December, a too hasty empiric might have inferred that the steadfastness often attributed to nations led by their nobles might belong, after all, to a nearly self-governing people, if blessed with a guide so determined as the one England found in the • Times.' But, unhappily, the steadfastness of the great journal was put to a harder and more protracted test. With what result we shall see. The accounts that by mail after mail now came pouring in from the Chersonese proved every day more and more painful as regarded the actual state of our army, but also more and more gloomy in their bearing upon what was to come ; and men needed no great weather-wisdom to see fast approaching a storm of public grief mingled with rage. The conductors of the great journal knew
