THE DEMEANOUK OF ENGLAND. 293 nance which his conduct towards Lord Eaglan CHAP. IX provokes by ascribing it to bodily ailment. ' There is some foundation for thinking that the language he unhappily addressed to the general commanding our army owed its source, after all, to the unseen approach of a malady which soon afterwards disclosed itself plainly by crippling the sufferer's right hand. If acquainted with the singular missive of the 12 th of February, and with the state of its writer soon afterwards when stricken by manifest gout, the modern physician, it seems, woidd be likely to hold that the cause of the patient's affliction, as disclosed by his swollen joints, was the same as the one that — when only assailing the brain, and not recognised yet as disease — had goaded him, a few weeks before, into writing the unseemly despatch.(^°) Upon entering the War Department, Lord LordPan- Panmure there found the despatches which had provided passed between his predecessor and Lord Eaglan, for inform- but also had unstinted access to that large and upon the p ,^ 1 1 • 1 1 n business of instructive part of the correspondence which had the cam- been carried on in private letters. For any Minister seeking to possess himself of the sub- ject to which his new duties had called him, here was ready at hand a large and well-ordered treasury of the very knowledge required — a treasury abundantly filled with clear, authen- tic information respecting the operations, the troubles, the wants, and the actual state of our army, all recorded from mail-day to mail-day with faithful, unceasing care.
