32 G THE WINTER TKOUBLES. CHAP, soldier-judges, and undergo the strong, wholesome
- discipline which enforces patience, patience, long
patience. (■^^^) Penned back in the way we have seen from the privileged end of the hall, the audience com- prised some keen men who might be trusted to engender that strife which Bishop Temple assures us is indispensably needed for causing truth to prevail (■^^'^) — comprised, indeed, if we borrow the very, very words of the poet : — ' A serried line ' of critics, with their gaze intent and fixed, all ' eager for the fray ; dealers of thunderbolts ' which, ready poised, would faU to-morrow.'* The great company of the ' Times ' was not only present in the persons of its reporters, but also had come represented by one of those gifted writers who were called, as we saw, ' crouching
- tigers.' This slayer — famed for his brilliancy
— sat keenly watching the quarry and waiting to make his spring. And he knew that before many hours his spring could be made ; for this martial tribunal was not one so constituted that — like an ancient High Court of Law — it could forbid the public handling of questions still awaiting judicial deci- sion. Day l)y day, the great journal assailed with keen, studied invectives the officers defend- ing their conduct ; buL day by day also, the patient soldier-judges went on with their labours, the Judge Advocate, Mr Cliarles Villiers, repress-
- Violet Fane. — The lines are not in her great poem
"Denzil Place," but in the volume called iier 'Collected Verses,' p. 35.
