CHAP. XIII.
stitutes the fourth of the lost occasions which these volumes have to record.
Another lost occasion. In succumbing for a time to the defenders of Sebastopol, and resolving to postpone his next attack to some future day, General Canrobert, it is plain, acted loyally, and without an idea of the extent to which he was sacrificing the common cause. By the conjuncture which had suddenly placed the resources of a whole fleet and arsenal at the disposal of transcendent genius there had been generated so vast a power of rapidly constructing, restoring, and re-arming defensive works, that the like of it had never before been known in the world; and it is scarcely wonderful that, even with all the quickness and sagacity of his nation, a French commander should have been slow to perceive the whole truth. He apparently formed no conception of the huge quantity of new work, and restoration, and re-armament that might be effected by the garrison and people of Sebastopol in the course of an autumn night, and suffered himself to imagine that the besieger's work of destruction might recommence on the morrow at the point where it was to leave off that same evening. If he had not indulged this illusion. General Canrobert would have seen that, to give further respite to Sebastopol when the favouring chances of war had torn open its line of defence, was to spurn a gift of rare worth, such as Fortune—too often rebuffed—might hardly again deign to proffer.
