Her reply reveals her characteristic high courage. One
quotation, which she makes from Shakspeare, is admirable:
"Beware
Of entrance to a quarrel; but being in,
Bear't, that the opposed may beware,
of thee."
Still, as we look back, it does seem as though with the wit of the Queen,
the wisdom of Prince Albert, the philosophy of Baron Stockmar,--the
philanthropy of Exeter Hall, and the piety of the Bench of Bishops, some
sort of peaceful arrangement might have been effected, and the Crimean
war left out of history. But then we should not have had the touching
picture of the lion and the unicorn charging on the enemy together, not
for England or France, but all for poor Turkey; and Mr. Tennyson could
not have written his "Charge of the Light Brigade," which would have been
a great loss to elocutionists. There were in Parliament a few poor-
spirited economists and soft-hearted humanitarians who would fain have
prevented that mighty drain of treasure and of the best blood of England-
holding, with John Bright, that this war was "neither just nor
necessary"; but they were "whistling against the wind." There was one
rich English quaker, with a heart like a tender woman's and a face like a
cherub's, who actually went over to Russia to labor with "friend
Nicholas" against this war.
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