It is true that ere the war was over a spy informed Lord Augustus Loftus, then Her Majesty's Ambassador at Berlin, that a certain channel or waterway existed unguarded by any fort at all, by which a British flotilla with muffled oars could have got quietly into the Neva without taking the trouble to destroy the Russian fleet or to blow the seven forts of Cronstadt into the air.

The revelations of the spy went for nothing; and, after the cutlasses of the lads in blue-jackets had been sharpened to a razor-like degree of keenness, those blades, for some occult reason, were not allowed to cut deep enough; the only cutting--and running into the bargain--being done by the Russian fleet, which, safely ensconced in the harbour of Cronstadt, defied us from behind the walls of fortresses which we did not care to bombard.

Still, the Baltic fleet was not wholly idle.

There was some fighting and some advantage gained over the Russians at Helsingfors, at Arbo, and notably at Bomarsund.

In all these engagements Commander Hobart distinguished himself--so brilliantly, indeed, as to be named with high approval in official despatches.
'Soldiers in peace, Bacon has remarked, are like chimneys in summer.
Hobart seemed resolved that the aphorism quoted by Francis of Verulam should not be verified in the case of sailors.