Memorials and Other Papers, vol 1 | Page 4

for
upholding or retrieving such saintly interests should come to be
dishonored or less honored, would the inference be valid that those
interests were shaking in their foundations. And any confederation or
compact of nations for abolishing war would be the inauguration of a
downward path for man.
A battle is by possibility the grandest, and also the meanest, of human

exploits. It is the grandest when it is fought for godlike truth, for human
dignity, or for human rights; it is the meanest when it is fought for petty
advantages (as, by way of example, for accession of territory which
adds nothing to the security of a frontier), and still more when it is
fought simply as a gladiator's trial of national prowess. This is the
principle upon which, very naturally, our British school-boys value a
battle. Painful it is to add, that this is the principle upon which our adult
neighbors the French seem to value a battle.
To any man who, like myself, admires the high-toned, martial gallantry
of the French, and pays a cheerful tribute of respect to their many
intellectual triumphs, it is painful to witness the childish state of feeling
which the French people manifest on every possible question that
connects itself at any point with martial pretensions. A battle is valued
by them on the same principles, not better and not worse, as govern our
own schoolboys. Every battle is viewed by the boys as a test applied to
the personal prowess of each individual soldier; and, naturally amongst
boys, it would be the merest hypocrisy to take any higher ground. But
amongst adults, arrived at the power of reflecting and comparing, we
look for something nobler. We English estimate Waterloo, not by its
amount of killed and wounded, but as the battle which terminated a
series of battles, having one common object, namely, the overthrow of
a frightful tyranny. A great sepulchral shadow rolled away from the
face of Christendom as that day's sun went down to his rest; for, had
the success been less absolute, an opportunity would have offered for
negotiation, and consequently for an infinity of intrigues through the
feuds always gathering upon national jealousies amongst allied armies.
The dragon would soon have healed his wounds; after which the
prosperity of the despotism would have been greater than before. But,
without reference to Waterloo in particular, we, on our part, find it
impossible to contemplate any memorable battle otherwise than
according to its tendency towards some commensurate object. To the
French this must be impossible, seeing that no lofty (that is, no
disinterested) purpose has ever been so much as counterfeited for a
French war, nor therefore for a French battle. Aggression, cloaked at
the very utmost in the garb of retaliation for counter aggressions on the
part of the enemy, stands forward uniformly in the van of such motives
as it is thought worth while to plead. But in French casuistry it is not

held necessary to plead _any_thing; war justifies itself. To fight for the
experimental purpose of trying the proportions of martial merit, but (to
speak frankly) for the purpose of publishing and renewing to Europe
the proclamation of French superiority--that is the object of French
wars. Like the Spartan of old, the Frenchman would hold that a state of
peace, and not a state of war, is the state which calls for apology; and
that already from the first such an apology must wear a very suspicious
aspect of paradox.
3. "The English Mail-Coach." [Footnote: Published in the
"Miscellaneous Essays."]--This little paper, according to my original
intention, formed part of the "Suspiria de Profundis," from which, for a
momentary purpose, I did not scruple to detach it, and to publish it
apart, as sufficiently intelligible even when dislocated from its place in
a larger whole. To my surprise, however, one or two critics, not
carelessly in conversation, but deliberately in print, professed their
inability to apprehend the meaning of the whole, or to follow the links
of the connection between its several parts. I am myself as little able to
understand where the difficulty lies, or to detect any lurking obscurity,
as those critics found themselves to unravel my logic. Possibly I may
not be an indifferent and neutral judge in such a case. I will therefore
sketch a brief abstract of the little paper according to my own original
design, and then leave the reader to judge how far this design is kept in
sight through the actual execution.
Thirty-seven years ago, or rather more, accident made me, in the dead
of night, and of a night memorably solemn, the solitary witness to an
appalling scene, which threatened instant death, in a shape the most
terrific, to two young people, whom I had no means of