I now regard the accounts of the
bloody passage of the Bridge of Lodi, and of French cuirassiers madly
transfixing themselves upon the bayonets of Wellington's squares, with
very much the same feeling of horror and loathing which is excited by a
detail of the exploits of an Indian Thug, or those of a mad Malay
running a-muck, creese in hand, through the streets of Pulo Penang.
Your Waterloo, and battles of the Nile and Baltic,--what are they, in
sober fact, but gladiatorial murder-games on a great scale,--human
imitations of bull-fights, at which Satan sits as grand alguazil and
master of ceremonies? It is only when a great thought incarnates itself
in action, desperately striving to find utterance even in sabre-clash
and gun-fire, or when Truth and Freedom, in their mistaken zeal and
distrustful of their own powers, put on battle-harness, that I can feel
any sympathy with merely physical daring. The brawny butcher-work of
men whose wits, like those of Ajax, lie in their sinews, and who are
"yoked like draught-oxen and made to plough up the wars," is no
realization of my ideal of true courage.
Yet I am not conscious of having lost in any degree my early admiration
of heroic achievement. The feeling remains; but it has found new and
better objects. I have learned to appreciate what Milton calls the
martyr's "unresistible might of meekness,"--the calm, uncomplaining
endurance of those who can bear up against persecution uncheered by
sympathy or applause, and, with a full and keen appreciation of the
value of all which they are called to sacrifice, confront danger and
death in unselfish devotion to duty.
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