Do I pitch the pipe too low? We poor honest men are at a sad
disadvantage; and now and then I am minded to give a loose to fancy, and
attribute something really grand and fine to my people, in order to make
them worthier the reader's respected acquaintance. But again, I forbid
myself in a higher interest; and I am afraid that even if I were less
virtuous, I could not exalt their mood upon a battle-field; for of all
things of the past a battle is the least conceivable. I have heard men
who fought in many battles say that the recollection was like a dream to
them; and what can the merely civilian imagination do on the Plains of
Abraham, with the fact that there, more than a century ago, certain
thousands of Frenchmen marched out, on a bright September morning, to
kill and maim as many Englishmen? This ground, so green and oft with
grass beneath the feet, was it once torn with shot and soaked with the
blood of men? Did they lie here in ranks and heaps, the miserable slain,
for whom tender hearts away yonder over the sea were to ache and break?
Did the wretches that fell wounded stretch themselves here, and writhe
beneath the feet of friend and foe, or crawl array for shelter into
little hollows, and behind gushes and fallen trees! Did he, whose soul
was so full of noble and sublime impulses, die here, shot through like
some ravening beast? The loathsome carnage, the shrieks, the hellish din
of arms, the cries of victory,--I vainly strive to conjure up some image
of it all now; and God be thanked, horrible spectre! that, fill the world
with sorrow as thou wilt, thou still remainest incredible in its moments
of sanity and peace.
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