h he
supported, many times as a volunteer--the dullest natures must have been
penetrated, the lowest exalted.[24]

To this grand passion of religious enthusiasm stands opposed, according
to the general persuasion, the passion, equally exalted, or equally open
to exaltation, of love. 'So the whole ear of Denmark is abused.' Love,
chivalrous love, love in its noblest forms, was a passion unknown to the
Greeks; as we may well suppose in a country where woman was not
honoured, not esteemed, not treated with the confidence which is the
basis of all female dignity. However, this subject I shall leave
untouched: simply reminding the reader that even conceding for a moment
so monstrous an impossibility as that pure chivalrous love, as it exists
under Christian institutions, could have had an existence in the Greece
of 1000 B.C.; the more elevated, the more tender it was, the less fitted
it could be for the coarse air of a camp. The holy sepulchre would
command reverence, and the expression of reverence, from the lowest
sutler of the camp; but we may easily imagine what coarse jests would
eternally surround the name of Helen amongst the Greek soldiery, and
everything connected with the cause which drew them into the field.

Yet even this coarse travesty of a noble passion was a higher motive
than the Greeks really obeyed in the war with Troy. England, it has been
sometimes said, went to war with Spain, during George II.'s reign, on
account of Capt. Jenkins's ears, which a brutal Spanish officer, in the
cowardly abuse of his power, had nailed to the mast. And if she did, the
cause was a noble one, however unsuitably expounded by its outward
heraldry. There the cause was noble, though the outward sign was below
its dignity. But in the Iliad, if we may give that name to the total
expedition against Troy and the Troad, the relations were precisely
inverted. Its outward sign, its ostensible purpose, was noble: for it
was woman. _But the real and sincere motive which collected fifty
thousand Grecians under one common banner, was_ (I am well assured upon
meditation) _money--money, and money's worth_. No less motive in that
age was adequate to the effect. Helen was, assuredly, no such prize
considering her damaged reputation and other circumstances. Revenge
might intermingle in a very small proportion with the general principle
of the war; as to the oath and its obligation, which is supposed to have
bound over the princes of Greece: th