modern chivalry. [Sir Charles James Napier had the same
experience in Virginia in 1813. "Potomac. We have nasty sort of fighting
here, amongst creeks and bushes, and lose men without show." "Yankee
never shows himself, he keeps in the thickest wood, fires and runs
off."--"These five thousand in the open field might be attacked, but
behind works it would be throwing away lives." He calls it "an
inglorious warfare,"--says one of the leaders is "a little deficient in
gumption,"--but--still my opinion is, that if we tuck up our sleeves and
lay our ears back we might thrash them; that is, if we caught them out of
their trees, so as to slap at them with the bayonet."--Life, etc. vol.
i. p. 218 et seq.]

Another fact parallels the story of the old campaigner, and may teach
some of you caution in selecting your assistants. A chaplain told it to
two of our officers personally known to myself. He overheard the
examination of a man who wished to drive one of the "avalanche" wagons,
as they call them. The man was asked if he knew how to deal with wounded
men. "Oh yes," he answered; "if they're hit here," pointing to the
abdomen, "knock 'em on the head,--they can't get well."

In art and outside of it you will meet the same barbarisms that Ambroise
Pare met with,--for men differ less from century to century than we are
apt to suppose; you will encounter the same opposition, if you attack any
prevailing opinion, that Sydenham complained of. So far as possible, let
not such experiences breed in you a contempt for those who are the
subjects of folly or prejudice, or foster any love of dispute for its own
sake. Should you become authors, express your opinions freely; defend
them rarely. It is not often that an opinion is worth expressing, which
cannot take care of itself. Opposition is the best mordant to fix the
color of your thought in the general belief.

It is time to bring these crowded remarks to a close. The day has been
when at the beginning of a course of Lectures I should have thought it
fitting to exhort you to diligence and entire devotion to your tasks as
students. It is not so now. The young man who has not heard the
clarion-voices of honor and of duty now sounding throughout the land,
will heed no word of mine. In the camp or the city, in the field or the
hospital, under sheltering roof, or half-protecting canvas, or open sky,
shedding our own blood or stanching that of our wounded defenders,
students or teachers, whate