Esmond" in 1852, "The Newcomes" in 1853-55, "The Virginians"
in 1857-59.

I

THE IMPERTURBABLE MARLBOROUGH[20]

And now, having seen a great military march through a friendly
country, the pomps and festivities of more than one German court, the
severe struggle of a hotly contested battle, and the triumph of
victory, Mr. Esmond beheld another part of military duty; our troops
entering the enemy's territory and putting all around them to fire and
sword; burning farms, wasted fields, shrieking women, slaughtered sons
and fathers, and drunken soldiery, cursing and carousing in the midst
of tears, terror, and murder. Why does the stately Muse of History,
that delights in describing the valor of heroes and the grandeur of
conquest, leave out these scenes, so brutal, and degrading, that yet
form by far the greater part of the drama of war? You gentlemen of
England, who live at home at ease and compliment yourselves in the
songs of triumph with which our chieftains are bepraised; you pretty
maidens that come tumbling down the stairs when the fife and drum call
you, and huzza for the British Grenadiers,--do you take account that
these items go to make up the amount of triumph you admire, and form
part of the duties of the heroes you fondle?

[Footnote 20: From "The History of Henry Esmond."]

Our chief, whom England and all Europe, saving only the Frenchmen,
worshipt almost, had this of the god-like in him: that he was
impassible before victory, before danger, before defeat. Before the
greatest obstacle or the most trivial ceremony; before a hundred
thousand men drawn in battalia, or a peasant slaughtered at the door
of his burning hovel; before a carouse of drunken German lords, or a
monarch's court, or a cottage table where his plans were laid, or an
enemy's battery, vomiting flame and death and strewing corpses round
about him,--he was always cold, calm, resolute, like fate. He
performed a treason or a court bow, he told a falsehood as black as
Styx, as easily as he paid a compliment or spoke about the weather. He
took a mistress and left her, he betrayed his benefactor and supported
him, or would have murdered him, with the same calmness always and
having no more remorse than Clotno when she weaves the thread, on
Lachesis when she cuts it. In the hour of battle I have heard the
Prince of Savoy's officers say the prince became possest with a sort
of warlike fury, his eyes lighted up; he rushed hither and th