e there is danger, there may be glory; and the mode
of hunting, which opens the fairest field to the exertions of valor,
may justly be considered as the image, and as the school, of war. The
general hunting matches, the pride and delight of the Tartar princes,
compose an instructive exercise for their numerous cavalry. A circle
is drawn, of many miles in circumference, to encompass the game of
an extensive district; and the troops that form the circle regularly
advance towards a common centre; where the captive animals, surrounded
on every side, are abandoned to the darts of the hunters. In this march,
which frequently continues many days, the cavalry are obliged to climb
the hills, to swim the rivers, and to wind through the valleys, without
interrupting the prescribed order of their gradual progress. They
acquire the habit of directing their eye, and their steps, to a remote
object; of preserving their intervals of suspending or accelerating
their pace, according to the motions of the troops on their right and
left; and of watching and repeating the signals of their leaders. Their
leaders study, in this practical school, the most important lesson
of the military art; the prompt and accurate judgment of ground, of
distance, and of time. To employ against a human enemy the same patience
and valor, the same skill and discipline, is the only alteration which
is required in real war; and the amusements of the chase serve as a
prelude to the conquest of an empire. [12]

[Footnote 12: Petit de la Croix (Vie de Gengiscan, l. iii. c. 6)
represents the full glory and extent of the Mogul chase. The Jesuits
Gerbillon and Verbiest followed the emperor Khamhi when he hunted in
Tartary, Duhalde, (Description de la Chine, tom. iv. p. 81, 290, &c.,
folio edit.) His grandson, Kienlong, who unites the Tartar discipline
with the laws and learning of China, describes (Eloge de Moukden,
p. 273--285) as a poet the pleasures which he had often enjoyed as a
sportsman.]

The political society of the ancient Germans has the appearance of
a voluntary alliance of independent warriors. The tribes of Scythia,
distinguished by the modern appellation of Hords, assume the form of
a numerous and increasing family; which, in the course of successive
generations, has been propagated from the same original stock. The
meanest, and most ignorant, of the Tartars, preserve, with conscious
pride, the inestimable treasure of their genealogy; and whatever
dist