m rumors of wars.

Now this is a pleasing fiction, and highly creditable to the light and
airy fancy of the Moors. It almost makes one sigh that an astrologer so
fertile in resources is not still extant. It is difficult to conceive,
indeed, of a more felicitous arrangement for a monarch devoted to his
ease, and proof against all temptations to military glory, or for a
people wedded to peaceful pursuits, and ambitious only of material
prosperity. But no such fascinating substitute for fields of carnage is
available in our degenerate days,--"_C'est charmant, mais ce n'est pas
la guerre_."

Nor yet is any useful example furnished by the warlike qualities of the
army raised by Peter Stuyvesant for the reduction of Fort Casimir: not
even when we remember that it included "the Van Higginbottoms, a race of
schoolmasters, armed with ferules and birchen rods,--the Van Bummels,
renowned for feats of the trenches,--the Van Bunschotens, who were the
first that did kick with the left foot,"--with many other warriors
equally fierce and formidable. We must, however reluctantly, leave such
romantic legends and facetious chronicles, and learn more practical
lessons from the sober and instructive page of history. We shall there
find that war means alternate success and defeat, alternate hope and
disappointment, great suffering in the field, many vacant chairs at
many firesides, immense expenditures with little apparent result, "the
best-laid schemes" foiled by a thousand unexpected contingencies,
lamentable indecision in the cabinet, glaring blunders in the field,
stagnation of industry, and heavy taxation.

"War is a game, which, were the nations wise,
Kings would not play at."

But nations are not always wise, and war often becomes a necessity.
When, then, the necessity arises, it should be met manfully. The
question once deliberately decided that peace is no longer consistent
with national honor or national safety, the dread alternative must be
accepted with all its hazards and all its horrors. To organize only in
anticipation of certain and speedy success, to despise and underrate the
enemy, to inquire with how small an army and how limited an expenditure
the war can be carried on, is as unstatesmanlike as it is in flat
defiance of all historical teaching. But if we carry our folly still
farther in the same direction,--if we fail to take into grave account
the most obvious and inevitable incidents of actual warfare,--if in
o