of deposited matter, and so your chaos, your
half-lighted labyrinth, your, ceaseless pressure to evolvement; and then
Light, and so Creation, order, the work of Genius. What do you say?

Without having a great brain, the measure of it possessed by Skepsey was
alive under strong illumination. In his heart, while doing penance for
his presumptuousness, he believed that he could lead regiments of men.
He was not the army's General, he was the General's Lieutenant, now and
then venturing to suggest a piece of counsel to his Chief. On his own
particular drilled regiments, his Chief may rely; and on his knowledge
of the country of the campaign, roads, morasses, masking hills, dividing
rivers. He had mapped for himself mentally the battles of conquerors in
his favourite historic reading; and he understood the value of a plan,
and the danger of sticking to it, and the advantage of a big army for
flanking; and he manoeuvred a small one cunningly to make it a bolt at
the telling instant. Dartrey Fenellan had explained to him Frederick's
oblique attack, Napoleon's employment of the artillery arm preparatory
to the hurling of the cataract on the spot of weakness, Wellington's
parallel march with Marmont up to the hour of the decisive cut through
the latter at Salamanca; and Skepsey treated his enemy to the like,
deferentially reporting the engagement to a Chief whom his modesty kept
in eminence, for the receiving of the principal honours. As to his men,
of all classes and sorts, they are so supple with training that they
sustain a defeat like the sturdy pugilist a knock off his legs, and up
smiling a minute after--one of the truly beautiful sights on this
earth! They go at the double half a day, never sounding a single pair
of bellows among them. They have their appetites in full control, to eat
when they can, or cheerfully fast. They have healthy frames, you see;
and as the healthy frame is not artificially heated, it ensues that,
under any title you like, they profess the principles--into the bog we
go, we have got round to it!--the principles of those horrible marching
and chanting people!

Then, must our England, to be redoubtable to the enemy, be a detestable
country for habitation?

Here was a knot.

Skepsey's head dropped lower, he went as a ram. The sayings of Mr.
Durance about his dear England: that 'her remainder of life is in the
activity of her diseases'--that 'she has so fed upon Pap of Compromise
as to be unable a