little regard to them.--Pyrrhus receives an unexpected invitation.

It was the great misfortune of Pyrrhus's life, a misfortune resulting
apparently from an inherent and radical defect in his character, that
he had no settled plans or purposes, but embarked in one project after
another, as accident or caprice might incline him, apparently without
any forethought, consideration, or design. He seemed to form no plan,
to live for no object, to contemplate no end, but was governed by a
sort of blind and instinctive impulse, which led him to love danger,
and to take a wild and savage delight in the performance of military
exploits on their own account, and without regard to any ultimate end
or aim to be accomplished by them. Thus, although he evinced great
power, he produced no permanent effects. There was no steadiness or
perseverance in his action, and there could be none, for in his whole
course of policy there were no ulterior ends in view by which
perseverance could be sustained. He was, consequently, always ready
to abandon any enterprise in which he might be engaged as soon as it
began to be involved in difficulties requiring the exercise of
patience, endurance, and self-denial, and to embark in any new
undertaking, provided that it promised to bring him speedily upon a
field of battle. He was, in a word, the type and exemplar of that
large class of able men who waste their lives in a succession of
efforts, which, though they evince great talent in those who perform
them, being still without plan or aim, end without producing any
result. Such men often, like Pyrrhus, attain to a certain species of
greatness. They are famed among men for what they seem to have the
power to do, and not for any thing that they have actually done.

In accordance with this view of Pyrrhus's character, we see him
changing continually the sphere of his action from one country to
another, gaining great victories every where, and evincing in all his
operations--in the organizing and assembling of his armies, in his
marches, in his encampments, and in the disposition of his troops on
the field of battle, and especially in his conduct during the period
of actual conflict--the most indomitable energy and the most
consummate military skill. But when the battle was fought and the
victory gained, and an occasion supervened requiring a cool and
calculating deliberation in the forming of future plans, and a steady
adherence to them when formed, th