of heroic races, as Highlanders, Circassians,
Montenegrins, Afghans, and those Arabs among whom Urquhart finely
said that peace could not be purchased by victory. Where destined to
appear at all, it is likely to be developed in extreme youth, which
explains such instances as the _gamins de Paris_, and that of Sir
Cloudesley Shovel, who in boyhood conveyed a dispatch during a naval
engagement, swimming through double lines of fire. Indeed, among
heroic races, young soldiers are preferable for daring; such, at
least, is the testimony of the highest authorities, as Ney and
Wellington. "I have found," said the Duke, "that raw troops, however
inferior to the old ones in manoeuvring, may be superior to them in
downright hard fighting with the enemy. At Waterloo, the young ensigns
and lieutenants, who had never before seen an enemy, rushed to meet
death, as if they were playing at cricket."

But though youth is good for an onset, it needs habit and discipline
to give steadiness. A boy will risk his life where a veteran will be
too circumspect to follow him; but to perform a difficult manoeuvre
in face of an enemy requires Sicinius with forty-five scars on his
breast. "The very apprehension of a wound," said Seneca, "startles a
man when he first bears arms; but an old soldier bleeds boldly, for
he knows that a man may lose blood and yet win the day." Before the
battle of Preston Pans, Mr. Ker of Graden, "an experienced officer,"
mounted on a gray pony, coolly reconnoitred all the difficult ground
between the two armies, crossed it in several directions,
deliberately alighted more than once to lead his horse through gaps
made for that purpose in the stone walls,--under a constant shower
of musket-balls. He finally returned unhurt to Charles Edward, and
dissuaded him from crossing. Undoubtedly, any raw Highlander in the
army would have incurred the same risk, with or without a sufficient
object; but not one of them would have brought back so clear a report,
--if, indeed, he had brought himself back.

The most common evidence of this dependence of many persons' courage
on habit is in the comparative timidity of brave men against novel
dangers,--as of sailors on horseback, and mountaineers at sea. Nay,
the same effect is sometimes produced merely by different forms of
danger within the same sphere. Sea-captains often attach an
exaggerated sense of peril to small boats; Conde confessed himself a
coward in a street-fight; and Will