iam the Conqueror is said to have
trembled exceedingly (_rehementer tremens_) during the disturbance
which interrupted his coronation. It was probably from the same cause,
that Mrs. Inchbald, the most fearless of actresses, was once
entirely overcome by timidity on assuming a character in a masquerade.

On a larger scale, the mere want of habitual exposure to danger will
often cause a whole population to be charged with greater cowardice
than really belongs to them. Thus, after the coronation of the
Chevalier, in the Scottish insurrection of 1745, although the
populace of Edinburgh crowded around him, kissing his very garments
when he walked abroad, yet scarcely a man could be enlisted, in view
of the certainty of an approaching battle with General Cope. And
before this, when the Highlanders were marching on the city, out of a
volunteer corps of four hundred raised to meet them, all but
forty-five deserted before the gate was passed.[1] Yet there is no
reason to doubt that these frightened citizens, after having once
stood fire, might have been as brave as the average. It was a saying
in Kansas, that the New England men needed to be shot at once or
twice, after which they became the bravest of the brave.

This habitual courage mingles itself, doubtless, with the third
species, the magnetic, or transmitted. No mental philosopher has yet
done justice to the wondrous power of leadership, the "art Napoleon."
The ancients stated it best in their proverb, that an army of stags
led by a lion is more formidable than an army of lions led by a
stag. It was for this reason that the Greeks used to send to Sparta,
not for soldiers, but for a general. When Crillon, _l'homme sans peur_,
defended Quilleboeuf with a handful of men against Marshal Villars,
the latter represented to him, that it was madness to resist such
superiority of numbers, to which the answer was simply,--"_Crillon
est dedans, et Villars est dehors_." The event proved that the hero
inside was stronger than the army outside.

Every one knows that there is a certain magnetic power in courage,
apart from all physical strength. In a family of lone women, there is
usually some one whose presence is held to confer safety on the house;
she may be a delicate invalid, but she is not afraid. The same
quality explains the difference in the demeanor of different
companies of men and women, in great emergencies of danger. Read one
narrative of shipwreck, and human nature seem