rder to encounter the reality. It is said that Van Amburgh
attributed all his power over animals to the similar rule given him
by his mother in his boyhood: "If anything frightens you, walk up
and face it." Applying this maxim boldly, he soon satisfied himself
that man possessed a natural power of control over all animals, if
he dared to exercise it. He said that every animal divined by
unerring instinct the existence of fear in his ruler, and a moment's
indecision might cost one's life. On being asked, what he should do,
if he found himself in the desert, face to face with a lion, he
answered, "If I wished for certain death, I should turn and run away."

Physical courage may be educated; but it must be trained for its own
sake. We say again, it must not be left to moral courage to include
it, for the two faculties have different elements,--and what God has
joined, human inconsistency may put asunder. The disjunction is easy
to explain. Many men, when committed on the right side of any
question, get credit for a "moral courage," which is, in their case,
only an intense egotism, isolating them from all demand for human
sympathy. In the best cause, they prefer to belong to a party
conveniently small, and, on the slightest indications of popular
approbation, begin to suspect themselves of compromise. The abstract
martyrdom of unpopularity is therefore clear gain to them; but when
it comes to the rack and the thumbscrew, the revolver and the
bowie-knife, the same habitual egotism makes them cowards. These men
are annoying in themselves, and still worse because they throw
discredit on the noble and unselfish reformers with whom they are
identified in position. But even among this higher class there are
differences of temperament, and it costs one man an effort to face
the brute argument of the slung-shot, while another's fortitude is
not seriously tested till it comes to facing the newspaper editors.

We have given but a few aspects of a rich and endless theme, and
have depicted these more by examples than analysis, mindful of the
saying of Sidney, that Alexander received more bravery of mind by
the example of Achilles than by hearing the definition of fortitude.
If we have seemed to draw illustrations too profusely from the
records of battles, it is to be remembered, that, even if war be not
the best nurse of heroisms, it is their best historian. The chase,
for instance, though perhaps as prolific in deeds of daring as the