
                                George Meredith

                               Beauchamp's Career

                                   Chapter I

                          The Champion of His Country

When young Nevil Beauchamp was throwing off his midshipman's jacket for a
holiday in the garb of peace, we had across Channel a host of dreadful military
officers flashing swords at us for some critical observations of ours upon their
sovereign, threatening Afric's fires and savagery. The case occurred in old days
now and again, sometimes, upon imagined provocation, more furiously than at
others. We were unarmed, and the spectacle was distressing. We had done nothing
except to speak our minds according to the habit of the free, and such an
explosion appeared as irrational and excessive as that of a powder-magazine in
reply to nothing more than the light of a spark. It was known that a valorous
General of the Algerian wars proposed to make a clean march to the capital of
the British Empire at the head of ten thousand men; which seems a small quantity
to think much about, but they wore wide red breeches blown out by Fame, big as
her cheeks, and a ten thousand of that sort would never think of retreating.
Their spectral advance on quaking London through Kentish hop-gardens, Sussex
corn-fields, or by the pleasant hills of Surrey, after a gymnastic leap over the
riband of salt water, haunted many pillows. And now those horrid shouts of the
legions of Cæsar, crying to the inheritor of an invading name to lead them
against us, as the origin of his title had led the army of Gaul of old
gloriously, scared sweet sleep. We saw them in imagination lining the opposite
shore; eagle and standard-bearers, and gallifers, brandishing their fowls and
their banners in a manner to frighten the decorum of the universe. Where were
our men?
    The returns of the census of our population were oppressively satisfactory,
and so was the condition of our youth. We could row and ride and fish and shoot,
and breed largely: we were athletes with a fine history and a full purse: we had
first-rate sporting guns, unrivalled park-hacks and hunters, promising babies to
carry on the renown of England to the next generation, and a wonderful Press,
and a Constitution the highest reach of practical human sagacity. But where were
our armed men? where our great artillery? where our proved captains, to resist a
sudden sharp trial of the national mettle? Where was the first line of England's
defence, her navy? These were questions, and Ministers were called upon to
answer them. The Press answered them boldly, with the appalling statement that
we had
