the
devil's own notion for upsetting a solid British line, and tempting fellows to
get invalided that they may blaze it before the shopkeepers and their wives in
the city. Give us an army! - none of your caperers. Here are lots of circusy
heroes coming home to rest after their fatigues. One was spouting at a public
dinner yesterday night. He went into it upright, and he ran out of it upright -
at the head of his men! - and here he is feasted by the citizens and making a
speech upright, and my boy fronting the enemy!«
    Everard's involuntary break-down from his veteran's roughness to a touch of
feeling thrilled Nevil, who began to perceive what his uncle was driving at when
he rebuked the coxcombry of the field, and spoke of the description of
compliment your hero was paying Englishmen in affecting to give them examples of
bravery and preternatural coolness. Nevil sent home humble confessions of guilt
in this respect, with fresh praises of young Michell: for though Everard, as
Nevil recognized it, was perfectly right in the abstract, and generally right,
there are times when an example is needed by brave men - times when the fiery
furnace of death's dragon-jaw is not inviting even to Englishmen receiving the
word that duty bids them advance, and they require a leader of the way. A
national coxcombry that pretends to an independence of human sensations, and
makes a motto of our dandiacal courage, is more perilous to the armies of the
nation than that of a few heroes. It is this coxcombry which has too often
caused disdain of the wise chief's maxim of calculation for winners, namely, to
have always the odds on your side, and which has bled, shattered, and
occasionally disgraced us. Young Michell's carrying powder-bags to the assault,
and when ordered to retire, bearing them on his back, and helping a wounded
soldier on the way, did surely well; nor did Mr. Beauchamp himself behave so
badly on an occasion when the sailors of his battery caught him out of a fire of
shell that raised jets of dust and smoke like a range of geysers over the open,
and hugged him as loving women do at a meeting or a parting. He was penitent
before his uncle, admitting, first, that the men were not in want of an example
of the contempt of death, and secondly, that he doubted whether it was contempt
of death on his part so much as pride - a hatred of being seen running.
    »I don't like the fellow