elves drunk, that they might execute a
project which they formed when they were sober, but which, while they
continued so, they did not dare to undertake.[63]

[Footnote 63: Dr Hawkesworth, we see, is anxious to array the character
of a mercenary soldier, in the best garment his reason and conscience
could allow him to fabricate--But the deformities are scarcely
concealed. It had been more candid, and on the whole too more judicious,
to say, that he fights without having interest in the nature of the
contest, and butchers without feeling passion against his opponent, for
he can scarcely be called enemy. It follows then, that the efforts of
courage he makes are the product of some superinduced principles, the
result of a certain discipline, suited to his desire for distinction,
and the love of what he holds to be glory. These principles are more
uniformly steady of operation than the rage, whether real or affected,
of savages, and are more conducive to the accomplishment of the objects
in view, than even the desperate intrepidity which they so often
exhibit, or that amazing fortitude in which they excel. Among these, the
enthusiasm of every individual is efficient indeed to the infliction of
vengeance and suffering, but it wants the energy of combination and the
sagacity of practised theory, for the accomplishment of great and
important designs. An army of soldiers, on the contrary, is a machine
organized and adjusted for a particular purpose, and formidable, not in
the proportion merely of the numbers of which it is composed, but in a
much higher degree; it operates, in short, by the accumulation of the
respective agencies of which it is made up, and the skill of the
engineer who conducts its operations. The whirlwind of the former is
dreadful indeed, but it is soon hushed on the ruins it has occasioned,
and it blusters no more; but the gale of the latter is interminable in
desolation, and seems to increase in strength as the bulwarks which
opposed it disappear. The repose of Europe has been assailed by both, at
different periods of her history. It is our mercy to have outlived the
mighty storm, and we are now in a condition to look with gratitude,
though mixed with pain, on the general wreck around us. It is not one of
the least singularities in the astonishing events we are still so busy
in contemplating, that the union of the two kinds of force now
specified, was essential to the liberation of the world from that odio