had given him certain large and fairly definite
conceptions of history and politics. But his practical education! What
a polishing and sharpening he had had against the revolving world
moving many times faster then than in most ages! He was an adept in
the art of civil war, for he had been not merely an interested
observer, but an active participant in it during five years in two
countries. Long the victim of wiles more secret than his own, he had
finally grown most wily in diplomacy; an ambitious politician, his
pulpy principles were republican in their character so far as they had
any tissue or firmness.

His acquisitions in the science of war were substantial and definite.
Neither a martinet himself nor in any way tolerant of routine,
ignorant in fact of many hateful details, among others of obedience,
he yet rose far above tradition or practice in his conception of
strategy. He was perceptibly superior to the world about him in almost
every aptitude, and particularly so in power of combination, in
originality, and in far-sightedness. He could neither write nor spell
correctly, but he was skilled in all practical applications of
mathematics: town and country, mountains and plains, seas and rivers,
were all quantities in his equations. Untrustworthy himself, he strove
to arouse trust, faith, and devotion in those about him; and
concealing successfully his own purpose, he read the hearts of others
like an open book. Of pure-minded affection for either men or women he
had so far shown only a little, and had experienced in return even
less; but he had studied the arts of gallantry, and understood the
leverage of social forces. To these capacities, some embryonic, some
perfectly formed, add the fact that he was now a cosmopolitan, and
there will be outline, relief, and color to his character. "I am in
that frame of mind," he said of himself about this time, "in which men
are when on the eve of battle, with a persistent conviction that since
death is imminent in the end, to be uneasy is folly. Everything makes
me brave death and destiny; and if this goes on, I shall in the end,
my friend, no longer turn when a carriage passes. My reason is
sometimes astonished at all this; but it is the effect produced on me
by the moral spectacle of this land [_ce pays-ci_, not _patrie_], and
by the habit of running risks." This is the power and the temper of a
man of whom an intimate and confidential friend predicted that he
would neve