your captain, informing me that I am unlikely to
see you home unless you learn to hold yourself in. I wish you were in
another battery than Robert Hall's. He forgets the force of example,
however much of a dab he may be at precept. But there you are, and
please clap a hundredweight on your appetite for figuring, will you. Do
you think there is any good in helping to Frenchify our army? I loathe a
fellow who shoots at a medal. I wager he is easy enough to be caught by
circumvention--put me in the open with him. Tom Biggot, the boxer,
went over to Paris, and stood in the ring with one of their dancing
pugilists, and the first round he got a crack on the chin from the
rogue's foot; the second round he caught him by the lifted leg, and
punished him till pec was all he could say of peccavi. Fight the
straightforward fight. Hang flan! Battle is a game of give and take, and
if our men get elanned, we shall see them refusing to come up to time.
This new crossing and medalling is 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