diness
for public action, and some good stout efforts besides, to the flat
result of an optically discernible influence of our hero's character in
the domestic circle; perhaps a faintly-outlined circle or two beyond it.
But this does not forbid him to be ranked as one of the most
distinguishing of her children of the day he lived in. Blame the victrix
if you think he should have been livelier.

Nevil soon had to turn his telescope from politics. The torch of war was
actually lighting, and he was not fashioned to be heedless of what
surrounded him. Our diplomacy, after dancing with all the suppleness of
stilts, gravely resigned the gift of motion. Our dauntless Lancastrian
thundered like a tempest over a gambling tent, disregarded. Our worthy
people, consenting to the doctrine that war is a scourge, contracted the
habit of thinking it, in this case, the dire necessity which is the sole
excuse for giving way to an irritated pugnacity, and sucked the
comforting caramel of an alliance with their troublesome next-door
neighbour, profuse in comfits as in scorpions. Nevil detected that
politic element of their promptitude for war. His recollections of
dissatisfaction in former days assisted him to perceive the nature of it,
but he was too young to hold his own against the hubbub of a noisy
people, much too young to remain sceptical of a modern people's
enthusiasm for war while journals were testifying to it down the length
of their columns, and letters from home palpitated with it, and shipmates
yawned wearily for the signal, and shiploads of red coats and blue,
infantry, cavalry, artillery, were singing farewell to the girl at home,
and hurrah for anything in foreign waters. He joined the stream with a
cordial spirit. Since it must be so! The wind of that haughty proceeding
of the Great Bear in putting a paw over the neutral brook brushed his
cheek unpleasantly. He clapped hands for the fezzy defenders of the
border fortress, and when the order came for the fleet to enter the old
romantic sea of storms and fables, he wrote home a letter fit for his
uncle Everard to read. Then there was the sailing and the landing, and
the march up the heights, which Nevil was condemned to look at. To his
joy he obtained an appointment on shore, and after that Everard heard of
him from other channels. The two were of a mind when the savage winter
advanced which froze the attack of the city, and might be imaged as the
hoar god of hostile elemen