d a hostile meeting was
arranged. Even at this meeting much still remained in the power of the
seconds: there was an absolute certainty that all fatal consequences
might have been evaded, with perfect consideration for the honour of
both parties. The principals must unquestionably have felt _that_; but
if the seconds would not move in that direction, of course _their_ lips
were sealed. A more cruel situation could not be imagined: two persons,
who never, perhaps, felt more than that fiction of enmity which
belonged to the situation, that is to say, assumed the enmity which
society presumes rationally incident to a certain position--assumed it
as a point of honour, but did not heartily feel it; and even for the
slight shade of animosity which, for half an hour, they might have
really felt, had thoroughly quelled it before the meeting, these two
persons--under no impulses whatever, good or bad, from within, but
purely in a hateful necessity of servile obedience to a command from
without--prepared to perpetrate what must, in that frame of
dispassionate temper have appeared to each, a purpose of murder, as
regarded his antagonist--a purpose of suicide, as regarded himself.
Simply a word, barely a syllable, was needed from the 'Friends' (such
Friends!) of the parties, to have delivered them, with honour, from this
dreadful necessity: that word was not spoken; and because a breath, a
motion of the lips, was wanting--because, in fact, the seconds were
thoughtless and without feeling, one of the parties has long slept in a
premature grave--his early blossoms scattered to the wind--his golden
promise of fruit blasted; and the other has since lived that kind of
life, that, in my mind, _he_ was happier who died. Something of the same
kind happened in the duel between Lord Camelford and his friend, Mr.
Best; something of the same kind in that between Colonel Montgomery and
Captain Macnamara. In the former case, the quarrel was, at least, for a
noble subject; it concerned a woman. But in the latter, a dog, and a
thoughtless lash applied to his troublesome gambols, was the sole
subject of dispute. The colonel, as is well known, a very elegant and
generous young man, fell; and Captain Macnamara had thenceforwards a
worm at his heart whose gnawings never died. He was a post-captain; and
my brother afterwards sailed with him in quality of midshipman. From
him I have often heard affecting instances of the degree in which the
pangs of remo