much
service, when he set out on that series of extraordinary campaigns which
came so near replacing the Austrian house in possession of Spain and the
Indies. Peterborough has been called the last of the knights-errant;
but, in fact, no book on knight-errantry contains anything half so
wonderful as his deeds in the country of Don Quixote. Sir Eyre Coote,
who had so boldly supported that bold policy which led to the victory of
Plassey, nearly a quarter of a century later supported Hastings in the
field with almost as much vigor as he had supported Clive in council,
and saved British India, when it was assailed by the ablest of all its
foes. His last victories were gained in advanced life, and are ranked
with the highest of those actions to which England owes her wonderful
Oriental dominion. Lord Keane was verging upon sixty when he led the
British forces into Afghanistan, and took Ghuznee. Against all her old
and middle-aged generals, her kings and princes apart, England could
place but very few young commanders of great worth. Clive's case was
clearly exceptional; and Wolfe owed his victory on the Heights of
Abraham as much to Montcalm's folly as to his own audacity. The
Frenchman should have refused battle, when time and climate would soon
have wrought his deliverance and his enemy's ruin.

It is generally held that the wars which grew out of the French
Revolution, and which involved the world in their flames, were chiefly
the work of young men, and that their history illustrates the
superiority of youth over age in the ancient art of human destruction.
But this belief is not well founded, and, indeed, bears a close
resemblance to that other error in connection with the French
Revolution, namely, that it proceeded from the advent of new opinions,
which obtained ascendency,--whereas those opinions were older than
France, and had more than once been aired in France, and there had
struggled for supremacy. The opinions before the triumph of which the
old monarchy went down were much older than that monarchy; but as they
had never before been able definitely to influence the nation's action,
it was not strange that they should be considered new, when there was
nothing new about them save their application. Young opinions, as they
are supposed to have been, are best championed by young men; and hence
it is assumed that the French leaders in the field were youthful heroes,
as were the civil leaders in many instances,--and a