--"Yet many a Spanish matador, who does n't care a button
for a bull, would take to his heels at the first lunge en carte from a
Frenchman. Therefore, in fact, if courage be a matter of constitution,
it is also a matter of custom. We face calmly the dangers we are
habituated to, and recoil from those of which we have no familiar
experience. I doubt if Marshal Turenue himself would have been quite
at his ease on the tight-rope; and a rope-dancer, who seems disposed to
scale the heavens with Titanic temerity, might possibly object to charge
on a cannon."

CAPTAIN ROLAND.--"Still, either this is not the courage I mean, or it is
another kind of it. I mean by courage that which is the especial force
and dignity of the human character, without which there is no reliance
on principle, no constancy in virtue,--a something," continued my uncle,
gallantly, and with a half bow towards my mother, "which your sex shares
with our own. When the lover, for instance, clasps the hand of his
betrothed, and says, 'Wilt thou be true to me, in spite of absence and
time, in spite of hazard and fortune, though my foes malign me, though
thy friends may dissuade thee, and our lot in life may be rough and
rude?' and when the betrothed answers, 'I will be true,' does not the
lover trust to her courage as well as her love?"

"Admirably put, Roland," said my father. "But a propos of what do you
puzzle us with these queries on courage?"

CAPTAIN ROLAND (with a slight blush).--"I was led to the inquiry (though
perhaps it may be frivolous to take so much thought of what, no doubt,
costs Pisistratus so little) by the last chapters in my nephew's story.
I see this poor boy Leonard, alone with his fallen hopes (though very
irrational they were) and his sense of shame. And I read his heart, I
dare say, better than Pisistratus does, for I could feel like that
boy if I had been in the same position; and conjecturing what he and
thousands like him must go through, I asked myself, 'What can save him
and them?' I answered, as a soldier would answer, 'Courage.' Very well.
But pray; Austin, what is courage?"

MR. CAXTON (prudently backing out of a reply).--"Papae!' Brother, since
you have just complimented the ladies on that quality, you had better
address your question to them."

Blanche here leaned both hands on my father's chair, and said, looking
down at first bashfully, but afterwards warming with the subject, "Do
you not think, sir, that little Helen h