as already suggested, if not
what is courage, what at least is the real essence of all courage that
endures and conquers, that ennobles and hallows and redeems? Is it not
PATIENCE, Father? And that is why we women have a courage of our own.
Patience does not affect to be superior to fear, but at least it never
admits despair."

PISISTRATUS.--"Kiss me, my Blanche, for you have come near to the truth
which perplexed the soldier and puzzled the sage."

MR. CAXTON (tartly).--"If you mean me by the sage, I was not puzzled at
all. Heaven knows you do right to inculcate patience,--it is a virtue
very much required--in your readers. Nevertheless," added my father,
softening with the enjoyment of his joke,--"nevertheless Blanche and
Helen are quite right. Patience is the courage of the conqueror; it is
the virtue, par excellence, of Man against Destiny,--of the One against
the World, and of the Soul against Matter. Therefore this is the courage
of the Gospel; and its importance in a social view--its importance to
races and institutions--cannot be too earnestly inculcated. What is it
that distinguishes the Anglo-Saxon from all other branches of the human
family,--peoples deserts with his children and consigns to them the
heritage of rising worlds? What but his faculty to brave, to suffer, to
endure,--the patience that resists firmly and innovates slowly? Compare
him with the Frenchman. The Frenchman has plenty of valour,--that there
is no denying; but as for fortitude, he has not enough to cover the
point of a pin. He is ready to rush out of the world if he is bitten by
a flea."

CAPTAIN ROLAND.--"There was a case in the papers the other day, Austin,
of a Frenchman who actually did destroy himself because he was so teased
by the little creatures you speak of. He left a paper on his table,
saying that 'life was not worth having at the price of such torments.'"

MR. CAXTON (solemnly).--"Sir, their whole political history, since the
great meeting of the Tiers Etat, has been the history of men who would
rather go to the devil than be bitten by a flea. It is the record of
human impatience that seeks to force time, and expects to grow forests
from the spawn of a mushroom. Wherefore, running through all extremes of
constitutional experiment, when they are nearest to democracy they
are next door to a despot; and all they have really done is to destroy
whatever constitutes the foundation of every tolerable government.
A constitutional