for their great preparation with an entire
insensibility to the expressions of contempt. Their firmness was
absolutely invincible. The world has deplored the results of this
expedition, but there is a great lesson for us in the firmness of
decision of its leaders. Such firmness would keep to its course and
retain its purpose unshaken amidst the ruins of the world.

At the battle of Marengo the French army was supposed to be defeated;
but, while Bonaparte and his staff were considering their next move,
Dessaix suggested that there was yet time to retrieve their disaster, as
it was only about the middle of the afternoon. Napoleon rallied his men,
renewed the fight, and won a great victory over the Austrians, though
the unfortunate Dessaix lost his own life on that field.

What has chance ever done in the world? Has it built any cities? Has it
invented any telephones, any telegraphs? Has it built any steamships,
established any universities, any asylums, any hospitals? Was there any
chance in Caesar's crossing the Rubicon? What had chance to do with
Napoleon's career, with Wellington's, or Grant's, or Von Moltke's? Every
battle was won before it was begun. What had luck to do with Thermopylae,
Trafalgar, Gettysburg? Our successes we ascribe to ourselves; our
failures to destiny.

A vacillating man, no matter what his abilities, is invariably pushed to
the wall in the race of life by a determined will. It is he who resolves
to succeed, and who at every fresh rebuff begins resolutely again, that
reaches the goal. The shores of fortune are covered with the stranded
wrecks of men of brilliant ability, but who have wanted courage, faith
and decision, and have therefore perished in sight of more resolute but
less capable adventurers, who succeeded in making port. Hundreds of men
go to their graves in obscurity, who have been obscure only because they
lacked the pluck to make a first effort, and who, could they only have
resolved to begin, would have astonished the world by their achievements
and successes. The fact is, as Sydney Smith has well said, that in order
to do anything in this world that is worth doing, we must not stand
shivering on the bank, and thinking of the cold and the danger, but jump
in and scramble through as well as we can.

Is not this a grand privilege of man, immortal man, that though he may
not be able to stir a finger; that though a moth may crush him; that
merely by a righteous will, he is raised abo