rinted the
other day, could not keep it on his stomach at any rate,--insufficient
clothing, and no shoes at all, as the bloody snow bore witness,--and
among our own New England troops "a spirit of insubordination which they
took for independence," as Washington expressed himself. We do not think
the New England men have rendered themselves liable to this reproach
of late,--and this is a remarkable tribute to the influence of a true
republican training. But in various quarters there has been enough of
it, and the consequent disorganization of at least one free and easy
regiment is no more than might have been expected.

A panic or two, with all the disgrace and suffering that attach to such
hysterical paroxysms, or at least a defeat, are the experiences through
which half-organized bodies often pass to teach them the meaning of
discipline and mechanical habit. An army must go through the annealing
process like glass; let a few regiments be cracked to pieces because
their leaders did not know how to withdraw them gradually from the
furnace of action, and the lesson will be all the better remembered
because taught by a costly example. Our early mishaps were all
predicted, sometimes in formal shape, as in various letters dated long
before the breaking out of hostilities, and very often in the common
talk of those about us. But, after all, when the first chastisement
from our hard schoolmaster, Experience, comes upon us, it is a kind of
surprise, in spite of all our preparation.

A writer in the present number of this magazine shows us that there is a
complete literature of panics, not merely as occurring among new levies,
but seizing on the best-appointed armies, containing as much individual
bravery as any that never ran away from an enemy. The men of Israel gave
way before the men of Benjamin, "retired" in the language of Scripture,
in order to lead them into ambush. At a given signal they faced about,
and the men of Benjamin "were amazed" (panic-struck) and "turned their
backs before the men of Israel unto the way of the wilderness,"--took to
the woods, as we should say. Their enemies did not lie still or run as
fast the other way, like ours at Bull Run, but they "inclosed" them, and
"chased them, and trode them down with ease," and "gleaned of them in
the highways," and "pursued hard after them." Yet "all these were men of
valor."

Not to return to our old classical friends, what modern nation has ever
known how to f