nly to those
who became officers of the State militia. Still in all essential
respects the Military Institute was little behind West Point. The
discipline was as strict, the drill but little less precise. The
cadets had their own officers and their own sergeants, and the whole
establishment was administered on a military footing. No pains were
spared either by the State or the faculty to maintain the peculiar
character of the school; and the little battalion, although the
members were hardly likely to see service, was as carefully trained
as if each private in the ranks might one day become a general
officer. It was fortunate indeed for Virginia, when she submitted her
destinies to the arbitrament of war, that some amongst her statesmen
had been firm to the conviction that to defend one's country is a
task not a whit less honourable than to serve her in the ways of
peace. She was unable to avert defeat. But she more than redeemed her
honour; and the efficiency of her troops was in no small degree due
to the training so many of her officers had received at the Military
Institute.

Still, notwithstanding its practical use to the State, the offer of a
chair at Lexington would probably have attracted but few of Jackson's
contemporaries. But while campaigning was entirely to his taste, life
in barracks was the reverse. In those unenlightened days to be known
as an able and zealous soldier was no passport to preferment. So long
as an officer escaped censure his promotion was sure; he might reach
without further effort the highest prizes the service offered, and
the chances of the dull and indolent were quite as good as those of
the capable and energetic. The one had no need for, the other no
incentive to, self-improvement, and it was very generally neglected.
Unless war intervened--and nothing seemed more improbable than
another campaign--even a Napoleon would have had to submit to the
inevitable. Jackson caught eagerly at the opportunity of freeing
himself from an unprofitable groove.

"He believed," he said, "that a man who had turned, with a good
military reputation, to pursuits of a semi-civilian character, and
had vigorously prosecuted his mental improvement, would have more
chance of success in war than those who had remained in the treadmill
of the garrison."

It was with a view, then, of fitting himself for command that Jackson
broke away from the restraints of regimental life; not because those
restraints were b