-arranged schemes for the destruction of his fellows
should often be made to fail by the condition of the weather. More
or less have the greatest of generals been "servile to all the skyey
influences." Upon the state of the atmosphere frequently depends the
ability of men to fight, and military hopes rise and fall with the
rising and falling of the metal in the thermometer's tube. Mercury
governs Mars. A hero is stripped of his plumes by a tempest, and his
laurels fly away on the invisible wings of the wind, and are seen no
more forever. Empires fall because of a heavy fall of snow. Storms of
rain have more than once caused monarchs to cease to reign. A hard
frost, a sudden thaw, a "hot spell," a "cold snap," a contrary wind, a
long drought, a storm of sand,--all these things have had their part in
deciding the destinies of dynasties, the fortunes of races, and the fate
of nations. Leave the weather out of history, and it is as if night were
left out of the day, and winter out of the year. Americans have fretted
a little because their "Grand Army" could not advance through mud that
came up to the horses' shoulders, and in which even the seven-league
boots would have stuck, though they had been worn as deftly as Ariel
could have worn them. They talked as if no such thing had ever before
been known to stay the march of armies; whereas all military operations
have, to a greater or a lesser extent, depended for their issue upon the
softening or the hardening of the earth, or upon the clearing or the
clouding of the sky. The elements have fought against this or that
conqueror, or would-be conqueror, as the stars in their courses fought
against Sisera; and the Kishon is not the only river that has through
its rise put an end to the hopes of a tyrant. The condition of rivers,
which must be owing to the condition of the weather, has often colored
events for ages, perhaps forever. The melting of the snows of the
Pyrenees, causing a great rise of the rivers of Northern Spain, came
nigh bringing ruin upon Julius Caesar himself; and nothing but the
feeble character of the opposing general saved him from destruction.

The preservation of Greece, with all its incalculable consequences, must
be credited to the weather. The first attempt to conquer that country,
made by the Persians, failed because of a storm that disabled their
fleet. Mardonius crossed the Hellespont twelve or thirteen years before
that feat was accomplished by Xerxes,