ls--"drank no wine through the helmet barred," and, quite unlike the
baronial ruffian of the Middle Ages, was strangely indifferent to
the feasts of gluttony and swilled insolence. He found no joy in the
pleasures of the table. Art had done little to increase the comforts or
the securities of his fortress. It was one, complete to his hands, from
those of nature--such a one as must have delighted the generous English
outlaw of Sherwood forest--isolated by deep ravines and rivers, a dense
forest of mighty trees, and interminable undergrowth. The vine and briar
guarded his passes. The laurel and the shrub, the vine and sweet scented
jessamine, roofed his dwelling, and clambered up between his closed
eyelids and the stars. Obstructions, scarcely penetrable by any foe,
crowded the pathways to his tent;--and no footstep, not practised in
the secret, and 'to the manner born', might pass unchallenged to his
midnight rest. The swamp was his moat; his bulwarks were the deep
ravines, which, watched by sleepless rifles, were quite as impregnable
as the castles on the Rhine. Here, in the possession of his fortress,
the partisan slept secure. In the defence of such a place, in the
employment of such material as he had to use, Marion stands out alone in
our written history, as the great master of that sort of strategy, which
renders the untaught militia-man in his native thickets, a match for the
best drilled veteran of Europe. Marion seemed to possess an intuitive
knowledge of his men and material, by which, without effort, he was led
to the most judicious modes for their exercise. He beheld, at a glance,
the evils or advantages of a position. By a nice adaptation of his
resources to his situation, he promptly supplied its deficiencies and
repaired its defects. Till this was done, he did not sleep;--he relaxed
in none of his endeavors. By patient toil, by keenest vigilance, by a
genius peculiarly his own, he reconciled those inequalities of
fortune or circumstance, under which ordinary men sit down in despair.
Surrounded by superior foes, he showed no solicitude on this account.
If his position was good, their superiority gave him little concern.
He soon contrived to lessen it, by cutting off their advanced parties,
their scouts or foragers, and striking at their detachments in detail.
It was on their own ground, in their immediate presence, nay, in the
very midst of them, that he frequently made himself a home. Better live
upon foes t