iterature of ours will be just as
classic a thing, if we do our part, as any which the past has treasured.
There is a mirage over all literary associations. Keats and Lamb seem to
our young people to be existences as remote and legendary as Homer, yet
it is not an old man's life since Keats was an awkward boy at the
door of Hazlitt's lecture-room, and Lamb was introducing Talfourd to
Wordsworth as his own only admirer. In reading Spence's "Anecdotes,"
Pope and Addison appear no farther off; and wherever I open Bacon's
"Essays," I am sure to end at last with that one magical sentence,
annihilating centuries, "When I was a child, and Queen Elizabeth was in
the flower of her years."

And this imperceptible transformation of the commonplace present into
the storied past applies equally to the pursuits of war and to the
serenest works of peace. Be not misled by the excitements of the moment
into overrating the charms of military life. In this chaos of uniforms,
we seem to be approaching times such as existed in England after
Waterloo, when the splenetic Byron declared that the only distinction
was to be a little undistinguished. No doubt, war brings out grand
and unexpected qualities, and there is a perennial fascination in the
Elizabethan Raleighs and Sidneys, alike heroes of pen and sword. But the
fact is patent, that there is scarcely any art whose rudiments are
so easy to acquire as the military; the manuals of tactics have
no difficulties comparable to those of the ordinary professional
text-books; and any one who can drill a boat's crew or a ball-club can
learn in a very few weeks to drill a company or even a regiment. Given
in addition the power to command, to organize, and to execute,--high
qualities, though not rare in this community,--and you have a man
needing but time and experience to make a general. More than this can be
acquired only by an exclusive absorption in this one art; as Napoleon
said, that, to have good soldiers, a nation must be always at war.

If, therefore, duty and opportunity call, count it a privilege to obtain
your share in the new career; throw yourself into it as resolutely and
joyously as if it were a summer-campaign in the Adirondack, but never
fancy for a moment that you have discovered any grander or manlier life
than you might be leading every day at home. It is not needful here to
decide which is intrinsically the better thing, a column of a newspaper
or a column of attack, Wordsworth