ns of actual events. A Portuguese,
at the siege of Goa, inserted a burning match in a cask of gunpowder,
then grasped it in his arms, and, crying to his companions,
"Stand aside, I bear my own and many men's lives," threw it among
the enemy, of whom a hundred were killed by the explosion, the bearer
being left unhurt. John Haring, on a Flemish dyke, held a thousand
men at bay, saved his army, and finally escaped uninjured. And the
motto of Bayard, _Vires agrainis unus habet_, was given him after
singly defending a bridge against two hundred Spaniards. Such men
appear to bear charmed lives, and to be identical with the laws of
Fate. "What a soldier, what a Roman, was thy father, my young bride!
How could they who never saw him have discoursed so rightly upon
virtue?"

From popular want of faith in these infinite resources of daring, it
is a common thing for persons of eminent courage to be stigmatized
as rash. This has been strikingly the case, for instance, in modern
times, with the Marquis of Wellesley and Sir Charles Napier. When the
Duke of Wellington was in the Peninsula in 1810, the City of London
addressed the throne, protesting against the bestowal of "honorable
distinctions upon a general who had thus far exhibited, with equal
rashness and ostentation, nothing but an useless valor."

But if bravery is liable to exist in excess, on the one side, it is
a comfort to think that it is capable of cultivation, where deficient.
There may be a few persons born absolutely without the power of
courage, as without the susceptibility to music,--but very few; and,
no doubt, the elements of daring, like those of musical perception,
can be developed in almost all. Once rouse the enthusiasm of the will,
and courage can be systematically disciplined. Emerson's maxim gives
the best regimen: "Always do what you are afraid to do." If your lot
is laid amid scenes of peace, then carry the maxim into the arts of
peace. Are you afraid to swim that river? then swim it. Are you
afraid to leap that fence? then leap it. Do you shrink from the
dizzy height of yonder magnificent pine? then climb it, and
"throw down the top," as they do in the forests of Maine. Goethe
cured himself of dizziness by ascending the lofty stagings of the
Frankfort carpenters. Nothing is insignificant that is great enough
to alarm you. If you cannot think of a grizzly bear without a shudder,
then it is almost worth your while to travel to the Rocky Mountains
in o