e, without
a doubt, just now in the bristling empires of the Continent. In
Germany and France, in Russia and Italy, there are many more soldiers
than are needed to make the taxpayer thrifty or the lover of the
picturesque happy. The huge armaments of continental Europe are an
oppressive and sinister spectacle, and I have rarely derived a high
order of entertainment from the sight of even the largest masses of
homesick conscripts. The _chair a canon_--the cannon-meat--as they
aptly term it in French, has always seemed to me dumbly,
appealingly conscious of its destiny. I have seen it in course of
preparation--seen it salted and dressed and packed and labelled, as it
were, for consumption. In that marvellous France, indeed, which bears
all burdens lightly, and whose good spirits and absence of the tragic
_pose_ alone prevent us from calling her constantly heroic, the army
scarcely seems to be the heavy charge that it must be in fact. The
little red-legged soldiers, always present and always moving, are
as thick as the field-flowers in an abundant harvest, and amid the
general brightness and mobility of French life they strike one at
times simply as cheerful tokens of the national exuberance and
fecundity. But in Germany and Italy the national levies impart a
lopsided aspect to society: they seem to drag it under water. They
hang like a millstone round its neck, so that it can't move: it has
to sit still, looking wistfully at the long, forward road which it is
unable to measure.

England, which is fortunate in so many things, is fortunate in her
well-fed mercenaries, who suggest none of the dismal reflections
provoked by the great foreign armies. It is true, of course, that they
fail to suggest some of the inspiring ones. If Germany and France are
burdened, at least they are defended--at least they are armed for
conflict and victory. There seems to be a good deal of doubt as to how
far this is true of the nation which has hitherto been known as the
pre-eminently pugnacious one. Where France and Germany and Russia
count by hundreds, England counts by tens; and it is only, strictly
speaking, on the good old principle that one Englishman can buffet
a dozen foreigners that a very hopeful view of an Anglo-continental
collision can be maintained. This good old principle is far from
having gone out of fashion: you may hear it proclaimed to an inspiring
tune any night in the week in the London music-halls. One summer
evening, in