French army is to be ascribed to the unheard-of energy of the pursuit, the results of which imagination could hardly exaggerate."

Impartial French opinion, and at the same time high military authority, may be cited to show that Moscow was considered untenable for the French army even before the conflagration: it will be found in the 'Souvenirs' of his own life by General Dumas, who served with the invading army during the campaign, that he deplored the pertinacity with which Napoleon postponed the retreat, and even considered the conflagration of Moscow a fortunate event, inasmuch as it was the means of preventing farther delay and destruction still more disastrous

"The direct and manifest interposition of God," that Dr. Arnold here speaks of, had been the subject of some lofty strains of English poetry nearly contemporary with the events; and sometimes the poet, with his higher aims of imaginative truth, is found to reach also more accuracy of fact than the historic commentator. In the present instance it is the Poet, more than the Lecturer, who does justice to human agency-to the deeds and the sufferings of men in the crisis of a desperate conflict, while the presence of a Divine power of retribution is not less recognised. The comparison to the annihilation of the Assyrian host had already been present to the imagination of Southey in one of his impassioned Lyrics:

"Witness that dread retreat,

When God and nature smote
The tyrant in his pride!

No wider ruin overtook
Sennacherib's impious host;

Nor when the frantic Persian led
His veterans to the Lybian sands;
Nor when united Greece

O'er the barbaric power that victory won
Which Europe yet may bless.
A fouler tyrant cursed the groaning earth,
A fearfuller destruction was dispensed.
Victorious armies follow'd on his flight;
On every side he met

The Cossacks' dreadful spear:
On every side he saw
The injured nation rise

Invincible in arms."

'Poetical Works,' vol. iii. 241.

In that series of poems which Wordsworth has worthily inscribed as 'dedicated to Liberty,' the subject is so treated as to show the Divine interposition made manifest in human agency as well as in the power of the elements—the work of destruction begun by the self-devotion and the courage of men, and finished by 'famine, snow, and frost :'

"By Moscow self-devoted to a blaze

Of dreadful sacrifice; by Russian blood
Lavish'd in fight with desperate hardihood;
The unfeeling Elements no claim shall raise
To rob our Human Nature of just praise
For what she did and suffer'd. Pledges sure
Of a deliverance absolute and pure

She gave, if Faith might tread the beaten ways
Of Providence. But now did the Most High
Exalt his still small voice;-to quell that host
Gather'd his power, a manifest ally;

He, whose heap'd waves confounded the proud boast
Of Pharaoh, said to Famine, Snow, and Frost,

'Finish the strife by deadliest victory!'"

'Poetical Works,' vol. iii. pp. 238 and 240.

NOTE 5.-Page 164.

The best way, perhaps, to correct the inadequacy here alluded to in our ordinary notions of warfare, and to obtain a theoretical sense of the importance of the 'economics' of war, will be by the perusal of the correspondence of those who are in command— for example, the official military letters of Washington, or the dispatches of Wellington. From these the reader may form some conception of the difficulty of provisioning an army-of clothing and daily feeding a large assemblage of soldiers of the care of the sick and wounded, &c. &c. I cannot dismiss a reference to the

military correspondence of Washington and Wellington without noticing how much each is characterized by the same qualities in the writers of good sense, or (to use a more adequate term) the highest practical wisdom-of singleness of purpose of heroism genuine and unostentatious—of integrity and an ever-present sense of duty and the spirit of self-sacrifice; and with these qualities a straight-forward simplicity of style—such as has been truly said to be the soldierly style-the style that is common to these great captains of modern times, and to Xenophon and Cæsar.

LECTURE IV.

At the very beginning of this lecture I must myself remind you, lest it should occur to your own minds if I were to omit it, of that well-known story of the Greek sophist who discoursed at length upon the art of war, when Hannibal happened to be amongst his audience. Some of his hearers, full of admiration of his eloquence and knowledge, for such it seemed to them, eagerly applied to the great general for his judgment, not doubting that it would confirm their own. But Hannibal's answer was, that he had met with many absurd old men in his life, but never with one so absurd as this lecturer. The recollection of this story should ever be present to unmilitary men, when they attempt to speak about war; and though there may be no Hannibal actually present amongst us, yet I would wish to speak as cautiously as if my words were to be heard by one as competent to judge them

as he was.

But although the story relates to the art of war only, yet it is in fact universally applicable. The unprofessional man, idiúrns, must speak with hesitation in presence of a master of his craft. And not only in his presence, but generally, he who is a stranger to any profession must be aware of his own disadvantages when speaking of the subject of that profession. Yet consider, on the other hand, that no one man in the common course of things has more than one profession; is he then to be silent, or to feel himself incapable of passing a judgment upon the subjects of all professions except that