This makes the fascination of war, which is in itself, of course, brutal and disgusting. Dr. Johnson says, truly, that the naval and military professions have the dignity of danger, since mankind reverence those who have overcome fear, which is so general a weakness. The error usually lies in exaggerating the difference, in this respect, between war and peace. Madame de Sévigné writes to her cousin, Bussy-Rabutin, after a campaign, "I cannot understand how one can expose himself a thousand times, as you have done, and not be killed a thousand times also." To which the Count answers, that she overrates the danger; a soldier may often make several campaigns without drawing a sword, and be in a battle without seeing an enemy, —as, for example, where one is in the second line, or rear guard, and the first line decides the contest. He finally quotes Turenne, and Maurice, Prince of Orange, to the same effect, that a military life is less perilous than civilians suppose.
It is, therefore, a foolish delusion to suppose, that, as the world grows more pacific, the demand for physical courage passes away. It is only that its applications become nobler. In barbarous ages, men fight against men and animals, and need, like Achilles, to be fed on the marrow of wild beasts. As time elapses, the savage animals are extirpated, the savage men are civilized; but Nature, acting through science, commerce, society, is still creating new exigencies of peril, and evoking new types of courage to meet them. Grace Darling at her oars, Kane in his open boat, Stephenson testing his safety-lamp in the terrible pit,—what were the trophies of Miltiades to these? The ancient Agamemnon faced no danger so memorable as that ocean-storm which beset his modern namesake, bearing across the waters a more priceless treasure than Helen, pride of Greece. And, indeed, setting aside these sublimities of purpose, and looking simply at the quantity and quality of peril, it is doubtful whether any tale of the sea-kings thrills the blood more worthily than the plain newspaper narrative of Captain Thomas Bailey, in the Newburyport schooner, "Atlas," beating out of the Gut of Canso, in a gale of wind, with his crew of two men and a boy, up to their waists in the water.
It is easy to test the matter. Let any one, who believes that the day of daring is past, beg or buy a ride on the locomotive of the earliest express-train, some cold winter-morning. One wave of the conductor's hand, and the live engine springs snorting beneath you, as no Arab steed ever rushed over the desert. It is not like being bound to an arrow, for that motion would be smoother; it is not like being hurled upon an ocean crest, for that would be slower. You are rushing onward, and you are powerless; that is all. The frosty air gives such a brittle and slippery look to the two iron lines which lie between you and destruction, that you appreciate the Mohammedan fable of the Bridge Herat, thinner than a hair, sharper than a scimitar, which stretches over hell and leads to paradise. Nothing has passed over that perilous track for many hours; the cliffs may have fallen and buried it, the frail bridges may have sunk beneath it, or diabolical malice put obstructions on it, no matter how trivial, equally fatal to you; each curving embankment may hide unknown horrors, from which, though all others escape, you, on the engine, cannot; and yet, still the surging locomotive bounds onward, beneath your mad career. You draw a long breath, as you dismount at last, a hundred miles away, as if you had been riding with Mazeppa or Brunechilde, and yet escaped alive. And there, by your side, stands the quiet, grimy engineer, turning already to his tobacco and his newspaper, and unconscious, while he reads of the charge at Balaklava, that his life is Balaklava every day.
Physical courage is not, therefore, a thing to be so easily set aside. Nor is it, as our reformers appear sometimes to assume, a mere corollary from moral courage, and, ultimately, to be merged in that. Moral courage is rare enough, no doubt,—probably the rarer quality of the two, as it is the nobler; but they are things diverse, and not necessarily united. There have been men, and still are such, leaders of their age in moral courage, and yet physically timid. This is not as it should be. God placed man at the head of the visible universe, and if he is to be thrown from his control, daunted by a bullet, or a wild horse, or a flash of lightning, or a lee shore, then man is dishonored, and the order of the universe deranged. No matter what the occasion of the terror is, a mouse or a martyrdom, fear dethrones us. "He that lives in fear of death," said Cæsar, "at every moment feels its tortures. I will die but once."
Having claimed thus much, we can still readily admit that we cannot yet estimate the precise effect upon physical courage of a state of permanent national peace, since indeed we are not yet within sight of that desirable consummation. Meanwhile, let us attempt some slight sketch and classification of the different types of physical courage, as already existing, among which are to be enumerated the spontaneous courage of the blood,—the courage of habit,—magnetic or transmitted courage,—and the courage inspired by self-devotion.
There is a certain innate fire of the blood, which does not dare perils for the sake of principle, nor grow indifferent to them from familiarity, nor confront them under support of a stronger will,—but loves them for their own sake, without reference to any ulterior object. There is no special merit in it, for it is a matter of temperament. Yet it often conceals itself under the finer names of self-devotion and high purpose,—as George Borrow convinced himself that he was actuated by evangelical zeal to spread the Bible in Spain, though one sees, through every line of his narrative, that it was chiefly the adventure which allured him, and that he would as willingly have distributed the Koran in London, had it been equally contraband. No surplices, no libraries, no counting-house desks can eradicate this natural instinct. Achilles, disguised among the maidens, was detected by the wily Ulysses, because he chose arms, not jewels, from the travelling merchant's stores. In the most placid life, a man may pant for danger; and we know quiet, unobtrusive men who have confessed to us that they never step into a railroad-car without the secret hope of a collision.
This is the courage of heroic races, as Highlanders, Circassians, Montenegrins, Afghans, and those Arabs among whom Urquhart finely said that peace could not be purchased by victory. Where destined to appear at all, it is likely to be developed in extreme youth, which explains such instances as the gamins de Paris, and that of Sir Cloudesley Shovel, who in boyhood conveyed a dispatch during a naval engagement, swimming through double lines of fire. Indeed, among heroic races, young soldiers are preferable for daring; such, at least, is the testimony of the highest authorities, as Ney and Wellington. "I have found," said the Duke, "that raw troops, however inferior to the old ones in manoeuvring, may be superior to them in downright hard fighting with the enemy. At Waterloo, the young ensigns and lieutenants, who had never before seen an enemy, rushed to meet death, as if they were playing at cricket."
But though youth is good for an onset, it needs habit and discipline to give steadiness. A boy will risk his life where a veteran will be too circumspect to follow him; but to perform a difficult manoeuvre in face of an enemy requires Sicinius with forty-five scars on his breast. "The very apprehension of a wound," said Seneca, "startles a man when he first bears arms; but an old soldier bleeds boldly, for he knows that a man may lose blood and yet win the day." Before the battle of Preston Pans, Mr. Ker of Graden, "an experienced officer," mounted on a gray pony, coolly reconnoitred all the difficult ground between the two armies, crossed it in several directions, deliberately alighted more than once to lead his horse through gaps made for that purpose in the stone walls,—under a constant shower of musket-balls. He finally returned unhurt to Charles Edward, and dissuaded him from crossing. Undoubtedly, any raw Highlander in the army would have incurred the same risk, with or without a sufficient object; but not one of them would have brought back so clear a report, —if, indeed, he had brought himself back.
The most common evidence of this dependence of many persons' courage on habit is in the comparative timidity of brave men against novel dangers,—as of sailors on horseback, and mountaineers at sea. Nay, the same effect is sometimes produced merely by different forms of danger within the same sphere. Sea-captains often attach an exaggerated sense of peril to small boats; Condé confessed himself a coward in a street-fight; and William the Conqueror is said to have trembled exceedingly (rehementer tremens) during the disturbance which interrupted his coronation. It was probably from the same cause, that Mrs. Inchbald, the most fearless of actresses, was once entirely overcome by timidity on assuming a character in a masquerade.
On a larger scale, the mere want of habitual exposure to danger will often cause a whole population to be charged with greater cowardice than really belongs to them. Thus, after the coronation of the Chevalier, in the Scottish insurrection of 1745, although the populace of Edinburgh crowded around him, kissing his very garments when he walked abroad, yet scarcely a man could be enlisted, in view of the certainty of an approaching battle with General Cope. And before this, when the Highlanders were marching on the city, out of a volunteer corps of four hundred raised to meet them, all but forty-five deserted before the gate was passed.[1] Yet there is no reason to doubt that these frightened citizens, after having once stood fire, might have been as brave as the average. It was a saying in Kansas, that the New England men needed to be shot at once or twice, after which they became the bravest of the brave.