I speak strongly, you will say, for I feel acutely; though I am so young a soldier, yet the whole of my brief career has been spent in camps, and a year such as the last, spent in almost constant strife, and a great part of it on detached and independent command, teaches one lessons which thirty years of peaceful life, of parades and cantonments, would never impart.
There are men of iron, like Napier and Radetzky, aged men, whom nothing affects; but they are just in sufficient numbers to prove the rule by establishing exceptions. Depend upon it, that for the rough work of war, especially in India, your leaders must be young to be effective.
If you could but see my beautiful rough and ready boys, with their dirt colored clothes and swarthy faces, lying in wait for a Sikh, I think it would amuse you not a little. I must try and send you a picture of them. Alas! I am no longer a "Guide," but only a big-wig, administering justice, deciding disputes, imprisoning thieves, and assisting to hang highwaymen, like any other poor old, fat, respectable, humdrum justice of the peace in Old England.
Umritsur, April 5th, 1850.
I quite agree with all you say about Arnold. His loss was a national misfortune. Had he lived, he would have produced an impression on men's minds whose effects would have been felt for ages. As it is, the influence which he did produce has been most lasting and striking in its effects. It is felt even in India; I cannot say more than that.
You should come and live in India for five years if you wished to feel (supposing you ever doubted it) the benefit of our "established" forms of Christianity. Even the outward signs and tokens of its profession—cathedrals, churches, colleges, tombs, hospitals, almshouses—have, I am now more than ever convinced, an influence on men's minds and principles and actions which none but those who have been removed from their influence for years can feel or appreciate thoroughly. The more I think of this, the more strongly I feel the effect of mere external sights and sounds on the inner and better man. Our Gothic buildings, our religious-looking churches, have, I am sure, a more restraining and pacifying influence than is generally believed by those who are habituated to them, and have never felt the want of them. A few cathedrals and venerable-looking edifices would do wonders in our colonies. Here we have nothing physical to remind us of any creed but Islamism and Hindooism. The comparative purity of the Moslem's creed is shown admirably in the superiority in taste and form of their places of prayer. Christianity alone is thrust out of sight! A barrack-room, a ball-room, a dining-room, perhaps a court of justice, serve the purpose for which the "wisdom and piety of our ancestors" constructed such noble and stately temples; feeling, justly, that the human mind in its weakness required to be called to the exercise of devotion by the senses as well as by reason and will; that separation from the ordinary scenes of every-day life, its cares, its toils, its amusements, is necessary to train the feelings and thoughts to that state in which religious impressions are conveyed. I have not seen a church for three years and more, nor heard the service of the Church read, save at intervals, in a room in which, perhaps, the night before, I had been crushed by a great dinner party, or worn out by the bustle and turmoil of suitors. The building in which one toils becomes intimately associated with the toil itself. That in which one prays should at least have some attribute to remind one of prayer. Human nature shrinks for long from the thought of being buried in any but consecrated ground; the certainty of lying dead some day or other on a field of battle, or by a roadside, has, I have remarked, the most strange effect on the soldier's mind. Depend upon it the same feeling holds good with regard to consecrated places of worship. You may think this fanciful, but I am sure you would feel it more strongly than I do, were you to live for a time in a country where everything but religion has its living and existent memorials and evidences.
But to return to reality: I have just spent three days in Sir Charles Napier's camp, it being my duty to accompany him through such parts of the civil district as he may have occasion to visit. He was most kind and cordial, vastly amusing and interesting, and gave me even a higher opinion of him than before. To be sure his language and mode of expressing himself savor more of the last than of this century,—of the camp than of the court; but barring these eccentricities, he is a wonderful man; his heart is as thoroughly in his work, and he takes as high a tone in all that concerns it, as Arnold did in his; that is to say, the highest the subject is capable of. I only trust he will remain with us as long as his health lasts, and endeavor to rouse the army from the state of slack discipline into which it has fallen. On my parting with him he said, "Now, remember, Hodson, if there is any way in which I can be of use to you, pray don't scruple to write to me." I didn't show him his brother's[14] letter,—that he might judge for himself first, and know me "per se," or rather "per me;" I will, however, if ever I see him again.