to the time when Brutus misquotes him, the intervening words would not take much more than a minute to read.

Brutus.-You say, you are a better soldier:

Let it appear so; make your vaunting true,

And it shall please me well: For mine own part,

I shall be glad to learn of noble men."

Then Cassius corrects this misrepresentation; but you must especially observe that he misrepresents what he had previously said, and is not at all confident as to what he did say.

Cassius. I said, an elder soldier, not a better:

Did I say, better ?"

Now what he did say, was "older in practice, abler than yourself to make conditions"-as being the more worldly-wise of the two, as Cassius would naturally think.

Then observe another point. This quarrel would never have been got over, without an interview. Writing letters would only have made matters worse. I can't prove that from any particular passage; but I feel that I am right in making the statement.

Lastly, come to the main point. How is it that the quarrel comes to an end? Only by Cassius ceasing to contend, and not indulging in denunciations, but in lamentations that are almost abject. "There is my dagger,

And here my naked breast;

*

I, that denied thee gold, will give my heart:
Strike, as thou didst at Cæsar; for I know,

When thou didst hate him worst, thou lov❜dst him better
Than ever thou lov'dst Cassius."

Brutus is immediately mollified. All the warmth that had been aroused by anger, deviates into tenderness, and the reconciliation of the two friends is one of the most touching things ever written, even by Shakespeare. I remember, when I was a child of six years old, that it was one of my first reading lessons, and I hated reading it, exceedingly, for I always felt inclined to cry over it.

Ellesmere. Of course, we have seen how, in this essay, you have made some allusions to the terrible war we are at present witnessing, -as, for instance, when you speak of the necessity of extracting every root of the cause of quarrel, applying your remark especially to the quarrels of Nations. I wish now to make an observation, to which I think you are bound to give some answer. You admit that, as regards private and domestic quarrels, there should be some preparation for them. Should there not also be some preparation for national quarrels, especially when they are perceived to be inevitable, or, at any rate, highly probable?

Sir Arthur. He is right, Milverton. I do not wish to say anything rude; but I think you yourself will admit that, in the present

state of Europe, it is verging on the Utopian to imagine that you can persuade any two or three of the principal nations to agree to a reduction of armaments. I do not say that the time may not come, when your pacific theories may possibly enter into practice; but surely the present is not that time.

Milverton. I am sure you will admit, that you have not often met a human being who has a more thorough detestation of war than I have, or a greater dislike to needless preparation for it. I object to the maxim, Si vis pacem, para bellum. I do not say, "If you want peace, prepare for war;" but I am obliged to confess that there are occasions when a nation must say to itself, "You can hardly expect to avoid war; and if you wish to prevail in war, you must prepare for it." A nation may see that it has entered into such treaties and guarantees; also that its colonial possessions may be of such an extended character; that, with every disposition for maintaining peace, it cannot reasonably expect to be let alone. Then, having an almost moral certainty that it will not escape conflict, or at least to give a menace, which will be futile unless the means of carrying out that menace are close at hand, it ought to prepare, and must prepare, for war. The great defect of modern statesmanship has been the not looking far enough forward. Statesmen have often been as well contented as members of the Stock Exchange, to arrange their transactions for the next month, and to look no further.

Sir Arthur. I liked what you said, Milverton, about the quarrels of affection. I suppose you had in your mind not only private quarrels of that sort, but the quarrels of nations as well. If the Americans loved us less, if they did not, indeed, value our regard more than that of all the world besides; they would not be so huffy with us. And, on the other hand, if we did not care far more for them than for all other nations, we should not be so vexed at their huffiness, and be prone to be huffy in return.

Milverton. For my own part, I can never view an American otherwise than as a fellow-countryman, once removed. I see very little essential difference between him and one of ourselves. I fancy, but perhaps this is a fancy, that he speaks a little nasally. He tells me, but perhaps this is a fancy on his part, that I do the same. But his thoughts are as my thoughts, except, perhaps, in one thing,—that he dotes upon extension of territory, and that I certainly do not. I should feel it to be a sort of murder to kill an American, even in battle. I should, perhaps, be killing a man who is the exact counterpart of myself. I believe, as you know, intensely in race. There are, doubtless, Milvertons in America; and this very man whom I might kill, might be, as I perhaps am, an exact resemblance in nature, form, and character, to some common ancestor. You know our friend

RIn his dining-room, just behind where the master of the house sits, there is the portrait of an ancestor who lived in the times of Charles I. I declare, if our friend were called out of the room unobservedly, and it were not for the difference of dress, the man in the picture might descend and take his place at the dinner-table, and no one of the guests would find out the difference. And so it might

be with me, and some American cousin of mine-both of us being exactly similar chips of the same old block. And then, (for these desperately unlucky things occur in real life as well as in novels), I am to kill this counterpart of myself. I decline to do so, or to run the chance of doing so, if I can possibly avoid it.

Ellesmere. I must tell you a droll idea that has come into my mind. The two Milvertons would be the two most indolent men in their respective armies. They would affect to be very courageous, for indolent men are always afraid of their indolence being mistaken for want of courage. They would, accordingly, be well to the front. They would, however, be lying down, having made a kind of sofa of baggage and knapsacks. Then they would take what are vulgarly called "pot shots" at one another. But this pleasing occupation would be occasionally interrupted by their making notes for future essays, or for "Thoughts on the Present Campaign," or for a great work on "The Folly of Soldiering." Both of them being bad shots, very little harm would be done either way, but they would furnish great amusement to the armies. And, as nothing promotes good fellowship so much as laughter on a common subject, they might be the means of making a lasting peace. Observe, that Milverton, much as he detests war, does not decline to go to battle with any other people than his dear American cousins.

Milverton. Never mind his nonsense. The greatest, and the most dangerous error, that at this moment besets the European family of nations, is that Englishmen, Scotchmen, and Irishmen do not love fighting. Being rather a sombre race (at any rate the English and the Scotch), nothing would delight us more than fighting. For war, whatever may be its evils, chases away dulness. And, as for the Irish, they love fighting for the fun of it. They are always anxious to find the "jontlemen who will have the kindness to tread on the tail of their registered paletôts." And no people in the world fight better.

But we are all restrained by the fear of doing something very wrong, in going to war. To speak the honest truth, and in words not common in these mealy-mouthed days, our rulers, and all those who could throw in their influence for war, are dreadfully afraid of being damned for doing so. They have come to the belief, that God does not approve of war; and therefore they will not be driven into it except by stern necessity. But, granted the existence

of that necessity, and that the burden of a tender conscience be removed from the British mind on its entrance into any war, the great mass of the British people are as merry as crickets. I have watched this feeling in my fellow-countrymen; and, to say the truth, in my own self.

Ellesmere. You are quite right, Milverton; even Cranmer on such occasions, has no objection to a loan—a transaction which absolutely horrifies him in other times. It all comes from our likeness to Fairy. I do really think that no Englishman thoroughly understands his fellow-countrymen, unless he has kept a bull-dog. Without any joking, bull-dogs are wonderfully like us. They are the least interfering of animals. Observe Fairy. She follows at our heels, wrapped in a surly kind of enjoyment; never going up to other people, never yappeting at the heels of horses. In fact she is a silent, steady, industrious kind of dog, who would get a prize for minding her own business. But once make that business war, and see with what animation, with what determination, and with what joy, this solid creature goes into action. Then, contrast the conduct of our greyhound, Rose, who has something to say to every cur she meets, and not always a friendly saying; who makes her way into every shop; pokes her nose into people's hands, to see if there is anything for her; and will absolutely startle and horrify two young lovers, by rushing in between them, and almost saying to them, "What folly are you going to commit?" Whereas, Fairy passes them by contemptuously, only hoping that they may some day quarrel, and that she may be obliged to take a side.

Cranmer. If Ellesmere once gets upon the subject of dogs, it is very difficult to stop him.

[The conversation was here interrupted by the arrival of the second editions of the morning papers. There had been a battle, and the letters of the correspondents teemed with descriptions of the horrors of the battle-field after the engagement. We could talk of nothing else. Mr. Milverton then gave us a description of the photographs of some battle-fields in America, which had been sent to his friend Dickens, and which they had looked over together. I now resume an account of the conversation as it proceeded.]

Milverton. I need hardly tell you that we were horror-stricken as we looked over these things.

We thought that, much as photography has done for the world, the best thing it had ever accomplished was these photographs, as they are such potent dissuaders from war. We thought so then. If my dear friend were alive now, he would probably agree with me that the world seems to have entered into such a career of madness that nothing can stop its folly.

Sir Arthur. I should like to have been with you. Dickens would have been sure to make such shrewd remarks.

Milverton. He did. He pointed out how the dead men all lay upon their backs, and he noticed a peculiar swelling of the body that was visible in all of them. But what I am always thinking of in these times, is not the dead, but those who are left wounded-fatally wounded-on the battle-field; and not even so much of their physical agonies, as of what may be their thoughts as they lie untended for hours, perhaps for days, slowly stiffening into death.

Cranmer. Mayhap they think but little.

Milverton. With many it may only be pain-masterful pain; the pain of a wounded animal-that absorbs the whole mind of the dying man; but if any one of them thinks away for a moment from his pain, what must be his thoughts? It is not likely that he has read his Shakespeare; but surely the thought, if not the expression, of the dying Mercutio comes to his lips-" A plague o' both your Houses!" and he roughly curses in his inmost soul both King and Kaiser. No longer buoyed up by hatred (there never, perhaps, was much of that feeling in him), and no longer even supported by excitement, the whole madness of the thing he has been concerned in, is revealed to him. Indignation consumes his soul, an indignation more profound than that of the dying gladiator, who thought of his "young barbarians at play;" an indignation more profound, I say, because he, the dying soldier, has had, or seems to have had, some particle of free-will in the matter. He has, at least, shouted forth vain-glorious boastings, and has joined in all that tavern exultation which forms such a ludicrous and horrible prelude to serious warfare. But all this seems to him now to belong to a former state of existence, and to have been transacted in another world. For now, wisdom, everhalting, mostly too late, has come upon him hand-in-hand with death!

Perhaps there is a sound of music in the camp of his own comrades, which his feeble voice cannot reach. They are merry there, and he hears the song which he, too, had often joined in singing at the tavern and on the march; but its strains are not so inspiriting as they were then, and are but a mockery of his sufferings.

Is he a lover? He thinks of her. It is not always of their sorrowful parting that he thinks; for that strangely errant and ungovernable thing, memory, carries him back, perhaps, to some fond hour, hitherto forgotten as when, one summer day, she threw wild flowers in his face while they were walking by the river-side, and was shy, and would not come as near to him as he wished; but never looked more beautiful. There is a strange complacency in his mind at the thought that he will be so much mourned over by her. If this bleeding would but stop, he would scribble something to her, at least