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ESSAYS IN IDLENESS.

breath of contentment when at last they see the foe, and gaping expectantly at their officers, "as terriers grin ere the stone is cast for them to fetch?" Who can forget the joyous abandon with which Mulvaney the disreputable and his "four an' twenty young wans" fling themselves upon Lungtungpen? It is a good and wholesome thing for a man to be in sympathy with that primitive virtue, courage, to recognize it promptly, and to do honor to it under any flag. "Homer's heart is with the brave of either side," observes Mr. Lang; "with Glaucus and Sarpedon of Lycia no less than with Achilles and Patroclus." Scott's heart is with Surrey and Dacre no less than with Lennox and Argyle; with the English hosts charging like whirlwinds to the fray no less than with the Scottish soldiers standing ringed and dauntless around their king. Théodore de Banville, hot with shame over fallen France, checks his bitterness to write some tender verses to the memory of a Prussian boy found dead on the field, with a bullet-pierced volume of Pindar on his breast. Dumas, that lover of all brave deeds, cries out with noble enthusiasm that it was not enough