—not peace—but the preservation of the Union, made no difficulty about fighting, when the assault was actually begun, and was confident that the South must soon yield for want of the necessaries and comforts of life.
The world has thus witnessed the spectacle of a military spirit in the North, brave enough to undergo the suffering of the necessary training, and of an unexpected economical ability in the South. Men can manufacture and trade in the Slave States; and men can fight, and grow fond of military adventure in the Free States. The whole set of faculties has existed in both all the while; and they will no doubt be found by-and-by to have improved incalculably by the more complete exercise of their powers; and to have risen in one another’s estimation by the proof afforded of what they can do.
We shall not hear much more in my time of the gross materialism and ignoble spiritlessness of our age. The Italian revolution, and the conflicts and turmoils and alarms which have kept Europe in incessant excitement for the last five years, have silenced the haughty censors of their age, and have turned not a few of the clergy into preachers of war instead of peace. Our generation is now more likely to be scolded for its sympathy with war, and branded as retrograde, than despised for being too pacific.
Some of us have had a secret, if not an open, belief, during our forty years’ peace, that the commercial period was not extinguishing the spirit of Englishmen, and that it would not bear us on into the Millennium without interruption. The strength of the organ of destructiveness,—or, as it would better be called, of antagonism,—in the English brain has hinted itself in some significant way all the time to observers who, like myself, did not wish to see all England mortifying one of the best organs in the human brain, in the course of cultivating and gratifying some others. Field-sports at home, and the glee with which young men (if not old ones) have entered into any possible warfare with poachers, have always shown me what a force of antagonism or destructiveness lay beneath the outward quietness which is the reaction from the bullying manners of the duellists of the last century. But the most curious and amusing spectacle is the emotion of our countrymen,—and, I may add, our countrywomen,—on coming face to face with man’s natural enemies, in remote countries and strange climates. The peculiar relation into which my countrymen are being brought with the wild animals of the world makes this spectacle one of great interest, if we did not look beyond it.
I have seen, without any surprise or overmuch contempt, the fear of almost all animals in which most English children are,—or were till lately,—brought up. I have seen what a drawback it was to the pleasures of a summer retreat at Bolton Abbey, or near Barden Tower at the other end of the valley of the Strid, that the vocation of the neighbourhood is grazing. It really is, to peaceable and unarmed people, a grievance to be able to go nowhere upon the glorious hills around, or in the wild pastures, without being warned as you pass every farmhouse, or cried out to from every eminence, to take care of the bull. It is vexatious when two-thirds up a Westmoreland mountain, to meet somebody who tells you there is a menacing bull in possession of the ridge, or this or that enclosure which you have to pass through. I could understand the paroxysm of terror which caused a maid-servant, in attendance on her mistress, to seize the lady’s arm, and hide behind her from the stare of a cow which looked up from her grazing. I could comprehend how a young lady, though late for dinner, felt compelled to turn round and leave a pasture, and make a long circuit home, because two young horses were running and tossing their manes. But I could not have conceived, without seeing and feeling it, what the emotion is of first coming within view of a brute enemy in a far country;—the emotion which is kindred to that felt by the soldier on the day of his first battle;—the emotion which may remain a singular experience in one’s life, or may grow into that peculiarity which I shall speak of presently.
I was rather surprised at the vigour of my own dislike of mosquitoes when at New Orleans; but I found how mild was that abhorrence when I learned to dread the rattlesnake on the Mississippi. Without finding the voyage up the river tedious, I liked, as the other passengers did, to step ashore at the wooding-places, and peep into the forest, which we could not penetrate beyond a few yards. It was so disagreeable, however, to have to examine every step among the dead wood and tangled creepers for snakes, and to be warned away from the woodpile lest some treacherous creature should wriggle out, that, after having sighted two or three abominable reptiles of one branch or another of the snake tribe, I grew less eager about visiting the shore, just for the sake of saying I had been in this or that state, or of gathering an armful of the splendid honeysuckle of the forest, or yellow jasmine, or dogwood, or crow-poison.
It was with a different kind of interest that I first saw real wild beasts roaming at pleasure. A small herd of buffalo were the very first, I think: but they were not unused to the sight of men. They were not tamed; that was impossible; and their cruel eyes, their heavy gait, and the weight of their forepart, which looked as if framed expressly to crush an enemy, caused a wonderful thrill of hostility, unlike anything I had felt before. I could fancy at once the attraction of hunting these ugly, powerful, malignant-looking creatures. Very different was my next accost of the wild part of creation. I was in a waggon crossing an expanse of open country in the western States, when a tawny dog, as I supposed, crossed the track, some distance before us, at a slow trot, carrying its head low, and its tail between its legs. It was a prairie-wolf; and before we could get a nearer view, it had disappeared behind some rise in the ground. The next encounter was more impressive. I was in a waggon on the prairie with a party of friends later at night than was prudent. The driver and other natives tried the effect upon a stranger of stories of travellers who had lost themselves on this prairie, and gone round and round for a few days and nights without seeing a single habitation. I did not expect this fate; but
