In the large training and experience of Antiquity the soldier and civilian were often united; but in modern times this has been seldom. The camp is peculiar in the influence it exercises; it is in itself an education; but it is not the education of the statesman. To suppose that we can change without preparation from the soldier to the statesman is to assume that training and experience are of less consequence for the one than the other,--that a man may be born a statesman, but can fit himself as a soldier only by four years at West Point, careful scientific study, the command of troops, and experience in the tented field. And is nothing required for the statesman? Is his duty so slight? His study is the nation and its welfare, turning always to history for example, to law for authority, and to the loftiest truth for rules of conduct. No knowledge, care, or virtue, disciplined by habit, can be too great. The pilot is not accepted in his trust until he knows the signs of the storm, the secrets of navigation, the rocks of the coast,--all of which are learned only by careful study with charts and soundings, by coasting the land and watching the crested wave. But can less be expected of that other pilot who is to steer the ship which contains us all? The failure of the modern soldier as statesman is exhibited by Mr. Buckle in his remarkable work on the “History of Civilization.” Writing as a philosopher devoted to liberal ideas, he does not disguise that in Antiquity “the most eminent soldiers were likewise the most eminent politicians”; but he plainly shows the reason when he adds, that “in the midst of the hurry and turmoil of camps these eminent men cultivated their minds to the highest point that the knowledge of that age would allow.”[52] The secret was culture not confined to war. In modern Europe few soldiers have been more conspicuous than Gustavus Adolphus and Frederick sometimes called the Great; but we learn from our author that both “failed ignominiously in their domestic policy, and showed themselves as short-sighted in the arts of peace as they were sagacious in the arts of war.”[53] The judgment of Marlborough is more pointed. While portraying him as “the greatest conqueror of his age, the hero of a hundred fights, the victor of Blenheim and of Ramillies,” the same philosophical writer adds that he was “a man not only of the most idle and frivolous pursuits, but was so miserably ignorant that his deficiencies made him the ridicule of his contemporaries,” while his politics were compounded of selfishness and treachery.[54] Nor was Wellington an exception. Though shining in the field without a rival, and remarkable for integrity of purpose, an unflinching honesty, and high moral feeling, the conqueror of Waterloo is described as “nevertheless utterly unequal to the complicated exigencies of political life.”[55] This judgment of the philosopher is confirmed by that of Metternich, the renowned statesman, who, after