For example, and in the way of parenthesis, it would be a parlous difficulty to teach the innate craven to plunge valiantly onward at the desperate head of a forlorn hope, or to hurl himself recklessly upon the sharp and bristling array of a forest of hostile bayonets. You may debate the question if you are so inclined, insisting on it vehemently that, in honor’s view, there is no essential difference in a case like this, between a glorious death and the triumph of a victory, and that the most disastrous of the two is infinitely preferable to an age without a name, yet, our life on it, it will prove that your friend of the weak nerve, and of the nonchivalrous temperament, is not to be talked, by the most persuasive, into any relish for cold steel, or into any decided fancy for the reception into himself of certain intrusive pellets of hot lead. Nay, Ciceronian eloquence would be wasted in the endeavor to induce him to come to the conclusion that it is much better for him to be extended face upward on the ensanguined plain, after the fashion of the “grinning honor” of Sir Walter Blount, than to find himself sound in body, but without a single sprig of laurel to his name, snugly enfolded in the blankets awaiting a call to breakfast. Nature, you will observe, has denied to him the perception of the romantic and the poetical. He has no desire to be posthumous to his own reputation. To such a one, the hard knock is simply a hard knock, unmitigated by transcendental embellishment; and renown has no part in the plain arithmetic of his calculations. He values life by its admeasurements—according to the number and length of its days. So give it up at once—there is no sun—of Austerlitz or of any other place—that can ripen this man into a warrior, or tempt him to enter into fierce competition for the wreath of glory. And thus—musically—we find that people “without an ear,” do not often take the lead in operatic performances; or, if they do participate, that the operatic performances are not particularly benefitted by their interference. The querulous and fretful—do they acquire the resources of patient fortitude? Not often, so far as our experience extends; and we do not know that the simpleton, school him ever so much, is likely to obtain distinction for himself as a philosopher—nay, he is often furthest from it at the very moment when he imagines himself a great deal wiser than his neighbors.