which perhaps had never before been seen among the troops of a highly civilized people. Savages could scarcely have been more quick-sighted in discovering a pass, detecting an ambush, or descrying a distant enemy. And the attachment between horse and rider became such, that if a trooper waking from sleep saw by the condition of his beast that in a fit of drunkenness he had over-ridden or any ways abused it, he would in the first emotions of self-reproach abjure wine and shed tears, with imprecations upon himself, go on foot whenever he could to spare the horse, and give him the bread which should have been his own portion. And yet this humanizing feeling did not render them more humane toward their enemies. Since the religious wars in France no contest had been carried on with so ferocious a spirit on both sides. That cruelty which in the middle ages was common to all nations had been continued among the Spaniards by the effects of the Inquisition, and by their bull-fights, ... among the French by the inhuman character of their old laws, and afterwards by the Revolution; on both sides it was called into full action, retaliation provoking retaliation, and revenge. Even the cheerfulness of the French, which is their peculiar and happy characteristic, which if not a virtue itself, is connected with many virtues, and without which no virtue can have its proper grace, ... even that quality was corrupted by the dreadful warfare in which they were engaged. Light minds go beyond the point of fortitude in that disregard of death which the continual presence of danger necessarily induces. That which the wise and good regard with silent composure is to them a theme for bravados and heart-hardening mockery. It became common ♦ROCCA, 84, 87.♦ for the French, when they recognised a comrade among the slain, to notice him not by any expression of natural feeling, but by some coarse and unfeeling jest. The evil here was to themselves alone; but their oppressions were rendered more intolerable, and their cruelties more devilish, because they were exercised mirthfully. ♦TEMPER OF THE SPANISH GENERALS IN LA MANCHA AND EXTREMADURA.♦