It may be said that a certain degree of timidity is necessary in every balanced character in order to ensure reflection, for natural courage, unaided by sensitiveness, would render it rash. But the Mexican soldier seems to be guided by a different system, and to be brave without either prudence or enduring discipline. He is trained in manoeuvres; and, believing that when he masters his manual he is equal to all military emergencies, he supposes that a battle is little more than a parade. As Mexican troops are rather political engines, designed for the domestic police of cities, than for actual service in the field, the soldier is more of a plaything than a tool or weapon. Vague, ideal notions of Roman patriotism, are infused into his mind by the demagogues of the army in bombastic proclamations, and he imagines it better to perish than surrender to his foe. But this murderous doctrine of "revenge or death" serves rather to animate him _before_ battle than to carry him steadily through its perils. He has the ability to perceive the beauty of abstract virtue, but lacks the sustained energy, the profound endurance, to realize it. He rushes onward without deliberation, or regard of consequences. An international war is, in his estimation, a personal not a political quarrel. A brutal ferocity marks every headlong movement, and deprives him of the control of reason. Besides this, _life_, has not the same value to a Mexican as to an American warrior, for the objects and hopes of their lives are incapable of comparison. One lives for practical liberty and progress, the other's existence is a mere strife for bread under military despotism. A Mahomedan fatalism--derived, perhaps, from his Moorish kindred--tinges the nature of a Mexican, and the impulsive blood of a tropical climate subjects him almost exclusively to his instincts. Hence Spanish wars have been long and sanguinary butcheries, while their civil dissensions are the feted ferment of corruption.