But there is a Nemesis at every man’s shoulder, and if Falstaff was cavalierly careless enough to run up a score at the Boar’s Head, and to accept even a present of Holland shirts, which he ungratefully designates as “filthy dowlas,” the way in which he was _dunned_ must have been harsh to the feelings of a knight and a gentleman. In reviewing his gallantries and his extravagances, we must not, in justice to him, forget that he was a bachelor. If he degraded himself, he inflicted misery on no Lady Falstaff at home. Heroes have been buried, with whole nations for mourners, whose offences in this worse respect have been forgotten. Not that I would apologise for the knight’s familiarity with either the Hostess or that remarkably nice young lady, Miss Dorothea Tearsheet. I do not know what the private life of that Lord Chief Justice may have been who was so very merciless in his censure upon the knight; but I do know that there have been luminaries as brilliant who have hidden their lights in very noisome places and who had not Falstaff’s excuse. I am as little embarrassed touching Sir John’s character as a soldier, as I am about his morals. I do not indeed like to hear him acknowledge that he has “misused the King’s press most damnably,” or that he has pocketed “three hundred and odd pounds” by illegally releasing a hundred and fifty men. But at this very day practices much worse than this are of constant observance in the Russian service, where officers and officials, whose high-sounding names “exeunt in off,” rob the Czar daily, and are decorated with the Order of St. Catherine. In the field, I maintain that Falstaff is a hero. As for his catechism on honor, so far from detracting from his reputation, it seems to me to place him on an equality with that modern English hero who said that his body trembled at the thought of the perils into which his spirited soul was about to plunge him. Falstaff did not _court_ death. “God keep lead out of me,” is his reasonable remark; “I need no more weight than mine own bowels!” But the man who makes this prayer and comment was not afraid to encounter death. “_I have led_ my ragamuffins where they are peppered.” He went then at their head. That there was hot work in front of him is proved by what follows. “There’s but three of my hundred and fifty left alive; and they are for the town’s end, to beg during life!” A hundred and forty-seven men killed out of a hundred and fifty-one; of the four who survived, three are illustriously mutilated; while the bold soul who led them on is alone unscathed! Why, it reminds us of Windham and the Redan. It is Thermopylæ, with Leonidas surviving to tell his own story.