only whether it is the worthiest field for their display, but whether it is not also the principal nursing-bed of the crimes that are the greatest disgrace to our nature. It is idle to think that our humanity will fail to take its colouring from our calling. Marshal Montluc, the bravest yet most cruel of French soldiers, was fond of protesting that the inhumanity he was guilty of was in corruption of his original and better nature; and at the close of his book and of his life, he consoled himself for the blood he had caused to flow like water by the consideration, that the sovereigns whose servant he had been were (as he told one of them) really responsible for the misery he had caused. But does the excuse avail him, or the millions who have succeeded to his trade? A king or a government can commission men to execute its policy or its vengeance; but is a free agent, who accepts a commission that he believes to be iniquitous, morally acquitted of his share of culpability? Is his responsibility no greater than that of the sword, the axe, or the halter with which he carries out his orders; or does the plea of military discipline justify him in acting with no more moral restraint than a slave, or than a horse that has no understanding? The Prussian officer who at Dijon blew out his brains rather than execute some iniquitous order[162] showed that he understood the dignity of human nature as it was understood in the days of the bygone moral grandeur of Rome. Such a man deserved a monument far more than most to whom memorial monuments are raised.