That sound the first amid the festival, And caught its tone with death's prophetic ear: And when they smiled, because he deemed it near, His heart more truly knew that peal too well, Which stretched his father on a bloody bier, And roused the vengeance blood alone could quell He rushed into the field, and, foremost fighting, fell! Ah! then and there was hurrying to and fro, And there was mounting in hot haste: the steed, While thronged the citizens, with terror dumb, Or whispering, with white lips, "The foe! they come! they come!" Last noon beheld them full of lusty life; Last eve, in beauty's circle, proudly gay; Battle's magnificently stern array! The thunder-clouds close o'er it, which, when rent, The earth is covered thick with other clay, Which her own clay shall cover, heaped and pent, Rider and horse, friend, foe, in one red burial blent. BYRON. CXXI.-LOVE IS POWER. AR-BI-TRA'TION, n., SUB-TRACTION, n., from the rest. AC-COU'TER-MENTS PER ANNUM (Latin), by the year. the taking of a part | BEL-LIG'ER-ENT (-lij-), a., war-mak or ing. AC-COU'TRE-PEC-U-LA'TION, n., theft of public money. MENTS (-koo'ter-), n. pl., equipage. MAR-TEL'LO TOWER, n., a vaulted EN-GEN'DER (-jen-), v. t., to produce. round tower for coast defense. | Ex'I-GEN-CY, n., pressing necessity. The h in humble ought to be sounded. Give er in ex'er-cise, gov'ern-ments, &c., its true sound, as in her, without stress. 1. WAR may be defined as a people's expedient for way accomplishing a purpose by violence. It is expressly so; and all the ingenuity in the world would fail to make it out as any thing else. What a strange ideä! A man who would seek to assert a right, or even to defend himself from wrong, by violence, - that is, by taking arms, and wounding or killing those opposed to him, would be regarded as an intolerable barbarian. The laws of his country would hold him as guilty of a capital offense, and he would suffer the severest penalty they were empowered to inflict. 2. But when a collection of men, forming what is called a nation, have a right to be asserted, or a wrong to be redressed, or perhaps only an opinion to be advanced, it is thought quite fair and reasonable that they should use these violent and murderous means. What is forbidden to individuals in every state above the most savage, and hardly tolerated even there, is freely granted to civilized nations, which, accordingly, are every now and then seen falling into bloody fights about matters which, with private men, would be settled by a friendly arbitration, or, at most, a decision in a law court. 3. Some of the evils of war are so manifest as to need only to be mentioned. Such-is the destruction of life which it occasions, always followed, of course, by misery to many survivors. Such is the devastation it often introduces into a country which is its seat. The injury it does, by misapplying the national energies and funds, is less apt to be understood. Yet this is one of its greatest evils. War destroys-it never creates or produces. All it does is in the way of subtraction-nothing in the way of addition. 4. The men who become soldiers are kept from useful employment; the money spent in their pay, accouterments, and all the appurtenances of war, is laid out on what makes no return, and is gone forever as truly as if it had been thrown into the sea. The persons, indeed, who furnish the articles required for war, have lived upon the profits of their work; but their work has been unserviceable, whereas it might have been otherwise. Their talents and labor have all been misdirected. Thus, in every point of view, the money spent in war is misspent. 5. War not only takes largely of our existing means, besides anticipating the future, but it paralyzes and blights the powers by which means are acquired. The commerce of a country is usually much deranged by war, in consequence of the shutting up of certain markets, and the danger incurred in reaching others. Manufacturers are consequently thrown idle. All this descends in incalculable miseries upon the humbler classes. 6. But perhaps the most fatal effect of war is the lowering of the moral tone of the people. It sets all their sympathies into wrong directions, and introduces a new set of objects to public notice. Idle parade and gewgaws take the place of solidly-useful matters; men worship what destroys; merit is estimated, not by the extent of good that a man does, but by his power of inflicting evil. The modest benefactors of their race are overlooked; while praise is heaped upon him who has shown an unusual amount of perhaps merely animal courage, or, at best, exercised ingenuity in inflicting suffering upon his fellow-creatures. 7. In the progress of such a dispute with another nation the selfish feelings are called into powerful play. We wish for victory, and seek to obtain it, without the least regard to the merits of the case. "Our own country and cause, right or wrong," is practically the maxim of all belligerent parties. This selfishness and injustice diffuse themselves into the administration of the government, and even into private affairs; so that corruption, peculation and fraud, abound on all hands. In such a state of things all that conduces to moral progress is sensibly checked; and it may be said that, for every year spent in war, we would require five to do away with its bad effects, and enable us to start at the point where we formerly were. 8. It is not wonderful that war should be so ruinous; for men are so constituted as to be benefited only by mutual kindness and a firm union, and not by doing each other harm. It is a great mistake to suppose even that we can be benefited, in the long run, by only consulting our own interests. A much greater mistake is to suppose that we can, as a rule, derive good from what does harm to our neighbors. All our highest gratifications are found in the efforts we make to give happiness to others. A nation, therefore, on the outlook for happiness to itself, ought to promote the benefit of its neighbors; it should seek to form friendly relations with them; to produce an interchange of benefits by commerce and other means; to do them, in short, all the good in its power. 9. But now a policy of suspicion, attended with immense expense, is established among states. France keeps up an army and navy, lest Britain should some day fall upon her. Britain does the same, dreading some outbreak on the part of France. Forts are raised beside harbors, to protect shipping from these imaginary hostilities. Half the men who are at the prime of life are obliged to go into discipline as soldiers, for a month per annum, that they may be ready to repel any assault from their neighbors, who are drilling under the same terror for them. 10. Thus money is misexpended, and human labor misapplied, to an enormous amount, from a mere sentiment of jealousy, -a fear which actually engenders its own assailants. How strange that no people have ever yet been found capable of the gallantry of saying to a neighbor, "We arm not, for we mean no harm, and wish to apprehend none. Here we offer you love, instead of hostility. You are too magnanimous, in such circumstances, to refuse the one or offer the other"! No nation, civilized to the degree of those in western Europe, could withstand this. There is no nation-but would, like Orlando, blush and hide its sword. 11. There is nothing Quixotic in this doctrine. It proceeds upon the most familiar principles in human nature, namely, that an honest good-will generates the same in the bosoms to which it is addressed. Would governments but try the relaxation of an im' port duty, instead of the putting a war-vessel into commission; would they but hold out a friendly hand in any case of exigency, such as occurred when Hamburgh was burnt, instead of raising up jealous forts and martello towers, they would find how much better it is to do good than to threaten or inflict evil, and how truly LOVE IS POWER. CHAMBERS. |