posing their lives, and they have the peculiar distinction of being always in active service. Examples: Lord Collingwood. General reasoning, however, upon the morality of fighting men is less impressive than exemplification by living instances. Those who doubt whether the highest and purest morality is possible where the hand is for ever on the sword, should study the life of Lord Collingwood'. No heart was ever more full of soft affections, or more exquisitely fitted for the enjoyment of domestic happiness. He had a wife and daughters, to whom he was devotedly attached; but only a few short months out of many years were all that were allowed him for personal intercourse with those objects of his love. He lived upon the sea, constantly intent upon his work, and upon the welfare of all who aided him in doing it, from the captain of his flag-ship down to the meanest cabin-boy. He sought no personal honour or promotion. He did not know the feeling of jealousy. He rejoiced in the triumphs of Nelson as if they were his own. His life was governed by the idea of duty. It was spent and sacrificed in the defence of England. Nothing can be more touching than the image presented of him during his long monotonous watches of the French ports; often walking the quarterdeck night after night, while he sent his over-wearied lieutenant to take some rest-sometimes himself snatching a brief and hurried sleep upon a gun, then starting up and sweeping the horizon with his night-glass, lest the enemy should escape in the dark; then suffering the thoughts to wander off for a moment to that distant Northumbrian home, where the chair had been so long vacant, and where hope, sickened with disappointment and waiting, had almost become 1 "Memoirs and Correspondence of Lord Collingwood," by G. L. N. Collingwood, Esq. Of this publication Southey said most truly, that it was "a national good," and that "it ought to be in every officer's cabin and in every stateman's cabinet." despair. And so the years wore on, and infirmities grew upon him, though he was not old. He begged the Admiralty to release him; but the request could not be granted-England could not spare him. He began to feel worn out. He was weak and tottering on his legs. The confinement to the ship was evidently killing him, and his friends urged him to surrender his command. But until the higher authorities relieved him he would not quit his post. He said that "his life was his country's in whatever way it might be required of him." She required it, and she had it. After much suffering he gradually sank, and died in the Mediterranean. And so ended that pure and beautiful life, the last thoughts being divided between family and country, and all constantly combined, as his biographer tells us, "with calmness and perfect resignation to the will of God." It may be said, perhaps, that Collingwood was an exception one of the more educated and favoured class-and that such a case proves nothing as to the moral influence of naval or military discipline. Unquestionably he was one of Nature's favourites. The visits of the celestials are few and far between, and, like Æneas, we rarely recognise them until the radiant feet have passed away from the earth; but we may turn to a class which is not supposed by any to be peculiarly favoured. It has been often mentioned as a wonder, and sometimes as a reproach, that the rank and file of the British army are composed of bad materials. The notion is, of course, an error, because good soldiers cannot be made out of bad materials. But it is true enough that recruits are constantly drawn from a class which is exposed to numerous and powerful temptations. But, whatever be the immorality of that class, the discipline of the army does much to raise its members in the scale of humanity. A proof will occur to the recollection of every one, from the circumstances connected with the shipwreck of the Birkenhead. Who can forget that memorable scene, and, amidst all its touching details, that pre-eminent fact of the perfect order and obedience of the troops up to the very moment at which the ship went to pieces? That wild impulse to selfpreservation which so often breaks through the strongest restraints, was there completely subdued. The law of discipline was sacredly observed to the last; and when the duties which were commanded could no longer be performed, those brave and faithful men went down, in calmness and silence, to inevitable death. |