The armies can't have got to Jerusalem; hey! Atwood ?" "I rather think, Sir Gervaise," the secretary coolly remarked, "that Sir Wycherly Wychecombe refers to the battle that took place last spring--it was fought at Font-something; and a font certainly has something to do with Christian baptism." "That's it--that's it," cried Sir Wycherly, with some eagerness; "Fontenoi was the name of the place, where the Duke would have carried all before him, and brought Marshal Saxe, and all his frog-eaters prisoners to England, had our Dutch and German allies behaved better than they did.

So it is with poor old England, gentlemen; whatever _she_ gains, her allies always _lose_ for her--the Germans, or the colonists, are constantly getting us into trouble!" Both Sir Gervaise and his friend were practical men, and well knew that they never fought the Dutch or the French, without meeting with something that was pretty nearly their match.

They had no faith in general national superiority.

The courts-martial that so often succeeded general actions, had taught them that there were all degrees of spirit, as well as all degrees of a want of spirit; and they knew too much, to be the dupes of flourishes of the pen, or of vapid declamation at dinner-speeches, and in the House of Commons.

Men, well led and commanded, they had ascertained by experience, were worth twice as much as the same men when ill led and ill commanded; and they were not to be told that the moral tone of an army or a fleet, from which all its success was derived, depended more on the conventional feeling that had been got up through moral agencies, than on birth-place, origin, or colour.