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86 Homeric picture. The husband was not thinking of his wife's beauty. He "caresses her with his hand," and tries to cheer her with the thought that no hero dies until his work is done.

The tender yet half-contemptuous tone in which the iron soldier relegates the woman to her own inferior cares, is true to the spirit of every age in which war is the main business of man's life. Something in the same tone is the charming scene between Hotspur and his lady in Shakspeare's 'Henry IV.'