Page:Once a Week Jul - Dec 1859.pdf/21

10 owing to our superior physical organisation, just as our heavy cavalry rode down the French cuirassiers at Waterloo. There is little doubt that a regiment of our grenadiers going into battle armed only with cricket bats would effectually bruise their antagonists, just as they would beat French small swords at “quarter-staff,” the wooden representative of our ancient two-handed sword. While we regard a gun more as a pike than a projector, we shall not get the best result. In a charge of pikes or bayonets it is quite obvious that if one side can wield a pike three feet longer than the other, that side must destroy its opponents; and precisely in this way should English arms be brought into play, guided by English muscles. The bayonet derives its origin from the musqueteers forming pikes of their guns by sticking their daggers into the muzzles; but a bayonet on a rifle deflects the ball in spite of all care, and a thin barrel loses its true form very commonly after being converted into a pike. It is quite clear that long range is henceforth to play a great part in our battles, and that long range is incompatible with a pike weapon. Then to solve this problem is the great question of the day, and so to solve it that our physical strength shall maintain its natural advantage; that we shall not merely make an improvement that may instantly be imitated by our neighbours, but such an improvement as we may ourselves use to the greatest advantage. As our space is limited, we shall return to the question in a future Number. 2em

the willows; in the trampled maize;

Midst up-torn vines, and shatter’d mulberry rows;

In rice-fields, corn-fields, dykes by dusty ways,

And cottage-crofts, where the gold gourd-flower blows,—

Swathes of Death’s scythe, wielded for two long days—

The dead lie thick and still: foes all at peace with foes.

So many nameless dead! no meed of glory

For all this blood, so freely pour’d, is theirs;

Yet each life here link’d many in its story

Of hopes and loves and hates, of joys and cares.

Of these unhonour’d sleepers, grim and gory,

Who knows, out of the world how much each with him bears?

These were all sons or sires; husbands or brothers;

Bread-winners, most of them, for homes afar.

This a sick father’s stay; that a blind mother’s;

For him in Paris, ’neath the evening star,

A loving heart its care in labour smothers,

Till taught by arms of price, how far they strike—how far!

Cry! let the poor soul wrestle with the woe

Of that bereavement. Who takes thought of her?

Through the illumined streets the triumphs go;

Under her window waving banners stir,

And shouting crowds to Notre Dame that flow.

Hide, mourner, hide the tears which might such triumphs blur!