Page:Poems of Nature and Life.djvu/189

 THE RANDALL FAMILY l8l

few that at this moment stand like his so isolated in my imagination as possessing the materials of character (I speak of combinations, not of special talents). The army- will never know what it has lost ; a few retired persons will know what they have lost, and I almost wish that I myself could not say that I know.

In such a death as this, I naturally recur to an old remark in which I justify no war except one of self- defence against invasions. Even a just war is the brutal- izer of a nation, and the greatest of curses. I know 'twas hard to avoid it ; but time will, as I think, show more and more the pity that it ever took place. For my own part, I would rather separate from my enemy than enter into partnership with him. This war will be but as that battle which came of an error, in the ballad of King Arthur's death, where —

" An addere creppit from a bush, Stung one of the King's men in the knee," etc.

and went on with —

" On one side there were left but three."

The very means taken to end it seem like blowing a great conflagration with a bellows. Even when all the fighting is over, words must settle the question. If we are to hold the rebels in subjection, they will prove, as I think, the costliest of elephants. The cowards, the knaves, and the makers of shoddy will survive, and the whole ornament of this generation will have perished — nay, has mainly already perished. Finally, it renders indeterminate the relations between the West and the East, which may at some future day produce more seces- sion. Who supposes that the Union or anything else in

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