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 322 Southern Historical Society Papers.

only because it represents a power built on the waves, but also because of the hard finish of the men." She is mistress of the seas; she is the dictator of finance and commerce there is the key of her ascendancy. Who, then, would you say next ?

Would you say Clive, the military statesman who conquered Hin- doostan ? He, who at the battle of Plassey, on the 23d of June, 1757, in Everett's fine words, "laid the foundations of a subject Empire to Great Britain at the gates of the morning? " When it is remembered that he dispersed the army of the Indian Nabob, estimated at sixty or seventy thousand, with a thousand European soldiers and two. thousand Indian Sepoy troops, and that his training was that of a government clerk, his genius and accomplishments are plain indeed. But when we reflect that his loss was twenty-two killed and about fifty wounded, and that his superior artillery broke the masses of the effeminate foe, we see how ridiculous it is to com- pare such exploits to the great movements of the Confederate war, and how ridiculous it would be to rank their heroes as military com- manders with the leaders of such armies as those of Lee, Grant, Early, or Sheridan. What matters it to the wolves how many the sheep be ? And how can a romp of the wolves among the cattle be compared to the combats of lions? Would you say Havelock ? Christian gentleman, gallant officer, true hero, I admit, but only a little Clive, a brigadier general who fought the same manner of men and overlaid them with superiority of every kind. Would you say Charles George Gordon, Chinese Gordon, as they call him, who was only a captain of engineers in the Crimean War, and who, while we were fighting in the Confederacy, was helping the Emperor of China to suppress the Taiping rebellion, and who was finally killed in the Soudan by a handful of Arabs? Brave man he was, indeed; but he never commanded even an English brigade. To compare his skir- mishes with the semi-barbarians to such actions as we had in war, or him to any great Confederate leader, would be to belittle aye, to abandon all ideas of military criticism.

Who would say Lord Raglan, who commanded in the Crimea ? He died of disease after incomplete experiences, and cannot furnish a subject of comparison.

LATE ENGLISH MILITARY MAGNATES

Let us glance at some late English military magnates, General James Thomas Brudenal, Earl of Cardigan, who led the Light Bri-