England, which is fortunate in so many things, is fortunate in her well-fed mercenaries, who suggest none of the dismal reflections provoked by the great foreign armies. It is true, of course, that they fail to suggest some of the inspiring ones. If Germany and France are burdened, at least they are defended--at least they are armed for conflict and victory. There seems to be a good deal of doubt as to how far this is true of the nation which has hitherto been known as the pre-eminently pugnacious one. Where France and Germany and Russia count by hundreds, England counts by tens; and it is only, strictly speaking, on the good old principle that one Englishman can buffet a dozen foreigners that a very hopeful view of an Anglo-continental collision can be maintained. This good old principle is far from having gone out of fashion: you may hear it proclaimed to an inspiring tune any night in the week in the London music-halls. One summer evening, in the country, an English gentleman was telling me about his little boy, a rosy, sturdy, manly child whom I had already admired, and whom he depicted as an infant Hercules. The surrounding influences at the moment were picturesque. An ancient lamp was suspended from the ceiling of the hall; the large door stood open upon a terrace; and outside the big, dense treetops were faintly stirring in the starlight. My companion dilated upon the pluck and muscle, the latent pugnacity, of his dear little son, and told me how bravely already he doubled his infant fist. There was a kind of Homeric simplicity about it. From this he proceeded to wider considerations, and observed that the English child was of necessity the bravest and sturdiest in the world, for the plain reason that he was the germ of the English man. What the English man was we of course both knew, but, as I was a stranger, my friend explained the matter in detail. He was a person whom, in the ordinary course of human irritation, every one else was afraid of. Nowhere but in England were such men made--men who could hit out as soon as think, and knock over persons of inferior race as you would brush away flies. They were afraid of nothing: the sentiment of hesitation to inflict a blow under rigidly proper circumstances was unknown to them. English soldiers and sailors in a row carried everything before them: foreigners didn't know what to make of such fellows, and were afraid to touch them. A couple of Englishmen were a match for a foreign mob. My friend's little boy was made like a statue: his little arms and legs were quite of the right sort. This was the greatness of England, and of this there was an infinite supply. The light, as I say, was dim in the great hall, and the rustle of the oaks in the park was almost audible. Their murmur seemed to offer a sympathetic undertone to the honest conversation of my companion, and I sat there as humble a ministrant to the simple and beautiful idea of British valor as the occasion could require. I made the reflection--by which I must justify my anecdote--that the ancient tradition as to the personal fighting-value of the individual Englishman flourishes in high as well as in low life, and forms a common ground of contact between them; with the simple difference that at the music-halls it is more poetically expressed than in the country-houses.