And as to the human point of view,--that wearing regret which almost melts the heart into a stream of woe when the calamity comes home to oneself,--the argument is nearly the same. The poor mother whose dear gallant boy has fallen in battle, as she thinks of her lad's bright eyes and curling locks, and straight young active limbs, and of all the glories of the young life which she herself gave with so many pangs,--as she remembers all this, she cannot reconcile herself to the need of war, nor unless she be a Spartan, can she teach herself to think that that dear blood has been well shed for the honour of her country. And, should he have fallen from some snowy peak, her judgment of the event will be simply the same. It will be personal regret, not judgment. It is equally impossible that she should console herself in either event by calculating that the balance of advantage to the community of which she is a member is on that side to which courage and the spirit of adventure belong.
In our personal regrets we must all think of our individual cases; but in discussing such a question as belonging to England at large, we can only regard the balance of advantage. And if we find that that spirit of enterprise which cannot have its full swing, or attain its required momentum without the fatality which will attend danger, leads to happy results,--that it makes our men active, courageous, ready in resource, prone to friendship, keen after gratifications which are in themselves good and noble; that it leads to pursuits which are in themselves lovely, and to modes of life which are worthy of admiration, then let us pay the necessary cost of such happy results without repining. That we should, all of us, have a tear of sorrow for those gallant fellows who perished on the Matterhorn is very good;--
For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime, Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer; Who would not sing for Lycidas?
But shall it be said among us that no boat is again to be put off from our shores because that one "fatal and perfidious bark" was "built in the eclipse?"
There is a fate infinitely worse than sudden death,--the fate of him who is ever fearing it. "Mors omnibus est communis." We all know it, and it is the excitement coming from that knowledge which makes life pleasant to us. When we hear of a man who is calm and collected under every danger, we know that we hear of a happy man. In hunting, in shooting, in yachting, in all adventures, in all travelling,--I had almost said in love-making itself,--the cream of the charm lies in the danger. But danger will not be danger long if none of the natural results of danger come; and the cream of such amusements would, under such safe circumstances, soon become poor and vapid as skim-milk. I would say that it is to be hoped that that accident on the Matterhorn may not repress the adventurous spirit of a single English mountain-climber, did I not feel so sure that there will be no such repression as to leave no room for hoping.