"But such enjoyment is only that of the swine."
"Well, and is not that of the swine perfect?--and what would you have more than perfection?"
A huge herd of those creatures, basking along the miry edge of the river, helped his illustration. "Mr Marston, you have not been for the last month on the staff of the commander-in-chief of the allied armies, or you would not look so incredulous. Sir, man's senses may be as suitable for his purposes, as those of the animals which we see wallowing there." I stared, waiting for the conclusion. He proceeded. "But man has drawbacks on his natural faculties, which they have not. Possibly nature intended that we should be as happy as they. But make nine-tenths of them hewers of wood and drawers of water--send some of them to dungeons--enforce a conscription among the rest, and send them to use their tusks upon each other, and the most complacent of them would rebel: or, as the last trial of temper, put the meekest of the race into a cabinet of princes and general-officers, themselves controlled by a cabinet five hundred miles off; and if they do not growl as I do now, I shall give up all my knowledge of quadruped nature."
"Why, Guiscard, what is the matter with you to-night? Have we not gained our point? You are like the Thracians, who always mourned at the birth of a child."
"And the Thracians were perfectly right, if the child were to be reared a diplomatist. You talk of success!" Our path had led to where a view of Valenciennes opened on us through the trees; and its shattered ramparts and curtains, the trees felled along its glacis, and its bastions stripped and broken by our cannon-balls, certainly presented a rueful spectacle. The Austrian flag was flying on the citadel.
"There," said he, "is our prize. It is not worth the loading of a single gun; but it has cost us more millions to ruin than it took francs to build it--it has cost us the conquest of France; and will cost Europe the war, which we might have extinguished three months ago if we had but left it behind. I acknowledge that I speak in the bitterness of my heart; delay has ruined every thing. Our march to Paris, and our march to Georgium Sidus, will now be finished on the same day."