Page:Books and men.djvu/221

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
THE CAVALIER.
211

that they had only the vaguest notions about Sesostris, and could not have defined an hypothesis of homophones with any reasonable degree of accuracy. But they were possessed, nevertheless, of a certain information of their own, not garnered from books, and not always attainable to their critics. They knew life in its varying phases, from the delicious trifling of a polished and witty society to the stern realities of the camp and battle-field. They knew the world, women, and song, three things as pleasant and as profitable in their way as Hebrew, Euclid, and political economy. They knew how to live gracefully, to fight stoutly, and to die honorably; and how to extract from the gray routine of existence a wonderfully distinct flavor of novelty and enjoyment. There were among them, as among the Puritans, true lovers, faithful husbands, and tender fathers; and the indiscriminate charge of dissoluteness on the one side, like the indiscriminate charge of hypocrisy on the other, is a cheap expression of our individual intolerance.

The history of the Cavalier closes with Killiecrankie. The waning prestige of a once powerful influence concentrated itself in Cla-