Loose Sketches; Y W.M. Thackeray; With a Frontispiece by John Leech

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1894 edition. Excerpt: ...but a war-song, breathing blood and vengeance, is a bad subject for everyday enthusiasm; and one_had better, perhaps, for a continuance, recreate oneself with some more peaceful musical diet. Even the fit of war is bad enough; but war every day, murder and blood on week-days as well as on Sundays---Entendez 1/our dam nos campagnes mugir ces feroces soldats?---eAg0rger vos fils, wos compagnes--I forget how the song runs. Mon Dieu! the ferocious soldiery is not in the country; French women and children are perfectly safe from Cossack or Prussian; the story is now fifty years old, and still Frenchmen lash themselves in a fury of conceit and blood-thirstiness whenever they hear it, and fancy their brutality patriotism. Napoleon established a. Valhalla idea of a Frenchman's paradise--it was conquest and murder all day. Just before this bloody chorus was set up, the King showed himself at the balcony of the palace, and was received, it is said, with a dead silence;--then he went out and fetched the little boy who had just been christened, but the audience received him, too, coldly, and so the royal pair went back again, and gave place to the more popular concert. To such as are inclined to moralize, is there not here matter enough? Think of this old man and his condition. He is the wisest, the greatest--the most miserable man in Europe. His bounty makes thousands happy, --it shines on all, like the sun; but the sun, they say, is cold itself, and in the midst of its splendours, lonely. Think of this man, how prudent and wise he is; through what dangers and crooked paths he has managed to conduct the fiercest, most obstinate team that ever was reined by imperial hand. Napoleon let them run ahead at mad gallop--this man has been keeping...