This is the courage of heroic races, as Highlanders, Circassians, Montenegrins, Afghans, and those Arabs among whom Urquhart finely said that peace could not be purchased by victory.  Where destined to appear at all, it is likely to be developed in extreme youth, which explains such instances as the gamins de Paris, and that of Sir Cloudesley Shovel, who in boyhood conveyed a dispatch during a naval engagement, swimming through double lines of fire.  Indeed, among heroic races, young soldiers are preferable for daring; such, at least, is the testimony of the highest authorities, as Ney and Wellington.  “I have found,” said the Duke, “that raw troops, however inferior to the old ones in manoeuvring, may be superior to them in downright hard fighting with the enemy.  At Waterloo, the young ensigns and lieutenants, who had never before seen an enemy, rushed to meet death, as if they were playing at cricket.”

But though youth is good for an onset, it needs habit and discipline to give steadiness.  A boy will risk his life where a veteran will be too circumspect to follow him; but to perform a difficult manoeuvre in face of an enemy requires Sicinius with forty-five scars on his breast.  “The very apprehension of a wound,” said Seneca, “startles a man when he first bears arms; but an old soldier bleeds boldly, for he knows that a man may lose blood and yet win the day.”  Before the battle of Preston Pans, Mr. Ker of Graden, “an experienced officer,” mounted on a gray pony, coolly reconnoitred all the difficult ground between the two armies, crossed it in several directions, deliberately alighted more than once to lead his horse through gaps made for that purpose in the stone walls,—­under a constant shower of musket-balls.  He finally returned unhurt to Charles Edward, and dissuaded him from crossing.  Undoubtedly, any raw Highlander in the army would have incurred the same risk, with or without a sufficient object; but not one of them would have brought back so clear a report, —­if, indeed, he had brought himself back.

The most common evidence of this dependence of many persons’ courage on habit is in the comparative timidity of brave men against novel dangers,—­as of sailors on horseback, and mountaineers at sea.  Nay, the same effect is sometimes produced merely by different forms of danger within the same sphere.  Sea-captains often attach an exaggerated sense of peril to small boats; Conde confessed himself a coward in a street-fight; and William the Conqueror is said to have trembled exceedingly (rehementer tremens) during the disturbance which interrupted his coronation.  It was probably from the same cause, that Mrs. Inchbald, the most fearless of actresses, was once entirely overcome by timidity on assuming a character in a masquerade.