confirm this view of what occurred on it:  the heavy loss of the Scotch, the small loss of the English, and the all but total destruction of the Royal army.  That Cromwell should make the most of his victory, of the “crowning mercy,” as he hoped it might prove, was natural enough.  Nothing is more common than for the victor to sound the praises of the vanquished, that being a delicate form of self-praise.  If they were so clever and so brave, how much greater must have been the cleverness and bravery of the man who conquered them?  The difficulty is in inducing the vanquished to praise the victor.  We have no doubt that General Beauregard speaks very handsomely of General McDowell; but how speaks General McDowell of General Beauregard?  Wellington often spoke well of Napoleon’s conduct in the campaign of 1815; but among the bitterest things ever said by one great man of another great man are Napoleon’s criticisms on the conduct of Wellington in that campaign.  We are not to suppose that Wellington was a more magnanimous person than Napoleon, which he assuredly was not; but he was praising himself, after an allowable fashion, when he praised Napoleon.  There would have been a complete change of words in the mouths of the two men, had the result of Waterloo been, as it should have been, favorable to the French.  Napoleon said that he never saw the Prussians behave well but at Jena, where he broke the army of the Great Frederick to pieces.  He had not a word to say in praise of the Prussians who fought at the Katzbach, at Dennewitz, and at Waterloo.  Human nature is a very small thing even in very great men.

As we see that the Roundheads triumphed in England, notwithstanding the panics from which their armies suffered, subduing the descendants of the conquering chivalry of Normandy, “to whom victory and triumph were traditional, habitual, hereditary things,” may we not hope that the American descendants and successors of the Roundheads will be able to subdue the descendants of the conquered chivalry of the South, a chivalry that has as many parents as had the Romans who proceeded from the loins of the “robbers and reivers” who had been assembled, as per proclamation, at the Rogues’ Asylum on the Palatine Hill?  The bravery of the Southern troops is not to be questioned, and it never has been questioned by sensible men; but their pretensions to Cavalier descent are at the head of the long list of historical false pretences, and tend to destroy all confidence in their words.  They may be aristocrats, but they have not the shadow of a claim to aristocratical origin.

Lord Macaulay’s brilliant account of the Battle of Landen (July 19, 1693) establishes the fact, that it is possible for an army of veterans, led by some of the best officers of their time, to become panic-stricken while defending intrenchments and a strong position.  “A little after four in the afternoon,” he says, “the whole line gave way.”  “Amidst the rout and uproar, while arms and