To Me The
Soldiers Seemed To Be Innumerable, Hanging Like Locusts Over The
Whole Country - A Swarm Desolating Everything Around Them.
Those
pomps and circumstances are not glorious in my eyes.
They affect me
with a melancholy which I cannot avoid. Soldiers gathered together
in a camp are uncouth and ugly when they are idle; and when they are
at work their work is worse than idleness. When I have seen a
thousand men together, moving their feet hither at one sound and
thither at another, throwing their muskets about awkwardly, prodding
at the air with their bayonets, trotting twenty paces here and
backing ten paces there, wheeling round in uneven lines, and
looking, as they did so, miserably conscious of the absurdity of
their own performances, I have always been inclined to think how
little the world can have advanced in civilization, while grown-up
men are still forced to spend their days in such grotesque
performances. Those to whom the "pomps and circumstances" are dear -
nay, those by whom they are considered simply necessary - will be
able to confute me by a thousand arguments. I readily own myself
confuted. There must be soldiers, and soldiers must be taught. But
not the less pitiful is it to see men of thirty undergoing the
goose-step, and tortured by orders as to the proper mode of handling
a long instrument which is half gun and half spear. In the days of
Hector and Ajax, the thing was done in a more picturesque manner;
and the songs of battle should, I think, be confined to those ages.
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