Desportes and Bertaut are relics of that time. Historical and
revolutionary songs abound in all countries; but even the
"Marseillaise," the gay, ferocious "Carmagnole," and the "Ca Ira,"
which somebody wrote upon a drum-head in the Champ de Mars, do not
belong to fighting-poetry. The actual business of following into the
field the men who represent the tendencies of any time, and of helping
to get through with the unavoidable fighting-jobs which they organize,
seems to inspire the same rhetoric in every age, and to reproduce the
same set of conventional war-images. The range of feeling is narrow;
the enthusiasm for great generals is expressed in pompous commonplaces;
even the dramatic circumstances of a campaign full of the movement and
suffering of great masses of men, in bivouac, upon the march, in the
gloomy and perilous defile, during a retreat, and in the hours when
wavering victory suddenly turns and lets her hot lips be kissed, are
scarcely seen, or feebly hinted at. The horizon of the battle-field
itself is limited, and it is impossible to obtain a total impression
of the picturesque and terrible fact. After the smoke has rolled away,
the historian finds a position whence the scenes deliberately reveal to
him all their connection, and reenact their passion. He is the real
poet of these solemn passages in the life of man. [1]

[Footnote 1: There is a little volume, called _Voices from the
Ranks_, in which numerous letters written by privates, corporals,
etc., in the Crimea, are collected and arranged. They are full of
incident and pathos. Suffering, daring, and humor, the love of home,
and the religious dependence of men capable of telling their own Iliad,
make this a very powerful book. In modern times the best literature of
a campaign will be found in private letters. We have some from Magenta
and Solferino, written by Frenchmen; the character stands very clear in
them. And here is one written by an English lad, who is describing a