town-fulls, where hamlets or villages blaze throughout whole districts or
are sunk beneath the ocean--scenes of rage, hatred, vengeance, self-
sacrifice, patriotism, where all the virtues and vices of which humanity
is capable stride to and fro in their most violent colours and most
colossal shape where man in a moment rises almost to divinity, or sinks
beneath the beasts of the field--such tragical records of which the
sanguinary story of mankind is full--and no portion of them more so than
the Netherland chronicles appeal more vividly to the imagination than the
neatest solution of mathematical problems. Yet, if it be the legitimate
end of military science to accomplish its largest purposes at the least
expense of human suffering; if it be progress in civilisation to acquire
by scientific combination what might be otherwise attempted, and perhaps
vainly attempted, by infinite carnage, then is the professor with his
diagrams, standing unmoved amid danger, a more truly heroic image than
Coeur-de-Lion with his battle-axe or Alva with his truncheon.

The system--then a new one--which Maurice introduced to sustain that
little commonwealth from sinking of which he had become at the age of
seventeen the predestined chief, was the best under the circumstances
that could have been devised. Patriotism the most passionate, the most
sublime, had created the republic. To maintain its existence against
perpetual menace required the exertion of perpetual skill.

Passionless as algebra, the genius of Maurice was ready for the task.
Strategic points of immense value, important cities and fortresses, vital
river-courses and communications--which foreign tyranny had acquired
during the tragic past with a patient iniquity almost without a parallel,
and which patriotism had for years vainly struggled to recover--were the
earliest trophies and prizes of his art. But the details of his
victories may be briefly indicated, for they have none of the