BOOK SEVENTH.


INITIAL CHAPTER.

MR. CAXTON UPON COURAGE AND PATIENCE.

"What is courage?" said my uncle Roland, rousing himself from a revery
into which he had fallen, after the Sixth Book in this history had been
read to our family circle.

"What is courage?" he repeated more earnestly. "Is it insensibility to
fear? That may be the mere accident of constitution; and if so, there is
no more merit in being courageous than in being this table."

"I am very glad to hear you speak thus," observed Mr. Caxton, "for I
should not like to consider myself a coward; yet I am very sensible to
fear in all dangers, bodily and moral."

"La, Austin, how can you say so?" cried my mother, firing up; "was it not
only last week that you faced the great bull that was rushing after
Blanche and the children?"

Blanche at that recollection stole to my father's chair, and, hanging
over his shoulder, kissed his forehead.

MR. CAXTON (sublimely unmoved by these flatteries).--"I don't deny that I
faced the bull, but I assert that I was horribly frightened."

ROLAND.--"The sense of honour which conquers fear is the true courage of