historical coincidences which contain true instruction for us.

Quite one of the chiefest art-mistakes and stupidities of men has been
their tendency to dress soldiers in red clothes, and monks, or pacific
persons, in black, white, or grey ones. At least half of that mental
bias of young people, which sustains the wickedness of war among us at
this day, is owing to the prettiness of uniforms. Make all Hussars
black, all Guards black, all troops of the line black; dress officers
and men, alike, as you would public executioners; and the number of
candidates for commissions will be greatly diminished. Habitually, on
the contrary, you dress these destructive rustics and their officers in
scarlet and gold, but give your productive rustics no costume of honour
or beauty; you give your peaceful student a costume which he tucks up
to his waist, because he is ashamed of it; and dress your pious
rectors, and your sisters of charity, in black, as if it were _their_
trade instead of the soldier's to send people to hell, and their own
destiny to arrive there.

114. But the investiture of the lily of Florence with scarlet is a
symbol,--unintentional, observe, but not the less notable,--of the
recovery of human sense and intelligence in this matter. The reign of
war was past; this was the sign of it;--the red glow, not now of the
Towers of Dis, but of the Carita, "che appena fora dentro al fuoco
nota." And a day is coming, be assured, when the kings of Europe will
dress their peaceful troops beautifully; will clothe their peasant
girls "in scarlet, with other delights," and "put on ornaments of gold
upon _their_ apparel;" when the crocus and the lily will not be the
only living things dressed daintily in our land, and the glory of the
wisest monarchs be indeed, in that their people, like themselves, shall
be, at least in some dim likeness, "arrayed like one of these."