of natural valour, but my impression, derived equally from internal feeling and from observation, is that standing fire is a very unpleasant thing, and extremely repugnant to the natural man. If we in some measure do it now, I take it that it is in virtue of the fag-end of the old-fashioned training which instilled into a man from his babyhood that standing fire was the one thing he had to do, and which succeeded in the main in making it easier to most men to stand fire than to refuse to stand it."
Such are the reflections of a man who has had some experience, and consequently has some knowledge of what he is writing about, while Mr. Cobden, who had no knowledge of the matter, wrote dogmatically about it, and called in Gibbon as a witness to support him—Gibbon, though he had been a militia officer, knowing as little about the matter as Mr. Cobden. Mr. Cobden, indeed, quotes these words as spoken by the Duke of Wellington in the House of Lords, June 15, 1852: "I believe every man is brave"—words which are in direct opposition to the words attributed to Marshal Lannes, that a man who says he does not know fear is a coward. The account which Colonel Gurwood has given of his sensations when his offer to lead the forlorn hope at Ciudad Rodrigo had been accepted is very instructive.
Colonel Gurwood put together for a special
