You are so much wiser in these days, you think, not believing in purgatory; and so much more benevolent,—not massacring women and children. But we must not be too proud of not believing in purgatory, unless we are quite sure of our real desire to be purified: and as to our not massacring children, it is true that an English gentleman will not now himself willingly put a knife into the throat either of a child or a lamb; but he will kill any quantity of children by disease in order to increase his rents, as unconcernedly as he will eat any quantity of mutton. And as to absolute massacre, I do not suppose a child feels so much pain in being killed as a full-grown man, and its life is of less value to it. No pain either of body or thought through which you could put an infant, would be comparable to that of a good son, or a faithful lover, dying slowly of a painful wound at a distance from a family dependent upon him, or a mistress devoted to him. But the victories of Charles, and the massacres, taken in sum, would not give a muster-roll of more than twenty thousand dead; men, women, and children counted all together. On the plains of France, since I first began to speak to you on the subject of
