need of quickness in judging of circumstances, need of energy, steady resolution, a youthful spirit of enterprise -- heroic qualities, to which we shall often have to refer. There is, therefore, but little wanted here of that which can be taught by books, and there is much that, if it can be taught at all, must come to the general through some other medium than printer’s type.

The impulse towards a great battle, the voluntary, sure progress to it, must proceed from a feeling of innate power and a clear sense of the necessity; in other words, it must proceed from inborn courage and from perceptions sharpened by contact with the higher interests of life.

Great examples are the best teachers, but it is certainly a misfortune if a cloud of theoretical prejudices comes between, for even the sunbeam is refracted and tinted by the clouds. To destroy such prejudices, which many a time rise and spread themselves like a miasma, is an imperative duty of theory, for the misbegotten offspring of human reason can also be in turn destroyed by pure reason.