One of Our Conquerors - World eBook Library

One of Our Conquerors
records, items, anticipations, of the manlier sports to decorate,
were his current themes; all being chopped and tossed
and mixed in salad accordance by his fervour of velocity.
And if you would like a further definition of Genius, think
of it as a form of swiftness. It is the lively young great-grandson,
in the brain, of the travelling force which mathematicians
put to paper, in a row of astounding ciphers, for the
motion of earth through space; to the generating of heat,
whereof is multiplication, whereof deposited matter, and so
your chaos, your half-lighted labyrinth, your, ceaseless pressure
to evolvement; and then Light, and so Creation, order,
the work of Genius. What do you say?
Without having a great brain, the measure of it possessed
by Skepsey was alive under strong illumination. In his heart,
while doing penance for his presumptuousness, he believed
that he could lead regiments of men. He was not the army’s
General, he was the General’s Lieutenant, now and then venturing
to suggest a piece of counsel to his Chief. On his own
particular drilled regiments, his Chief may rely; and on his
knowledge of the country of the campaign, roads, morasses,
masking hills, dividing rivers. He had mapped for himself
mentally the battles of conquerors in his favourite historic
reading; and he understood the value of a plan, and the danger
of sticking to it, and the advantage of a big army for
flanking; and he manoeuvred a small one cunningly to make
it a bolt at the telling instant. Dartrey Fenellan had explained
to him Frederick’s oblique attack, Napoleon’s employment
of the artillery arm preparatory to the hurling of the cataract
on the spot of weakness, Wellington’s parallel march with
Marmont up to the hour of the decisive cut through the
latter at Salamanca; and Skepsey treated his enemy to the
like, deferentially reporting the engagement to a Chief whom
his modesty kept in eminence, for the receiving of the principal
honours. As to his men, of all classes and sorts, they are
so supple with training that they sustain a defeat like the
sturdy pugilist a knock off his legs, and up smiling a minute
after—one of the truly beautiful sights on this earth! They
go at the double half a day, never sounding a single pair of
bellows among them. They have their appetites in full control,
to eat when they can, or cheerfully fast. They have
healthy frames, you see; and as the healthy frame is not artificially
heated, it ensues that, under any title you like, they
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