In such an
age bodily vigour is the most indispensable qualification of a warrior.
At Landen two poor sickly beings, who, in a rude state of society,
would have been regarded as too puny to bear any part in combats, were
the souls of two great armies. In some heathen countries they would
have been exposed while infants. In Christendom they would, six hundred
years earlier, have been sent to some quiet cloister. But their lot had
fallen on a time when men had discovered that the strength of the
muscles is far inferior in value to the strength of the mind. It is
probable that among the hundred and twenty thousand soldiers that were
marshalled round Neerwinden, under all the standards of Western Europe,
the two feeblest in body were the hunchbacked dwarf, who urged forward
the fiery onset of France, and the asthmatic skeleton who covered the
slow retreat of England."
The effect of Climax is very marked in the drama. Every speech, every
scene, every act, should have its progressive sequence. Nothing can be
more injudicious than a trivial phrase following an energetic phrase, a
feeble thought succeeding a burst of passion, or even a passionate
thought succeeding one more passionate.
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