FIRST ACTIONS OF WOUNDED SOLDIERS. 157 



what are the symptoms, what the actions, ahove all, what the 

 conscious feelings of the victim himself, or, as poetical fancy in- 

 sists he shall be named, the hero ? How wide or how narrow to 

 his vision is the interval between the hard reality and the senti- 

 mental ideal ? Flesh and bone of themselves can not be expected 

 to rise to the height of the strained occasion. Torn and broken, 

 glory never heals the one or sets the other ; and so men's bodies 

 will not forever remain insensible to the claims of Nature, even 

 though in the excitement of war the mind may be superior to 

 every consideration less than heroic. Yes, there must be a time 

 when the will of the soldier is at odds with the forces that nor- 

 mally rule the sinews and tendons of his frame a time, dear 

 poet, when the hero proves to be only a man a creature inspired 

 after the flesh as well as after the spirit. 



And now, looking at the soldier as a warring machine, does a 

 missile fired into the delicate apparatus bring the whole engine 

 quickly to a dead halt ? The world hears so much about the 

 Light Brigade at Balaklava that it should be familiar with the 

 tragic story of the most noted victim of that affair, Captain No- 

 lan. Nolan, as aide-de-camp of the division general, assumed 

 to guide the Light Brigade in its awful charge, and, with frantic 

 exclamation and vehement gestures with his uplifted sword, he 

 rode to the right oblique beyond the head of the reckless column, 

 in order to draw the six hundred out of the valley of death, 

 which lay directly in their course, off toward a line of flanking 

 redoubts which they had been ordered to attack, and where vic- 

 tory and not disaster doubtless awaited them. When he was a 

 few paces to the right of the leading ranks a piece of shell struck 

 him on the chest, tearing into the heart. 



" The sword dropped from his hand," says the minute chroni- 

 cle of Kinglake, " but the arm with which he was waving it the 

 moment before still remained high uplifted in the air, and the 

 grip of the practiced horseman, remaining as yet unrelaxed, still 

 held him firm in his saddle. Missing the perfect hand of his 

 master, and finding the accustomed governance now succeeded by 

 the dangling reins, the horse all at once wheeled about and began 

 to gallop back upon the front of the advancing brigade. Then, 

 from what had been Nolan and his form was still erect in the 

 saddle, his sword-arm still high in the air there burst forth a 

 cry so strange and appalling that the hearer who rode nearest 

 him called it unearthly. And in truth, I imagine/' continues 

 the historian, "the sound resulted from no human will, but 

 rather from those spasmodic forces which may act upon the 

 bodily frame when life as a power has ceased. The firm-seated 

 rider, with arm uplifted and stiff, could hardly be ranked with 

 the living. The shriek men heard rending the air was scarce 



