336 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Far from seeing in this address a display of egotism, you will, I 

 believe, accept it as a fragment of the life of a brother who has felt 

 the scars of the battle in which many of you are now engaged. Duty 

 has been mentioned as my motive force. In Germany one heard this 

 word much more frequently than the word glory. The philosophers 

 of Germany were men of the loftiest moral tone. In fact, they were 

 preachers of religion as much as expounders of philosophy. It would 

 to a certain extent be true to say that from them the land takes its 

 moral color ; but it should be added that the German philosophers 

 were themselves products of the German soil, probably deriving the 

 basis of their moral qualities from a period anterior to their philoso- 

 phy. I asked two Prussian officers whom I met in the summer of 

 1871, at Pontresina, how the German troops behaved when going into 

 battle — did they cheer and encourage each other? The reply I re- 

 ceived was : " Never in our experience has the cry, ' Wir mussen 

 siegen ' — we must conquer — been heard from German soldiers ; but 

 in a hundred instances we have heard them resolutely exclaim, * Wir 

 milssen unser Pflicht thun ' — we must do our duty." It was a sense of 

 duty rather than love of glory that strengthened those men and filled 

 them with an invincible heroism. We in England have always liked 

 the iron ring of the word " duty." It was Nelson's talisman at Traf- 

 algar. It was the guiding star of Wellington. When in his days of 

 freshness and of freedom our laureate wrote his immortal ode on the 

 death of the Duke of Wellington, portions of which both he and oth- 

 ers might well take to heart at the present moment, he poured into the 

 praise of duty the full strength of his English brain : 



" Not once or twice in our rough island storv 

 The path of duty was the way to glory : 

 He that walks it, only thirsting 

 For the right, and learns to deaden 

 Love of self, before his journey closes 

 He shall find the stubborn thistle bursting 

 Into glossy purples which outredden 

 All voluptuous garden roses." 



— Pall Mall Budget. 



-♦•♦- 



GLADIATOES OF THE SEA * 



By FKEDEEIK A. FEENALU. 



IN the ancient city of Siena, secluded among the hills of Northern 

 Italy, Christopher Columbus received his education, and there, 

 over the portal of the old collegiate church, hangs a memento of his 



* This article is largely made up from " Materials for a History of the Sword-fishes," 

 by G. Brown Goode, in the " United States Fish Commission Report for 1880," from which 

 the cuts have also been obtained. 



