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Untitled Article
to work miracles in fight , we can only get a shilling a day , less clothes and food , and we mean to earn it as gasily as we can . If we win the town you will get all the honour , with scarcely any of the risk , and perhaps a pecuniary reward also , by a vote of the Honourable House . If we live through the assault we shall be only " we were , " and if we perish we shall be reported in the Gazette as so many rank and file ' expended . They'll only reckon us by the score , like sheep or oxen /
Some might say tigers ; but hear the duke in reply : 4 There is some truth in what you say , you scoundrels . Being hungry you cannot fight so well . I am better off , having had a dinner of three courses , —one of them red-legged partridges , —and my accustomed dessert and wine ; I therefore feel in a very good temper , and by vv ay ^ of encouragement to you , you dogs , if you take the city by assault you shall have twenty-four hours' plunder of it , and use the inhabitants , men and women , according to your pleasure . '
• Hurra ! ' replies the dog-feeder ; * beauty and booty ! plunder and lust , and a short life and a merry one ! Up to the breach , comrades V The troops of Marcius were not in this position ; they were fi ghting , not for hire , not to please the mere ambition of others ,
but for the security of their own hearths , to save their wives and daughters from pollution , and their city from the flames ; they were fighting for all that has been held dear and precious by men in all conditions of life . Struggling in this cause , they yet turned their backs and fled , like cowards . Well might their
leader scorn and threaten them , for they were only asked to fight , like him , for their country ; they were only asked to risk the same danger as he dared in person , at their head , and with greater peril than themselves . A A modern general orders his greater peril than themselves . modern general orders his
troops to the assault ; an ancient general led them . The same spirit prevailed amongst the French revolutionary generals , and to that , in some measure , might their success be attributed . A man obeys the orders of another much more readily when he soos him volunteer the risk of his own person , practising his own
precept . The scorn of Marcius shames his troops , and they beat back the Volsces , who take refuge in their city . Marcius , in the eagerness of the combat , enters with them , and his soldiers abandon him to a supposed certain fate . He again appears , covered with blood ; the Romans all crowd to the assault , and the city is taken .
The fifth scene discovers the interior of the taken city , where the Roman soldiers are busy plundering all they can lay their hands on , making , of course , many blunders in their hurried operations . Marcius enters , and with indignant scorn exclaims , 4 See here these movers , that do prize their hours At a crack'd drachm ! Cushions , leaden spoons , Irons of a doit , doublets that hangmen would
Untitled Article
132 Conolanus no Aristocrat .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Feb. 2, 1834, page 132, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2630/page/48/
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