counterfeiting Jove's thunder to an amazing degree! Terrific
Drawcansir figures, of enormous whiskerage, unlimited command of
gunpowder; not without sufficient ferocity, and even a certain
heroism, stage-heroism, in them; compared with whom, to the
shilling-gallery, and frightened excited theatre at large,
it seemed as if there had been no generals or sovereigns before;
as if Friedrich, Gustavus, Cromwell, William Conqueror and
Alexander the Great were not worth speaking of henceforth.

All this, however, in half a century is considerably altered.
The Drawcansir equipments getting gradually torn off, the
natural size is seen better; translated from the bulletin style
into that of fact and history, miracles, even to the shilling-
gallery, are not so miraculous. It begins to be apparent that
there lived great men before the era of bulletins and Agamemnon.
Austerlitz and Wagram shot away more gunpowder,--gunpowder
probably in the proportion of ten to one, or a hundred to one;
but neither of them was tenth-part such a beating to your enemy as
that of Rossbach, brought about by strategic art, human ingenuity
and intrepidity, and the loss of 165 men. Leuthen, too, the battle
of Leuthen (though so few English readers ever heard of it) may
very well hold up its head beside any victory gained by Napoleon
or another. For the odds were not far from three to one; the
soldiers were of not far from equal quality; and only the
General was consummately superior, and the defeat a destruction.
Napoleon did indeed, by immense expenditure of men, and gunpowder,
overrun Europe for a time: but Napoleon never, by husbanding and
wisely expending his men and gunpowder, defended a little Prussia
against all Europe, year after year for seven years long, till
Europe had enough, and gave up the enterprise as one it could not