When the Lady of the Lake first reached Sir Adam Fergusson, he was posted with his company on a point of ground exposed to the enemy’s artillery; somewhere no doubt on the lines of Torres Vedras.  The men were ordered to lie prostrate on the ground; while they kept that attitude, the Captain, kneeling at their head, read aloud the description of the battle in Canto VI., and the listening soldiers only interrupted him by a joyous huzza whenever the French shot struck the bank close above them.

Finally, before leaving this subject, it may be noted that amidst the verse, sometimes pathetic and sometimes rollicking, which appealed more especially to the naval and military temperament, there occasionally cropped up a political allusion which is very indicative of the state of popular feeling at the time the songs were composed.  Thus the following, from a song entitled “A cruising we will go,” shows the unpopularity of the war waged against the United States in 1812: 

    Be Britain to herself but true,
      To France defiance hurled;
    Give peace, America, with you,
      And war with all the world.

The sixteenth-century Spaniards embodied a somewhat similar maxim of State policy as applied to England in the following distich, the principle of which was, however, flagrantly violated by that fervent Catholic, Philip II.: 

    Con todo el mundo guerra
    Y paz con Inglaterra.

[Footnote 110:  Since writing the above it has been pointed out to me that Garrick’s song was composed during the Seven Years’ War (1756-63).]

INDEX

Abu’l’Ala, 65

Acton, Lord, and the Turks, 80, 223, 266

Acton, Lord, on the making of history, 432

Adrianople, occupation of, 411

Akbar, Emperor, 40

Alexandria, society at, 228

Alfred the Great, 450

Algeria, French in, 250-263

Alison, 216

Alliteration, 71

Almanza, song on defeat at, 456

America and Free Trade, 134, 138

America, war with, in 1812, unpopularity of, 457

Amherst, Lord, occupies Burma, 288

Anarchy, 20

Ancient Art and Ritual, 361-371

Andrade, Colonel Freire d’, 380, 383, 384

Anglo-French Agreement of 1904, 162, 167

Anglo-Saxon individualism, 15

Anthology, translations from, 72

Anthropology, bases of, 364

Antigonus Gonatas, 351

Anti-Slavery Society, 373

Apollo Belvedere, 370

Aratus of Sicyon, 358

Army reform, 107-126

Arndt, national poetry, 443

Arthur, Sir George, 123

Asoka, 355

Assouan dam, 296

Athenaeus, on dancing, 370

Attwood, Mr. Charles, 196

Aulard, M., on Taine, 430