276.  Nor is this, in any point of view, an unimportant matter.  A tall man is, whether as labourer, carpenter, bricklayer, soldier or sailor, or almost anything else, worth more than a short man:  he can look over a higher thing; he can reach higher and wider; he can move on from place to place faster; in mowing grass or corn he takes a wider swarth, in pitching he wants a shorter prong; in making buildings he does not so soon want a ladder or a scaffold; in fighting he keeps his body farther from the point of his sword.  To be sure, a man may be tall and weak; but, this is the exception and not the rule:  height and weight and strength, in men as in speechless animals, generally go together.  Aye, and in enterprise and courage too, the powers of the body have a great deal to do.  Doubtless there are, have been, and always will be, great numbers of small and enterprizing and brave men; but it is not in nature, that, generally speaking, those who are conscious of their inferiority in point of bodily strength, should possess the boldness of those who have a contrary description.

277.  To what but this difference in the size and strength of the opposing combatants are we to ascribe the ever-to-be-blushed-at events of our last war against the United States!  The hearts of our seamen and soldiers were as good as those of the Yankees:  on both sides they had sprung from the same stock:  on both sides equally well supplied with all the materials of war:  if on either side, the superior skill was on ours:  French, Dutch, Spaniards, all had confessed our superior prowess:  yet, when, with our whole undivided strength, and to that strength adding the flush and pride of victory and conquest, crowned even in the capital of France; when, with all these tremendous advantages, and with all the nations of the earth looking on, we came foot to foot and yard-arm to yard-arm with the Americans, the result was such as an English pen refuses to describe.  What, then, was the great cause of this result, which filled us with shame and the world with astonishment?  Not the want of courage in our men.  There were, indeed, some moral causes at work; but the main cause was, the great superiority of size and of bodily strength on the part of the enemy’s soldiers and sailors.  It was so many men on each side; but it was men of a different size and strength; and, on the side of the foe, men accustomed to daring enterprise from a consciousness of that strength.

278.  Why are abstinence and fasting enjoined by the Catholic Church?  Why, to make men humble, meek, and tame; and they have this effect too:  this is visible in whole nations as well as in individuals.  So that good food, and plenty of it, is not more necessary to the forming of a stout and able body than to the forming of an active and enterprizing spirit.  Poor food, short allowance,