It is horrible to Henry that the devil might say to the traitor:
"I can never win
A soul so easy as that Englishman's."

He has his English cowards, too, who wound themselves to show their scars at home,

"and swear they get them in the Gallia wars."

He was not the English commander who declared to us the other day that all his soldiers had behaved like brave men on the field, and like gentlemen when off. Henry answers from the world of reality:

"There is no king, be his cause never so spotless, if it come to the arbitrement of swords, can try it out with all unspotted soldiers: Some peradventure have on them the guilt of premeditated and contrived murder; some of beguiling virgins with the broken seals of perjury; some making the wars their bulwark that have before gored the gentle bosom of peace with pillage and robbery."

And what the men have been, doubtless that they are. A holy writer did say that there are among soldiers more saints than among any other class of men in the world; but wars do not make all the bad ones good, do they?

Williams, Henry's poor soldier friend, says even: "I am afeard there are few die well that die in battle."

Henry himself, however rapid in fight, troubles his mind longover where the rights, public and private, clash, and must have these set in their places by his conscience. If, as is said, even in the High National-Anglican and generally Tory Church Quarterly Review, there is an alarming sentiment running through England now, which would support not only a just war, as this Review thinks the present one, but also a war of aggression and plunder, then such a sentiment of patriotism would not be recognized by Shakespeare's hero Catholic-English King. That would be almost, for him, the patriotism which Dr. Johnson declared to be the last refuge of a scoundrel. Did not Dr. Johnson echo the higher patriotism, for Englishmen and all men, when of gross misdeeds of his day he said, in effect: "Then, Sir, perish the government of England, if, as you say, it must be kept up by such lawless laws against men as you have now in force in Ireland?"

And now, what do we find done by Henry, the soldier—in whose thoughts that name became him best—when his poor men beared, their ruin on the morrow, and wondered besides Aether they were doing- right in being there at all?

^ right in. blindly following my country, suppose I am in the army"? Indeed, these poor fellows were not the fierce soldier type with whom Henry threatened the "guilty in defence," the Harfleur citizens—"the flush'd soldier . . . with conscience wide as hell." "Well, Henry says this war is just. But Williams doubts: "That's more than we know." And Bates comments: "Ay, or more than we should seek after; for we know enough if we know we are the King's subjects: if his cause be wrong, our obedience to the King wipes the crime of it out of us."

Now, does Henry accept that as final? He has no such forgetfulness of what a man is. He declares, indeed: "Every subject's duty is the King's;"

but he adds,

"Every subject's soul is his own.* Therefore should every soldier in the wars do as every sick man in his bed, wash every mote out of his conscience; and dying so, death is to him advantage; or not dying, the time was blessedly lost wherein such preparation was gained; and in Vnm that escapes it were not sin to think that, making God so free an •offer, he let him outlive that day to see his greatness, and to teach others iiow they should prepare."

The present German Emperor is a true son of Luther and his irresponsible kinship: "The soldier should not have a will of his own, but all of you should have one will, and that is my will. There exists only one law, and that is my law." S. Ambrose, S. Gregory VII, Pius VII, yoxx are needed yet; for the spirit of Theodosius, Henry IV and Napoleon still walks abroad. There is no Catholic Henry V troubling about the .absolute in this Wilhelm of local deities incarnate in the prince.

What a world, there, of truth, reality and manliness not forgetful of mortality, and not playing with death—by contrast to Southey's pietistic comments on that other great rejoicer in fight, Telsar, when he, the paramour of his host's wife—was it not?—came to die, rather boasting of his sinless past. To which hero can you fit on the religion that judges him who says "I have not sinned?" The false patriotism would make a great hero, therefore a pure soul. But that is not Shakespeare's.

He would rather have been with Byron's Vision of Judgment than with Southey's, in its pious impiety over King George the

*"It is the principle of moral theology that, although no one can lawfully take part in a war which he certainly knows to be unjust, the soldier is safe in obeying his orders."

Third, who cometh to judgment. "And who is George the Third?" exclaimed the Apostle, as Byron not unreasonably makes St. Peter at heaven's gate demand.

To suggest that one cannot love country or friend without believing them always right or holy in their acts is a dilemma whose foolishness is surpassed only by its cruel injustice. And this, even though

"I do love

My country's good with a respect more tender,
More holy and profound than mine own life."

To be most glad when it is one's own country does right, to be most grieved when one's country does wrong, there we come to a patriotism such as is suggested in these plays where man acts in his freedom as the responsible soul, interesting beyond all things else, whose smallest moral act outweighs ten thousand suns. Of such patriotism we might hear Dr. Johnson very differently saying:

"That man is little to be envied whose patriotism would not gain force on the plains of Marathon," adding, "or whose piety

would not grow warmer among the ruins of Iona."

For, "Whatever withdraws us from the power of our senses, whatever makes the past the distant, or the future predominate over the present, advances us in the dignity of thinking beings."

Thus we in some measure see the due proportion of things, and the greatness and the littleness of human life. That which we see is not all; and we know nothing of what the part truly is, do we consider it alone. "Those who refuse to look backward to their ancestors will seldom look forward to posterity;" and hence what self-centered meanness; and what monstrous self-importance, what unreality; for individual life is short; that a preparation for les longs esporis et les vastes pensees; what a forgetfulness of morality, what a closing of eternity, what blindness of heart or deadness of soul, what moral confusion, what secret unbelief in good.

A Richard II it is who claims more for England as such, for the King as such, than was claimed by a Henry V. These form the contrasted picture in Shakespeare of Kings weak and strong, one unjust, selfish and querulous; the other buoyant in confidence of right action, humble and generous and just. If both have splendor externally, it is Richard who is beautiful inform;Henry "never looks in his glass for love of anything he sees Acre." "We saw that the pains he takes at the outset are to find il there he justice in his cause. Richard shames us, in his first scenes, -with suspicion and cunning, with cruelty toward those who would tell him truly, with the merciless policy of fear. And so the hasis is laid for rebellion. For there is something better worth than loyalty to King and country, it is loyalty to what King and, country ought to be.

It is true that Shakespeare found in his Mediaeval Story a notion ot kingship differing from that new monarchy under which he himself lived. The Middle Ages could have no such idea of absolute monarchy; for them the canon law ruled with its "the true "Rex is Rex," with its ideal, at least, of Christianity and not Caesarism. One sees this contrast when one notes that the mediaeval deposition scene of Richard* was not played in the reign of Elizabeth, who, of all Tudor princes, had, of course, special reasons for fearing allusions too plain to titles to a throne.

But if Shakespeare found his story, he makes use of it obviously enough for what interests him and us more than Lancastrian "usurpation," that is, loyalty in a man's life.

We do not doubt that we are right when, with Henry, we give our best selves; the poor timorous soldier, half in fear, half in despair, is ready with his life heartily when Henry has spoken with him: the commander who wished for more troops is willing, when heartened by Henry, to fight, just those two together, against all the foe.

"Every wretch, pining and pale before,
Beholding him, plucks comfort from his looks.
A largess universal, like the sun.
His liberal eye doth give to every one,
Thawing cold fear."

His cry is "God for Henry! England! and St. George!" And

*In fact, the Catholic Middle Ages were less Anglican or Gallican than even Shakespeare suggests; for Richard was deposed by the clergy and nobility, rather than by his fickle self.

men follow with all their hearts; nor will their heads in quieter times condemn them.*

Richard indeed commands—

And, "yet looks he like a King"—

"Lions make leopards tame," he declares magnificently, a king to a duke. "We were not born to sue but to command." And yet men hesitate, nor will they; for, within is strife between their loyalties; and there is enough to justify their own selfishness in the injustice of the King.

Gaunt holds in his wrath:

"Gods' is the quarrel; for Gods substitute
His deputy anointed in His sight,

Hath caus'd his [Gloster's] death, the which, if wrongfully,
Let heaven revenge; for I may never lift
An angry arm against his minister."

But at last, against the wrongdoings of his country embodied in her King, he appeals, through very love of country itself: "Methinks I am a prophet new inspired.

This royal throne of kings, this sceptr'd isle,

This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,

This other Eden, semi-paradise;

This fortress built by Nature for herself

Against infection and the hand of war;

This happy breed of men, this little world;

This precious stone set in the silver sea,

Which serves it in the office of a wall,

Or as a moat defensive to a house,

Against the envy of less happier lands;

This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England;

This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings,

Fear'd by their breed, and famous by their birth,

Renown'd for their deeds as far from home,—

As is the sepulchre in stubborn Jewry

Of the world's ransom, blessed Mary's Son;— Henry V was full of knightly devotion to the Blessed Virgin. "Thismost Christian prince there [in Westminster Abbey] ordained for him to be sung three masses every day in the week while the world lasteth." (Fabyan.) And one of these three daily masses was in honor of some mystery of our lady's life—such as the Assumption, the Visitation, the Purification.

♦Readers may be interested to note that the cry at Agincourt was— as Elusham, a monk of the time of Henry V, tells—

"Virgo Maria fave, propria pro dote; Georgi
Miles, et Edwarde, Rex pie, confer opem."