Elizabeth Hyde Reid

“ And as no one can be present in two places at once, should I, for that reason, not place myself, at the head of your heroic ranks—because duty will call on me to do that in our own dear country, where I shall have to fight for freedom and right in Hungary, while you will be fighting for it in Italy—my appeal will reach you by the hand of a gallant Hungarian commander, whom I will charge to lead you on to the field of glory—fighting forward home to join the banner which I shall hold there. ”

“ No one can read the letter of the illustrious Hungarian without blushing to think that he should be systematically assailed in the most savage manner, and be made the victim of a series of the grossest calumnies by a paper arrogating to itself the title of ‘the leading journal of Europe.’ Captain Mayne Reid deserves, and will receive, the thanks of every lover of justice for his spirited and triumphant defence of the character of Kossuth. ”

“ An active man of adventurous temperament, he imparted his own animal spirits and his passion for the marvellous into the products of his busy brain. He was born with a zest for travel, which he contrived to indulge at a very early age. He explored American backwoods, hunted with Indians up the Red River, and roamed the boundless prairie on his own account. On behalf of the United States, in whose army he received a commission, he fought against Mexico. When his sword was in its sheath, and his fingers held the pen, he wrote with vigour and impetuosity as if under fire. ”

“ So I took it to be my simple duty rather silently to submit to any virulent indignity than to harm the chances of the struggling patriots at Milan, who, though inconsiderately and at an ill-chosen moment, risked their life and blood and their sacred honour to free their country from insupportable oppression, and that a foreign one, too; just as England once rose and risked blood and life and sacred honour—nay, more, sent one king to the scaffold and one other into eternal exile—to free herself from oppression, though it was not a foreign one. ”

“ When they had arrived within about half musket shot the enemy opened upon this gallant band the most dreadful fire it has ever been the fate of a soldier to sustain. Six pieces from the field battery played upon their ranks; while the heavy guns from Chapultepec, and nearly six thousand muskets from the enemy’s entrenchments, mowed them down in hundreds. The first discharge covered the ground with dead and dying. ”

“ The body lay at full length upon its back; the hair was clotted with blood and standing out in every direction; the teeth were clenched in agony; the eyes glassy and open, as if glaring upon the moon that shone in mid-heaven above. One arm had been cut off at the elbow, while a large incision in the left breast showed where the heart had been torn out, to satisfy the vengeance of an inhuman enemy. There were shot wounds and sword cuts all over the body, and other mutilations made by the zopilotes and wolves. ”

“ Never was the utter powerlessness of a journal more thoroughly demonstrated than was that of The Times on the arrival of Kossuth in this country, and the mortification of its signal failure to prevent the tide of popular feeling from flowing in favour of the ex-governor of Hungary, still rankles in the heart of The Times. The gross act of injustice which we have sought to expose, and which we have so unsparingly denounced, is the consequence of that intolerable mortification. ”

“ I know not what course M. Kossuth may pursue towards you. Doubtless he may treat you with that dignified silence he has hitherto observed. He can well afford it. He need not fear to be silent. He shall not lack defenders.
“You may double your staff of facile scribes, and arm each of them with a plume plucked from the fetid wing of the Austrian eagle. You will find among the champions of truth, brains as clear and pens as clever as your own; and though you may stuff your columns with wordy sophistry, it will be scattered like chaff before the heaven-born wind. ”

“ I certainly, sir, did highly disapprove of any idea of rising in Italy now; but the failure of the unfortunate victims I will consider but as a new claim upon my compassion and sympathy. Men, in the peaceful enjoyment of freedom and prosperity, can scarcely imagine what aspirations and what thoughts can and must cross the hearts of a people suffering what Italy does. That should be borne in mind before we cast the stone of blame upon those who fell. ”

“ I am not bound to any allegiance to Francis Joseph of Austria. Not I; not my exiled countrymen; not our dear Hungary. He is no lawful sovereign of Hungary. Justice is at home in England, sir; and, therefore, I defy any man to get up a jury, or to point out a court in all England which would find a verdict for Francis Joseph being a lawful sovereign of Hungary—or I and my country owing him allegiance.
“Nor do I desire to be understood that I have never written anything like the contents of that apocryphal document. ”

“ During the time of the building he would be up at six o’clock every morning to look after the workmen, and woe betide any who were the least negligent in their duty. The Captain’s voice would be heard afar off, and one might fancy he was again storming Chapultepec, or that a troop of his wild Indians on the “war-path” had suddenly invaded the quiet village.
This unfortunate mania for bricks and mortar, combined with other circumstances, ended disastrously, and Mayne Reid had to give up his country home, returning to London towards the end of 1866, to begin the world over again. ”

“ The commander-in-chief had made requisition for 150 of these boats, though only sixty-nine arrived at Anton Lizardo in time to serve the purpose they were intended for.
“The capture of Vera Cruz was an event alike creditable to the army and navy of the United States, for both bore part in it; and creditable not only on account of the courage displayed, but the strategic skill. It was, in truth, one of those coups in which boldness was backed up by intelligence even to cunning, this last especially shown in the way we effected a landing. ”

“ Fortunately for the character of the English press, there is not another journal of any reputation in the country that would act in this matter as The Times has done. However much a paper may chance to be opposed to a particular individual, we know of no instance, with this solitary exception of The Times, in which an editor, having preferred a groundless charge against a man whose character is everything to him, would refuse to allow a contradiction and disproof of the accusation. ”

“ Training the mind by the declination of ‘hic haec hoc,’ or that most absurd of all absurd excessing, scansion, is the veriest mockery of mental discipline. Science even in its humblest branches does infinitely better, and along with the lesson gives something as valuable as the training itself, or more so.
“‘Ah! that may be true,’ admit the admirers of defunct tongues, ‘but then think of the soldiers, the statesmen, the poets, the heroes and notables of every speciality, who have lived, and whose deeds are alone recorded in the languages called dead. ”

“ The ranks will be thinned, and hearts made sorrowful at their coming that hoped to rejoice in the fullest fruition of gladness. Many a gallant spirit has fallen to rise no more; and the wild note of the bugle cannot awake them to duty, or the sweeter call of friendship and home. The triumphs may be as splendid as ever crowned a human effort, but they have been purchased at the price of noble lives, and too dearly not to mingle the tear of sorrow with the shout of joy.”
The verses by Captain Mayne Reid referred to are ”

“ Mayne Reid did not admire a classical education. He wrote the following in May, 1881, and intended to publish it:
“The old adage ‘knowledge is power’ is more trite than true. Like many other proverbs long unquestioned in these modern days it often meets contradiction—indeed oftener than otherwise—ignorant men in every walk of life wielding an influence denied to the most learned. ”

“ I was in command of the Grenadier Company of New York Volunteers, and saw that a squadron of Mexican lancers were getting ready to charge, and knew that if they came on while the flanking party were in such a state of disorganisation the fight would end in a rout. On the other hand, if we charged on them, the chances were the enemy would give way and run. In any case, nothing could be worse than the present state of inaction and slaughter. ”

“ The Globe, February 2nd, 1852, says: “Captain Mayne Reid offers to the juvenile community a little book calculated to excite their surprise and to gratify their tastes for the transatlantic, and the wonderful. The dangers and incidents of life in the wilderness are depicted in vivid colours.” ”

“ As our judgment on Mayne Reid’s novels is not that of our contemporaries, we are disinclined to allow his death to pass without a word of criticism. As an individual we knew nothing about him, except that in our judgment he missed his career, and would have made a first-class agent of the Geographical Society, to explore dangerous or excessively difficult regions, like Thibet, the Atlas Range, or the unknown hills and locked-up villages of Eastern Peru. ”

“ But to get at the aqueducts Chapultepec need to be first taken, otherwise the besiegers would have had the enemy both in front and rear. Hence the desperate and determined struggle at the taking of the Castle, and the importance of its succeeding. Had it failed, I have no hesitation in giving my opinion that no American who fought that day in the Valley of Mexico would ever have left it alive. Scott’s army was already weakened by the previous engagements, too much so to hold itself three days on the defensive. Retreat would have been not disastrous, but absolutely impossible. ”

“ The Times—we say it with regret, because the character of the entire newspaper press is more or less affected by the misdeeds of one of its leading members—has earned for itself an unenviable notoriety by the frequency with which it gives circulation to calumnies against those to whom it is opposed, and then refusing to allow the parties affected to prove that they are calumniated. ”

“ With her, indeed, he found so little favour that she intentionally avoided his society. Mrs Hyde began to believe herself the attraction, as Mayne Reid spent hours in her society. All is fair in love and war. ”

“ Your sneer at the ‘authority of Mayne Reid,’ is equally characteristic. It is true I am but a plain gentleman, who make my living, like yourself, by literature. But I did not calculate upon the statement of a plain gentleman having any weight with you. In my letter I offered you full proof of my assertions. You do not seem inclined to call them forth.
“And now, sir, one word more. If you flatter yourself that by means of bold swagger and personal invective you can cover your misdeeds, you are sadly mistaken. ”

“ A light southerly breeze, blowing up coast almost direct for Vera Cruz, had declared itself before sunrise, and by earliest daybreak all was activity. Alongside each transport ship, as also some of the war vessels, would be seen one or more of the great lead-coloured boats already alluded to, with streams of men backing down the man-ropes and taking seat in them. These men were soldiers in uniform and full marching order. ”

“ There is not a spot in Lake Tezcoco where a man, standing upright, would have his head under water. It is traversed by market boats of the bread-basket pattern, flat bottomed, and impelled by poling—just the same sort as Cortez found navigating it when he launched his brigantine on its eastern edge, which vessel was doubtless nothing more than a rude raft. The periaguas, and other craft which now ply upon it, bringing produce from Tezcoco, and other lake shore towns to the capital city, are all of the punt species, none of them drawing over eighteen inches of water. ”

“ As in the wet ground trenching is impossible, there is no other way of approach. Even a charge by cavalry going at full gallop must fail; they would be decimated, or utterly destroyed, long before arriving at the entrenched line.
“These were the exact conditions under which Mexico had to be assaulted by the American army. There were no houses outside of the city walls, no cover of any kind, save rows of tall poplar trees lining the sides of the outgoing roads, and most of these had been cut down. How then was the place to be stormed, or rather approached within storming distance? ”

“ Poe was no Quaker; but, I remember well, he was next-door neighbour to one. And in this wise: that while the wealthy co-religionist of William Penn dwelt in a splendid four-story house, built of the beautiful coral-coloured bricks for which Philadelphia is celebrated, the poet lived in a lean-to of three rooms—there may have been a garret with a closet—of painted plank construction, supported against the gable of the more pretentious dwelling. ”