The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1891-07-05
GOLD AND DRoss.


John Russell Young, who knew Sir
William Gordon Cumming well, says OF
him:
A high-tempered, impetuous. brusque, out
spoken, resolute man, with capacity for instant
anger, sensitive, irritable, ready with word or
blow, the military temperament at times I'M
duly developed: stern with men, infinite in
sympathy for dogs and dumb domestic animals.
could imagine anything Of Sir william Gordon
Cumming rather than his cheating at cards
If this is intended as the statement of
just reasons for doubling the guilt of Cum
ming in face Of the evidence which forced
his conviction, it is not worth serious con-
sideration. The disgraced man was tried
by Lord Coleridge, who is Gladstonian
Liberal in politics and has never belonged
to the court party or belonged to 1.-The
Prince of Wales clique;" he was defended
by counsel of great ability, and the
Jury was composed of men from the
middle classes who are troubled with
no superauous sympathies for the prince
and his companions. The charge Of Lord
Coleridge clearly shows that on the evil
dence he believed the accused guilty.
There is nothing in the fact that Cumming
had been gallant soldier to make us be-
lieve him incapable of cheating at cards.
Courage in battle Is very cheap and COM
mon quality. Pugnacity carries with it
no necessary assurance of pecuniary honor
or truthful speech; and mere pride and
vanity make many cheap worthless man
behave with personal courage in battle.
Benedict Arnold behaved with matchless
heroic courage both at Quebec and at Sara
toga, where he led his troops under fire
until he fell wounded, with the desperate
valor of Ney at Waterloo. Marshal Mas
sena, hero in battle, was, by Napoleon's
confession, a thief in all money matters
entrusted to him. Napoleon, who rode up
and down his shrinking lines at Wagram,
was a monumental liar, and Marlborough,
who was as serene and composed in battle
as he was in court drawing-room, was
traitor, a liar, and the most venal of men.
A man of moral courage, who would never
stoop to lie or steal, might make very
wretched soldier in battle, and man
without a particle of truth, pecuniary
honor or honesty might face and storm
battery. Some men are physically brave
part of the time; some men are physically
towards all of the time, and but very few
men, as Wellington and Bonaparte both
testified, are brave all of the time.
There is no inconsistency between the
capacity to behave courageously in battle
and an incapacity to refrain from cheating
1,f l.
was villain from every point of view-a
liar, thief and traitor; and quite as
brave and meanly bad were Richard the
Third and Macbeth. Shakespeare knew
what good many persons forget, that
human nature is not consistent in the
sense that the possession of very high
qualities, even heroic virtues, necessarily
implies the absence of all meaner traits
Indeed, so truthful a painter was Shakes
peare that all his most heroic men are
marred with some gross Infirmity; nobility
mixed with deal of ignobility. If we
seek moral heroism in Shakespeare I'M
marred by serious moral weakness of char
acter we find it among some of his women,
but among none of his men. His great men
are men of action and are stained by sin and
SCARED spiritually by the rough conflicts
and corrupting rivalries of ambitions
warning votaries, and Shakespeare was too
true an artist to sketch them as sanity
figures; but some of his great women are
made to stand for the ideal of perfect
womanhood, because as a sheltered and
guarded, non-combatant creature,
woman might grow up into sanity shape
with her high, heroic virtues unalloyed
with the vices which seem to marbleize the
virtues of his more heroic men.
Is it any more incredible or inconsistent
with human nature that gallant soldier
and aristocratic English gentleman should
cheat at cards than it is that man of un-
doubted genius, Disraei, should have
stolen the speech he delivered as his own
eulogy on the Duke of Wellin gton: or
that another man of undoubted genius,
Coleridge, should have stolen the hymn,
Before Sunrise at Chamouni," from the
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