But to return to our heroines of commonplace life. Their greatness does not even need striking incidents. Their worth makes precious those trivial atoms of which life is composed, and what began as an unpretending patchwork, ends as a complete and precious picture, like the splendid mosaics of Venice or Rome. This is why one might defy the first of novelists to describe the loveliness of such a life; its daily parts are positively too small to pick up.
For each one of us there is some face enshrined in memory, whose influence is lofty as an inspiration, whose power is a living power, whose love has been stronger than death, and will light an upward path for us even to life’s end. Why is all this but because she whom we loved was a heroine? And what were her characteristics? One answer will serve for all—Tenderness, gentleness, self-forgetfulness, suffering. The last characteristic may not be universal, like the rest. But the highest love can only exist where suffering has touched the object loved. It is one of the compensations for the manifold sorrow of this world of ours. The fire of trial seems to light up every beauty and attraction. The life that not only loved much but suffered much has a royal right of influence as long as memory lasts—an influence which cannot belong to any life which suffering has not crowned.
Now we have sketched our heroine, easily recognisable, but herself never dreaming or caring to think that she is one, or her glory would be frail as a bubble. The poorest woman knitting on her cottage threshold can have this glory for her own; for there is no true-hearted woman, rich or poor, who cannot walk her simple life lovingly enough to leave enshrined for others, as a living influence, such a memory as we have described. And what sceptre has so sweet a power as that—an immortal influence through the hearts we have loved most? Compared with this, what is fame but an echo, and what is the heroism of romance but an unreal shadow!
The valuable advantages these institutions offer to soldiers and their children will, we trust, be evident from the perusal of the following short account of their organisation. With regard to children, these schools will soon have little to do; for the new system of short service promises to do away almost entirely with the married soldier. A soldier is not allowed to marry till he has served seven years, subject to certain qualifications of good conduct; but as the great majority of men are passed into the Reserve before they reach that length of service, the proportion of married soldiers is very small, and rapidly becoming more and more reduced in number. It is rather with the men themselves, therefore, that the military schoolmaster and his assistants have now principally to deal.