You were thinking of the lost chance, the past day; of that which should have been conceived and was not; of the service due and not rendered.

Time was, said the voice in your ear, in your pleasant room, as you sat raging and writing; and if the words written were base beyond parallel, the rage, I am happy to repeat--it is the only compliment I shall pay you--the rage was almost virtuous.

But, sir, when we have failed, and another has succeeded; when we have stood by, and another has stepped in; when we sit and grow bulky in our charming mansions, and a plain, uncouth peasant steps into the battle, under the eyes of God, and succours the afflicted, and consoles the dying, and is himself afflicted in his turn, and dies upon the field of honour--the battle cannot be retrieved as your unhappy irritation has suggested.

It is a lost battle, and lost for ever.

One thing remained to you in your defeat--some rags of common honour; and these you have made haste to cast away.
Common honour; not the honour of having done anything right, but the honour of not having done aught conspicuously foul; the honour of the inert: that was what remained to you.