"It often happens that things that are most neglected in one age become
the ruling fashions of the next, just as things once highly honoured
may often fall into complete discredit.
"Take this instance. In an old and dusty folio, entitled '_Académie de
l'Espée_[2],' which I discovered yesterday banished to the darkest
corner of the library, I found several pages entirely devoted to the
art '_of delivering a stroke with the point at the right eye_.' The
point is specified because in those days cuts and thrusts were held in
equal favour.
"What do you say to a thrust in the eye? And yet if you will consult my
folio you will find a collection of plates illustrating all the passes
by which this brilliant stroke may be brought off.
"You know what is thought now-a-days of a hit in the face, that is to
say on the mask; we are taught,--again quite wrongly,--not to take the
smallest notice of it. And this leads me to hope that some day we may
yet see a revolution, by which the vulgar belly will claim its rights
and in its turn drive out the lordly bosom. It will be rated too highly
then, as it is too much degraded now. But when did revolutions ever
know where to stop?
"For the assault the one thing needful is self-reliance. Trust to your
own resources, and do not imagine that you have to repeat word for word
the lesson that you have got by heart from your book, but rather look
for inspiration to the resources of your native wit.