Over this land he guided cavalry and infantry, and—what is perhaps the most remarkable part of the expedition—he led the elephants of Asia, bearing the artillery of Europe, over African passes which might have startled the trapper and appalled the hunter of the Alps. When he arrived at the base of this critical rendezvous, he encountered no inglorious foe; and if the manly qualities of the Abyssinians sank before the resources of our warlike science, our troops, even after that combat, had to scale a mountain fortress, of which the intrinsic strength was such that it may be fairly said it would have been impregnable to the whole world had it been defended by the man by whom it was assailed. But all these obstacles and all these difficulties and dangers were overcome by Sir Robert Napier, and that came to pass, which ten years ago, not one of us could have imagined even in his dreams, and which must, under all the circumstances, be an event of peculiar interest to an Englishman—the standard of St. George was hoisted on the mountains of Rasselas.

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "Over this land he guided cavalry and infantry, and—what is perhaps the most remarkable part of the expedition—he led the elephants of Asia, bearing the artillery of Europe, over African passes which might have startled the trapper and appalled the hunter of the Alps. When he arrived at the base of this critical rendezvous, he encountered no inglorious foe; and if the manly qualities of the Abyssinians sank before the resources of our warlike science, our troops, even after that combat, had to scale a mountain fortress, of which the intrinsic strength was such that it may be fairly said it would have been impregnable to the whole world had it been defended by the man by whom it was assailed. But all these obstacles and all these difficulties and dangers were overcome by Sir Robert Napier, and that came to pass, which ten years ago, not one of us could have imagined even in his dreams, and which must, under all the circumstances, be an event of peculiar interest to an Englishman—the standard of St. George was hoisted on the mountains of Rasselas." in the context of "Speech in the House of Commons on the Abyssinian Expedition (2 July 1868), quoted in Selected Speeches of the Late Right Honourable the Earl of Beaconsfield, Volume II, ed. T. E. Kebbel (1882), pp. 128-129" to mean that wisdom is timeless.