swampy marshes of Ceylon-certes, you have spilt your blood, you, bah! have ruined your health, you have passed a good examination, and have proved yourself a first-rate officer, but, my dear colonel, are you not a colonel, eh? You have a wife and children, and your money is as much theirs as yours. Now come, did we compel you to marry? Did we wish you to have children? Have we not built our barracks on the most antagonistic principles to domestic comfort, and done everything in our power to support the glorious millennium of bachelorism? Bah! I see you are attempting to lay to our charge matters we have no more to do with than the man in the street!' I see you are cantankerous, sir! You are an ass, sir! You put us quite in a rage! Go, and be a master cotton-spinner, if you want filthy lucre. Turn your sword into a pen, and don't come plaguing us. For shame, my dear colonel. Good morning!" We will undertake to assert, that if the suffrages of the British army were taken-especially amongst the privates and non-commissioned officers of a corps-no such an unpopular step would ever have been decided upon as making the rank of colonel the prize of "competitive examination." Let us bear in mind whence we draw our soldiers-from the pits of theatres, the bars of gin-palaces, the purlieus of St. Giles's, or the low haunts of Manchester or Leeds. Remember what ideas they come to us imbued with; and then look upon the British soldier and say if you can, where you can pick out a finer specimen of manly obedience, loyalty, and bravery in the whole class of human nature! Yet how has this reformation been effected? Some witchery must have been practised. Zealous clergymen have exhausted all their powers of rhetoric, denouncing terror to some, or offering consolations to others, and yet all their efforts have been in vain. The proselyte has soon fallen back into his evil ways. Such is never the case, except in very few instances, with the British soldier! Why? Because there is a set in every regiment called the "old soldiers;" men who perhaps have been very wild and mutinous, or drunkards, when young, but who, having "sown their wild oats," settle down into worthy members of the army. They give a tone to a regiment, insist on discipline being upheld and reverence paid to authority, and support in every way the officers and non-commissioned officers. They look on their "ould" corps as a home, and love it as much as a captain does his ship! No one is more reverenced by these men than the Colonel. They have known him since they were lads. They were at drill together, both wild, no doubt, but each has seen the other settle down into a quiet, respectable man, a credit to the honourable service he belongs to. They have fought many a hard battle together, and have slept side by side on the bloody plain; they have shared hunger and thirst and pain, and have reaped honour and glory and fame in the same action. Yet with this sympathy between soldier and commanding officer, you would shelve the latter, and throw open his place to the highest bidder; passing some young stay-at-home exquisite, who may have studied Vauban, over the heads of a corps of veterans who have nobly fought for their country in every quarter of the globe! If such a system were to be introduced into our army, the consequences would be fatal! You may laugh and jeer now as you did when the great Sir Charles Napier foretold the consequences of your conduct to the Bengal army. He warned, but you, like the deaf adder, shut your ears to his warning. It will be the same with our own army, if you allow ignorant men to attempt its reform. The Duke of Wellington said that the English mob was not less brave than a foreign mob. This was uttered in 1848, when all Europe, save England and Russia, was in the hands of mobs. The Duke might have added that the British army is to be always depended upon, and is therefore feared by the mob. This arises from the aristocratic element infused into it by the officers being men of property; men who will fight for their own as much as for their country. To obtain a lieutenant-colonelcy, majors are to volunteer for a competitive examination. Now, supposing Colonel A. of the Plungers is shelved, and Major B. of that corps is a first-rate officer, a fine dashing manœuvrer, a first-rate drill, and a Murat of elegance; but Major C. of the Lights, a weak, puny, sickly creature, who has vegetated at home all his life, and cannot stand a tropical climate, passes a better examination in Vauban than Major B.-C. consequently must have A.'s vacancy This in preference to B., though B. is the better officer of the two. savours much of the blundering system characteristic of the Circumlocution Office. Remember our schoolboys. We all respected the "sap" who headed the sixth form and won the Newcastle scholarship, but he was not the lad we selected as stroke-oar of the "eight," or captain of the "eleven!" As boys, we had too much common sense to commit such an act of folly. Why not, as men, follow the wisdom of our boyhood? No one would object to educate British officers; but we maintain, as a general rule, they are well educated, far better than those of the continental armies. A loud cry was raised before the Crimean war about the superior education of the French officer. When fighting side by side our officers had a good opportunity of knowing if these statements were true, and found they were incorrect. As a proof, we would refer to the evidence of the general officers before this very commission. We are now told, what we know the French are not, that the German officers are much better instructed than our own. As both Prussia and Austria studiously avoided "breaking the peace" in 1854, we shall take the assertion for what it is worth, and form our own conclusions when we see them in the battle-field. A great deal has been said for and against Promotion by Purchase. It is a capital cry to bawl "promote by merit" in time of war, somewhat like the vote by ballot" shouted out during the late general elections. But how are you to promote by merit in time of peace? It must perforce degenerate into seniority or interest. Many point to the navy, and so will we, and to the grievances, and heartburnings, and disappointments, too, that hundreds feel at this very moment at not receiving their justly-earned reward, all through, they assert, the favour shown to some scion of a noble house. Take care of Dowb. Beware of him, my good readers, and be not deceived. A man has no interest and no money, but he has a martial spirit, and is on excellent terms with himself. He says, "Do away with purchase, and I shall then find myself in my proper position." Purchase is done away with, but in its place up rises interest, and our poor friend finds this new bugbear is worse than the former. Interest and Dowbs are rampant just now in the British army, but they are chiefly counteracted by wealth, and many sons of wealthy merchants and manufacturers can now purchase their positions in the army, whilst, if you were to sweep away such a system, rub it from the slate, you would find, as the army became thereby so much more remunerative, so it would also be so much the more esteemed as a comfortable provision for the younger cadets of great houses. Be assured Interest would only take the place of Purchase. Let the authorities act as they will, they will never prevent money from being used in obtaining promotion, even if purchase were done away with to-morrow. It is in full force in the Company's service; it is in full force in our artillery; nay, even descends to our ranks, and a sergeant gives a quartermaster or an adjutant a certain bonus before he will retire in his favour. We allow it is a bad system-a very bad system: but we apprehend there is no remedy for it. To such a pitch was it carried before the Crimean war, that in a crack cavalry corps a regiment was sold for fifteen thousand pounds, a majority for nine thousand five hundred, a troop for six thousand guineas, and so on in proportion; although such trafficking was punishable, not only by court-martial, but by civil law. The present examinations for promotion are a farce. They are worse than useless. A board of officers sits on judgment on a candidate. If he is popular, the whole affair is slurred over. If he should not enjoy that enviable position, the chances are that the victim is "spun." We should therefore compel each commanding officer to certify that a lieutenant is fit to purchase his troop or company, and at the same time make the lieutenant produce a certificate stating he has passed an examination before boards of gentlemen appointed especially for that purpose, who should sit in our three capitals, London, Edinburgh, and Dublin. It was the fashion to sneer at our army before the Crimean war, and during and after that event to vilify it. We trust such defamation is at an end, and shall therefore conclude our remarks with the blunt advice of Smollett in "Roderick Random :"-" Sir, sir, I have often heard it said she is a villanous bird that befouls her own nest. As for what those people who are foreigners say, I do not mind it: they know no better; but you who were bred and born, and have got your bread under the English government, should have more regard to gratitude, as well as truth, in censuring your native country." GARDEN RHYMES FOR MY PICCANINNIES. BY WALTER THORNBURY. HOW THE BLACKBIRD, GLAD AND MERRY, FEEDS UPON THE BLACKHEART CHERRY. BLACKBIRD sings upon the cherry, Merry very, merry very, Every time he stoops to peck, how he jerks his glossy neck, Golden bill loves well the cherry, Merry very, merry very, Very merry, merry very; After every juicy bite, proud he looks from left to right, LIFE OF AN ARCHITECT. MY WIFE AND FAMILY. My wife was my own: my family my father-in-law's. My own father died intestate, and his affairs got into Chancery. My father-in-law lived speculatively, and his affairs got into embarrassment: so the paternal intentions he would otherwise have liberally fulfilled towards me were added to "the paving stones" which are proverbially said to floor that basement story ycleped "the regions below." The money settled," in some uncertain fashion, upon his first wife, was not, as proposed, forthcoming to her only surviving child-my spouse; and as I married the latter for "the riches of herself alone," I remained careless about any explanation of the matter. The little she obtained from her grandmother was never looked for, and therefore came as a "godsend." When the leavings of my father-proper were brought, in due course of law, into the form of available cash, the necessities of his successor in wedlock compelled him to advantage himself by what the law allowed. He therefore first took the third of the amount, as due to his wife, my father's widow; secondly, paid himself the cost of my schooling and professional education; and handed over to me the small remainder. Thus, by my own means and efforts, I was just enabled to keep my head above water, till my professional barque got afloat to receive me, and ready to bear me on, as, God be thanked, it afterwards continued to do. The crew of the ship, however, included none of my own begetting; but as I came into the inheritance of little, and did not look to have anything to bequeath, I was well content to find myself childless. "The joys of parents," says Bacon, " are secret." They were secrets to me at all events. 66 Secret," too, says the same high authority, are the parents' "griefs and fears ;" but of these I had something of a second-hand taste, since a loved brother was left me, whose father I was old enough to be, and in whose boyhood's progress and subsequent well-being I felt a father's interest. Otherwise, I had my Lord Bacon's consolation in the dictum he lays down, when he says: "Certainly, the best works, and of greatest merit for the public, have proceeded from childless men." A still more comforting authority, however, was found in my friend Tom, the philosopher of Bodmin Lunatic Asylum, who, seeing a parcel of ragged urchins in the street, exclaimed, "Poor little devils! What'll become of 'em? 'Tis said, 'Happy is the man as has his quiver full on 'em but sometimes 'tis a diff'rent thing altogether!" But my wife was all that could be, short of becoming a mother, and perhaps she was more of the rest, lacking that; certainly none the less in her companionship; in her devotion as a friend and nurse; in her housewifery and creditable lady-isms; a fair musician and picture copyist; and "so delicate with her needle," that the embroidered cloth and worsted coverings of her sofas, chairs, and ottomans, rendered her drawing-room a small marvel to behold. Add to this my own "studio," radiant at least with the gilded frames of my Italian drawings, and a showy supply of the nicknackeries of virtù, and "our house at hame" presented a somewhat more general aspect of small art finery than would have been the case had our quiver |