student was found, who looked at the wound,
suggested that "oil and cotton would be the
right sort of thing," and left him. There was
no written order, and neither oil nor cotton
were in store. "Next day," he says, "at nine
o'clock, my wound was dressed by the principal
(and really kind-hearted) medical officer, who
sent into the town for necessaries. In course
of time I left the hospital, and waited on the
adjutant to obtain my discharge, which was
expected. He, seeing from my appearance that I
had been on the sick list, went so far as to
inquire into the nature of my injury, which I
explained; and directed me to wait on him again at
a certain hour in the afternoon. I did so, and was
kept standing, by his order, for fully twenty
minutes, while he sat perusing some papers of an
official kind, and while a non-commissioned officer
was engaged in procuring the important document
which I sought. ' Stand to attention, sir!'
said the adjutant, 'while you are before me,' or
' before an officer,' or words to that effect, when
he observed me shifting my feet. It was
extremely painful for me to remain, just at that
time, standing at all, much more so to remain in
a regimental position; and he could not fail,
moreover, to see that it was so, even had he not
made any previous inquiry, for I wore a
slipshod shoe."

In no other army in Europe, we believe not even
in the Russian, does the military sense of caste
and obstinate adherence to routine, part soldier
from officer so widely as in England. While it
is so, the recruiting officer with beard and pipe,
unbuckled belt, and chin-strap anywhere—with
all the lying air of ease that he is able to assume
—must go to the besotten men in pot-houses for
his material, and must mislead even them into
enlistment.

But the soldier when he enlists receives his
outfit from the country, and enters at once into
such prosperity as his new state of life can
furnish. The sailor has been asked for many years
to begin his life in the navy with debt and
discomfort. The evidence taken before Lord
Hardwicke's Committee of the year 'fifty-eight, upon
the subject of the manning of the navy, although
all question of Admiralty management was kept
out of it, and there was a great want of thoroughness
in investigation of the feelings or prejudices
of the men, revealed more than enough reason
for the fact, that the best class of men no longer
can be got to serve her Majesty at sea. Some
of the least evils that admitted of prompt remedy
were remedied by the Admiralty while the
commission sat, and without waiting for the
recommendations made in its report.

The Lords of the Admiralty have been very
often indeed, able hardworking men, anxious to
do all their hands can find to do for the improvement
of the service; but unhappily it has been
seldom given them to know where they could
lay their hands, or how long they could keep
their hands on anything. They come in and go
out with every wave of party. There is no
continuous oversight, no individual responsibility,
even for the few months or years during which
an Admiralty board can represent an unchanged
government. There are six lords and two
secretaries, of whom only one is permanent. The
first lord is a high politician, who, probably, if
turned loose on a ship, could not make out his
own way either to the quarter-deck or the gun-
room. The next four lords are sailors, the
next in rank to the first lord being the senior
sea lord; but the junior may be a civilian.
These six gentlemen meet on a change of
ministry with all their work to learn; they divide
among themselves the immense masses of work
to be done, but no one lord takes single
responsibility for what he does. They have under them,
a surveyor of the navy, whose entire responsibility
they take on their own shoulders; and they
work on in the dark, or, if in the light, impeded
by the stumbling of others, struggling
sometimes with a rare energy to remove abuses and
establish wholesome changes, but knocked down
like so many ninepins by this or that throw of
the political ball—knocked down so often that
in the last thirty years there have been one
hundred and three changes in the officers managing
the affairs of the navy! It is wonderful that the
navy itself, so managed, is not in the worst of
plights. It has rubbed on somehow, though not
earning credit with the population of seafarers.
That the few changes made, upon discovery in
eighteen forty-eight and nine of many causes of
unpopularity, have not sufficed for the recovery
of credit, is evident from the fact that of
the thirty thousand Royal Naval Volunteers
who were to begin to enrol themselves on the
first of January last year, only three thousand
have offered. These volunteers were invented
by the present Admiralty. The men were to be
called out for service, only in case of great
emergency or actual war; they may remain in what
service they please, only they must not go out
on long voyages without a special leave; they
receive six pounds a year as retainer, and come
up for drill on twenty-eight days in the year,
during which they are victualled and paid wages
and lodging money. There is also the prospective
advantage of a pension of twelve pounds a
year for life, after the age of sixty. Liberal and
tempting as the terms are, men have not entered,
because they do not believe in the Admiralty.
What one board does, another undoes. They see
sailors paid off not seldom from men-of-war
under conditions that virtually amount to breach
of contract. They hear of ungenerous gripings
of small things, and a profuse offer is distrusted.
A year ago, an extract from a speech in the
House, by Lord Clarence Paget, Secretary to
the Admiralty, spoken to be placarded, was
placarded in half the seaport towns of the united
kingdom. Its purport was to assure men that her
Majesty's government has no sort of intention to
kidnap them into the navy. It began thus: " I
know what seamen are. They are fine, noble,
hearty creatures, but men of remarkably
suspicious character; and if there are any people
they are suspicious of, it is the Admiralty."
The author of an excellent volume upon
Admiralty administration, lately published, in discussing