comrades, the senior of which had been twenty, and
two others had each been seventeen, years in the
army. Is it to be supposed for an instant that
promotions like these—promotions, be it remembered,
which are the legitimate consequences of
the purchase system, and which have only become
more rare in consequence of the casualties in
the Crimea, or in India, but which will return in
plenty in times of peace—is it to be supposed for
an instant that such promotions do not cause
ill- blood amongst those who are superseded?

Take three instances—all of which the writer
has known in the army—in which officers have
been obliged to leave the service. A lieutenant-colonel
commanding a cavalry regiment, lost a suit
in Chancery which had been bequeathed to him
by his father. To pay all he owed, he sold everything
he had in the world, intending to exchange
into a regiment in India, and there live by his
profession on the increased pay which military
men serving in that country receive. This,
however, was not enough for his creditors. His
commission was a marketable commodity, and, as
such, they obliged him to sell it and make over
the proceeds to them, leaving himself without
either means or a profession. The second case
was that of a captain of infantry, who had
become security for his brother's debts. The
brother died; there was something or other
informal in the life insurance policy with which his
liabilities were covered, and the brother in the
army had to pay the debts, to effect which his
creditors obliged him to sell his commission. The
third instance which the writer recollects was
still more severe, inasmuch as there were three
sufferers, all brothers, all in the army, and all joint
trustees for the property of some orphan
relatives. The attorney to whom they entrusted the
business decamped, and to make good what he
had absconded with, all three brothers had to sell
out of the army. In no other profession, or in
no other country, would men have to abandon
their means of living in order to pay even their
own, far less the debts of others.

If commissions in the army are to be had—if
promotion in the service is to be obtained—by
purchase, let us at least be consistent, and not
allow poor men to mix with the wealthy. Nay, let
us go further than this, and oblige every young
man who obtains a commission to deposit in the
public funds at least enough money to purchase
him up to the top of his profession. Should he
retire before he obtains the rank of lieutenant-colonel,
his money will be returned to him, and
the money of those who take his place will
replace it. Thus, in any case, we shall be spared
the private heart-burnings, and the national
disgrace of seeing officers who have money
supersede those who have none, or who have
little. If, on the other hand, we want our army
to be what it ought, and to be officered by men
who can trust to nothing but professional
qualifications for their advancement, let us for ever
abolish a system which, to say the best of it, is
a miserable remainder of corrupt days, when all
public places and posts were bought, sold, and
exchanged for money. If military appointments
are to be sold, why not sell those in the civil
service—Treasury and Post-office clerkships,
consul and vice-consulships, custom-house
officers' berths, tide-waiters' situations, and
chaplains' commissions? Let one and all be tariffed,
and no promotion take place in any department
unless a certain regulation price is paid for the
advancement. Why should the English army
alone be disgraced by the table of rates, or Prices
of Commissions, which figures at the end of every
Army List? Let us, at any rate, be consistent;
and, if we are to have any situations under
government bought and sold, let all be bought and
sold.

REAL MYSTERIES OF PARIS AND
LONDON.

Not mysteries of crime; no account of secret
societies that exist in the heart of London—the
Odd-Fellows, the Druids, the Codgers, the
Foresters, the Rum Pum Pas; no revelations
of unknown horrors going on in the innermost
recesses of Paris; no trackings out of hidden
villanies perpetrated in nooks and corners of
that city—no one of these things is going just
now to be made the subject of discussion. Nor
are the wonderful mechanical but hidden
contrivances by which the inhabitants of these two
cities are supplied with gas and water, nor the
secrets of the great sewers, of the Morgue,
of the Dark Arches, to be treated of in this
paper. The shut-up and deserted houses in
Stamford-street, Blackfriars-road, London, again,
it might be legitimately supposed, were likely
to be included in our mysteries of London.
Those houses in rows of two or three together
which no human being ever enters, which are
black and horrible to look at, which have not
one single pane of unbroken glass in any one of
their windows, and the floors of whose rooms
must be covered with the missiles by which
the glass was broken. Those houses are said
to belong to an eccentric old lady. It is a
question whether old ladies, as a class, are to be
trusted with house property. We all remember
that terrible old lady whom we used to be so
afraid of when we were little, who used to live
in the house with the boarded up windows, and
whose hollow-sounding knocker used to be plied
all day by the boy population of the neighbourhood.
Enough of this old lady, however. The
mysteries proposed to be dealt with are of a
more familiar and less alarming kind than the
Stamford-street houses, but they are none the
less deep and inscrutable for all that.

Now there are some mysteries which I do not
expect to have explained to me. I am content
to receive them, abandoning all hope of
comprehension. They are too much for me, and I
make no secret that they are so. To this class
belongs the mystery of India. This country
seems to consider India, and India alone, as
important. Every family sends some of its
members to India. We fight for India, with