initiatory five years on West Point. Here he
learns all sorts of drill, gunnery, and
mathematics, engineering, and all that is necessary
to make him a theoretically perfect officer.
Education here is entirely gratuitous. The
only necessity it involves is eight years of
paid service to be devoted to the government.
Some leave at the end of their service, but the
majority enter the regular army of the United
States, the officers of which, it is said, are the most
deeply and widely educated officers in the world.
There is a rumour that the school is not what it
was, but this may be a mere slander against
Colonel Delafield, the commandant. It was at
this school that that admirable painter, Leslie,
taught drawing.

I visited nearly every State in America without
ever seeing a soldier of the regular army,
not even a useless sentinel, or a vagrant officer
on his way to duty at an outpost fort. I
met plenty of colonels in hotel smoking-rooms,
but they were militia colonels; the blue
uniforms and the white facings I did not
see at all. America has no millions to waste
on keeping idle soldiers in time of peace, and, in
time of war, every man who could bear arms
would take up his rifle. But America has no
colonies, and each State defends itself.

The small American army is, in fact, not kept
to support rich men's sons, and to clothe idle
young noblemen, but for real use on the frontiers.
The men go to the forts in Texas, to keep back
the Comanchee horsemen, or to the prairies round
the Red River to watch the Indians, to assist
travellers, and to protect the fir traders and the
buffalo hunters. There is little honour to be
got in the service, and but small opportunity to
ring out all the high mathematics taught at
West Point. There is no large war to stretch
the wings of one's ambition, but much
swamp-fever, much privation, and much thankless
fatigue. To have no night in which sleep may
not be broken by an Indian's whoop ; to have
to arbitrate between drunken Indians and
quarrelsome trappers ; to bear tropical heat and long
winters of snow, for some thousand dollars a
year—are not such inducements as make a duke's
son enter our English regiments.

It is not the ambitious, the restless, and the
insatiable who enter the American army; but
men who wish for adventure, and who like
command; for in America there is no influential
class, as with us, to invariably throw their
influence into the scale of war. War is too
expensive a luxury for the American nation, and
the great and admirable method of instituting
an expensive profession, the expenses of which
are paid by the masses, to support rich men's
sons, has not yet been dreamt of by the American
philosopher.

In the present disastrous war, many of the
military traditions of the War of Independence
will be revived. The legends of the days of
leather hunting-shirts and fringed mocassins—of
" the Green Mountain Boys"—of " Marian's"
regiment, and of the brave men who fell on
Bunker's Hill and at Brandy wine, will be recalled
to rouse the North and to consecrate the
standards dusty with so long and so holy a peace.

If the North is wise, it will keep the war away
from its own frontiers, and at once carry the
sword into the enemy's country. The South
shed the first blood—the South committed the
first act of desecration. The North denies that
it is declaring war to intolerantly force abolition
on the South; but the North says that it is
determined to allow no State to leave the Union,
or to break the solemn compact once agreed to.

The only quality that renders an American
unfitted for military service is his proud
incapacity for obedience. He hates uniform as he
hates livery, and he does not acknowledge the
divine right of generals. His mind is not
receptive of pipeclay; he detests those small
punctilious exactions which in the English army seem
almost intended merely to ruffle the temper and
break the spirit of the men. He will march,
fight, and bear fatigue with any one, but he does
not like to have to perform menial services that
should only be required from " helps."

The result is, that of all the volunteer corps
in America the most popular is the Zouave
regiment of Chicago. The easy, showy dress
—the guerilla warfare—the individual action—the
free agency of the Zouave drill, which is almost
acrobatic, delight the Americans. Moses Adams,
a popular Southern writer, who has cleverly
sketched their cat-like manoeuvres, says of them
in his humorous bad spelling, " They run into
batle on the flats of their stomaks, and fire off
their guns with the bottom of their insteps."

Our old captains, during the last war, used to
laugh (even when taken prisoners) at the licence
practised by the sailors on board a French
man-of-war, the jangling of voices, the fuss and
distracting noise of every one giving orders and
advice at the same moment. Such, I am
inclined to think from stories I have heard, were
sometimes the scenes witnessed in the American
camp during the more dangerous moments of the
Mexican war. Republicans are by nature
impatient of control, and so are volunteers, however
brave and disciplined they may be. At moments
when the one great clear-minded man should see
all and direct all, I fear that this excitable race
are sometimes apt to assume too large a share
in the war council, and to become factious when
perfect unity is more than usually necessary.

GREAT EXPECTATIONS
Will be concluded in the Number for Saturday, 3rd August,
And on SATURDAY, 10th AUGUST,
Will be commenced (to be copmleted in six months)
A STRANGE STORY
BY SIR EDWARD BULWER LYTTON.