to study, alone or in company with other
instruments. Indeed, so much have private
soldiers to learn, individually and collectively,
that it is supposed that a good and complete
foot soldier can scarcely be turned out in less
than three years. By a complete soldier, we
mean one who performs by instinct every
individual and collective manoeuvre, whether he has
to work in battalion or company, in solid square,
or in broken and retreating masses.

It is, we think, universally allowed, that
intellectually, the English labourer improves by
becoming a soldier. The red-faced vacant-
eyed lad, who moved his legs only a year ago
as if they were solid lead from the knees
downward: can he be that smart neat nimble
fellow in the Guards standing sentinel at a
door in Pall-Mall? A mountain of black
bearskin hides the low heavy forehead; the
legs, cased in red-corded black trousers, are
firm, straight, and alert in movement. They obey
the officer's orders as the ivory key of the piano
does the finger of the player. The lad's mind
has more grasp now, and, like his legs, can move
more quickly and spontaneously. He is not a
braver man than he was when he only knew
how to handle the scythe or the reaping-hook;
but he is a more orderly and methodical creature,
and knows how to move about to some
purpose, and that too in the fire and smoke of
battle. His mind, too, is prompter, because it has
been taught to reflect on a wider range of
topics. He is a better man now, not merely
because he has learnt to move his feet and hands
in a certain way on certain words being uttered,
but because he has been exercising his powers
of reflection on a difficult routine, and in a new
profession. His every-day life is in fact an
education itself, compared to his old dreary exist-
ence in Downshire, where sheep-minding, pig-
feeding, and driving horses to water, presented
few subjects for thought.

Morally, however, we cannot say as much for
him, for he has fallen among a set of men who
spend all their time in the low public-houses
leading from Pimlico to Westminster: who
drink, gamble, swear, and cut unoffending
people's heads open with their heavy-buckled
belts: a vicious, idle set, with many broken
constitutions among them that would not sustain
the fatigues of a single campaign.

Alas, that we can nowhere see English
soldiers but there are such men among them.
Go to Gibraltar, and there inside the low rum-
shops in " Snake-in-the-Grass-lane," you will
find such fellows roaring, cursing, and
threatening death. Go to Malta, and there in the
back streets of Valetta reel along the same sort
of men. Go to Quebec, and there, close to the
ramparts, there is no alley in which you will not
meet a bruised drunken soldier being bumped
along, in the hands of the picket. Go to many
an English garrison town, and ask the magistrate
of the day if he finds the soldiers troublesome.

Now, cheap or gratuitous Reading Rooms and
Free Libraries are excellent things for the more
thoughtful and intellectual soldier. The man
who has been a mechanic, the man who has
taken at an early age to reading (Scotchmen
generally do, to their infinite honour be it said),
will naturally solace their leisure moments with
books; and in these days of good cheap literature,
they can do so easily, but these are not
the men whose leisure hours we want to find
occupation for. These men probably, in any
profession, would be prudent, quiet, and
industrious. To some men it is pain and grief to be
idle. These readers soon get recognised, become
corporals and sergeants, and pass into better
places. It is the rough rank and file, the brute
ordinary mass, that we want to see more civilised
and better employed. It is the thoughtless Irish
madcap, the bully of the regiment, the drunkard,
the habitual deserter, the refractory, the
mutinous, that we want to find healthy recreation
for, and to wean from the misuse of the gin-
bottle, the dirty cards, the tavern songs, the
bagatelle-board, the dice, and the beer-jug.

Now, there are men of certain temperament, of
certain ages, and of certain education, who
cannot derive pleasure from intellectual pursuits.
They have no imagination, no powers of reflection;
they bring nothing to the book, so the
book brings nothing- to them; they prefer to
see things rather than to read of them. They
could talk for an hour over Sergeant Pontoon's
story of the Kaibe Pass, but to read ten lines
about it in a book would set them a yawning.
They like a play, they like a story, but they
have not the sort of mind that can appreciate
a book, nor has culture of any kind ever enabled
them to replace their loss. Their pre-regimental
life, spent in a colliery, or in the street, or in a
barge, or in a factory, was too hard and busy.

No! Our soldiers want what the mere
healthy animal— man— always craves for, and
that is, EXERCISE, made pleasurable in the form
of athletic games, constant exercise stimulated
by gymnastics, exercise that, under a tepid
depressing climate, must be rendered competitive
and exciting; exercise, above all, that will tend
to make him a stronger, a more agile, and a
more self-reliant soldier.

Oar officers know well enough that it is not
mere drill that makes the perfect soldier. It is
not learning by mechanical instinct to fire so
many times in a minute, or to click on and off
the bayonet with astonishing but automaton
quickness, that makes the model soldier. No
drill can give men stamina or endurance, and
no drill will enable them to "pull through"
blundering Walcheren expeditions, or to baffle
Yellow Jack in fever quarters at Barbadoes.
Drill alone does not make the soldier return safe
and healthy from Corunna retreats, or restore him
and the hundred pounds sterling he represents,
to the anxious tax-payer.

Our officers know well that it is their solemn
duty to direct their soldiers' amusements; to
forget now and then the billiard-room, Rotten-row,
and what not, and to lead away their men's minds
from the incessant filthy grog-shop and low vice;
but yet they too often neglect this duty. They need
sacrifice no position; they could still be officers