much as possible, and wives and mothers taken
instead, when feasible.

Admission to these children's schools is not
quite gratuitous; twopence a month being
demanded for one child, three-halfpence for each
if there be two, and a penny for each if three
or more attend. The children of soldiers
serving abroad, are taken without payment;
this presupposes that they have been unable to
accompany their fathers; and the children of
the regimental officers, should they attend the
military school, pay five shillings a month each,
decreasing in proportion according to the
number sent from each family, as we have seen
with the children of privates. No difference is
made between the children, whatever the rank
of the parents, but all are subject to the same
laws and regulations without respect of persons;
as if Ihe whole thing were of the severest
republicanism to be found within the four seas.
But the old rule of extremes meeting holds good
everywhere; and in a military school and in a
republican, the same severity of discipline may be
found, and the same ignoring of rank; though
starting from such different principles, and
worked out to such different results.

Another new feature in barrack life is that of
giving lectures to the soldiers; also the creation
of libraries and recreation-rooms, subject
to wise and careful regulations. From the
libraries are excluded all books of an immoral
character, or of a political, or controversially
religious—else we should have Paddy breaking
Sawney's head concerning the greater sanctity
of the Pope as against John Knox; in the
recreation-rooms are prohibited the two amusements
of gambling and drinking. But a
refreshment-bar supplying innocent drinks and
innocuous refreshments, is allowed, as is smoking—
spittoons being supplied from head-quarters
if asked for. The lists of recreation-rooms
established in Great Britain and the colonies,
India excepted, give the following figures: Fifty-
six corps have two recreation-rooms each;
one hundred and three corps have only one
each; twelve use the library for all purposes;
four have not established a recreation fund at
all; sixty-nine supply refreshments; and forty
thousand eight hundred and one soldiers
subscribe to the recreation-rooms. The scale of
subscription is, for an officer, a shilling a month;
for a sergeant, sixpence; fourpence for a
corporal; threepence for a trumpeter, drummer, or
private. There are strict rules relating to the
cleanliness of these rooms, and the cleanliness
of the regimental librarian and the regimental
bar-keeper. To those of us who love method and
order, and are opposed to untidiness and slovenliness,
it is a positive refreshment to contemplate
the orderly precision and drill-sergeant kind of
regularity of these barrack-yard relaxations.

The examination papers of the Royal Military
Asylum Normal School, Chelsea, for educating
trained schoolmasters, are of the stiffest; full
of arithmetic and mensuration, and finding the
sides of squares equal to rectangles of any odd
number of feet you like to give; diagonals of
quadrilateral figures; the perimeter of parallelograms,
or rather of a rectangle; equilateral
and equiangular pentagons; and whole pages
tattooed with algebraic signs. Here is one
problem that looks like a riddle. "If the
company of a regiment contain 64 Englishmen
and 30 Scotchmen, how many different
guards of three men can be formed in which
there is always one Scotchman?" Riddle-me,
riddle-me-ree, perhaps you (Gentle Reader)
can't tell me how this may be! This, and

"Expand (x–—1/z) 6 . Find the sixth term of
(a 2–—x2)—1/2 ," end the paper on algebra.
Then come logarithms and plane trigonometry;
mechanics, and a discursion into mean sections
and levers and equilibriums, &c.; then comes
grammar, and an awful question relating to
common, proper, collective, abstract, and
complex nouns; a request to have written down
the first person of the future perfect, present
perfect, pluperfect, and past imperfect of the
verb I strike; also a request for the plural of
Miss Smith. What will the army schoolmasters
say to this? Miss Smiths, or the Miss Smiths,
or the Misses Smith, or what? Other people
would be puzzled at the command, for the poor
Miss Smiths get but an irregular kind of plural
assigned them at the best of times, and have to
trust much more to individual taste than to
grammatical rules. In history, too, knotty points
are offered to the military schoolmaster to untie.
"Write a life of Henry the Eighth." From
whose text-book, Hume's or Froude's? And
how will he handle that Fidei Defensor if he
be a Roman Catholic?—and how those orthodox
enmities against Dissent if he be a
Presbyterian? In geography he is required to
explain the term, watershed. Considering that
the foremost of our literary journals has been
signalised week after week with "fratchings"
and scratchings concerning this one word, it
will be rather hard on the poor army
schoolmaster to make him decide so uncertain a question.
Then, in Roman history his knowledge
is expected to be almost as extensive and accurate
as that of the imperial author of Jules
César himself. He is to "state very briefly the
origin and issue of the Numantine, Jugurtnine,
Servile, and Piratic wars;" he is to say in what
wars were fought the battles of the Regillus,
Scutinum, the Siris, Pydna, Aqua; Sextiac,
Orchomenus; also to name the commanders
therein. Riddle-me, riddle-me-ree, again. Could
you do this, reader? In the Grecian history,
the military schoolmaster is to speak of the
important events which occurred at Coronea,
Arnphipolis, Chaeronea, Ipsus, Sphacteria, and
Issus; also he is to tell where he finds
especial mention made of Argos, Egesta,
Epidamnos, Plataea, and Olynthos. For India,
he is to write the lives of Clive and Warren
Hastings, and say when Assam, Aden, Candy,
Jamaica, and Penang, became British possessions;
also to give the names of the commanders
victorious against the Sikhs, and to give the
names and dates of the battles fought against
them; he is likewise to say (a mere trifle this)