thought otherwise. This was not the
kindhearted old gentleman who commanded us
some six years later, but a gentleman who
had very recently exchanged into our regiment
from half-pay unattached. He ordered
the corporal to be tried by a garrison court-
martial, and this tribunal sentenced him to be
imprisoned for three months, and to be "branded
with the letter D in the usual manner," besides
being reduced from the rank of corporal to that
of a private dragoon. The sentence was carried
out, and the unfortunate man never held up his
head again. To drown care, he took to drinking,
and in two years died of delirium tremens
in the Belturbet Hospital, after haying spent
more days in, than out of, the regimental cells,
and being tried more than once by a regimental
court-martial for intoxication.

It is not of the actual severity of the punishments
in the service that I or any soldier need
complain. It is not a less severe but a less
degrading code that is required in the army.
There is hardly any punishment we have, which
does not carry degradation with it to a certain
extent. Thus, if a soldier is for some comparatively
trivial offence ordered to be confined
seven days in the cells, it is generally made a
point to order his hair to be clipped so short,
that for six weeks or two months after his
punishment, he looks like a ticket-of-leave man just
got free from jail. His punishment is ordered
for, say a month, but it hangs about him for four
or five months, as during all that time he is
ashamed to uncover his head, and will not enter
any public place where he would have to take
his cap off, lest the shortness of his hair be
observed and laughed at. In many of our large
garrison towns side-locks are sold, which the
soldier who has had his hair clipped close to
his head on entering the cells, purchases, and
attaches to the sides of his cap.

Another source of much crime in our army is
the way in which some— not all, but still too
many — officers address their men. It does not
proceed from any wilful intention of hurting the
feelings of the men so addressed, but from a
silly idea that it denotes an officer-like bearing,
and a strict disciplinarian. I have seen mere lads
of seventeen or eighteen, who were yet under
the hands of the riding-master and adjutant,
speak to old soldiers who wore the Crimean
and Indian medals on their breasts, as if they
were really inferior beings to themselves. It
is not so much what these commissioned youths
say, as the way in which they say it. The fault
is very seldom to be found among titled officers
or men of undoubted good breeding. For, a
true gentleman always respects the feelings of
others, in the army as elsewhere.

My own experience in the army does not
teach me that officers who have risen from the
ranks, speak roughly, or behave ill to soldiers
under their command. I have often seen it
stated that they do, both in parliament and
elsewhere, but I have never found it so.

The young men who join direct from home—
the officers who merely go through an examination
at Chelsea, and then are sent to learn their
duties in the regiment, to which they should
come to teach, and not have to be taught — often
make the greatest possible blunders, and know
nothing whatever of true work for at least two
years after they have been receiving the Queen's
pay and wearing the Queen's uniform. And these
are almost invariably the very men who speak
to soldiers in the harshest terms. I remember
well a case of this sort a few years ago. In the
regiment to which I belonged, there was a young
cornet who had but lately joined, and who was,
perhaps, as awkward a specimen of unfledged
humanity as ever put on uniform. He had been
months in the riding-school, but the riding-
master could make nothing of him, and when at
foot drill he was the despair of every instructor.
At field-days he was quiet and civil-spoken, for
he was in such mortal dread of his charger, that
all his attention was given to keeping himself
from falling off; but, at dismounted parades, he
bullied the men of his troop whenever he had
a chance: that is, whenever the captain was
absent, and he commanded in his place. There
was in the troop, a man called Benson — Bill
Benson. Bill was one of the best riders in the
British cavalry, and as fine a specimen of an
English dragoon as ever was seen. He had
been twenty-five years in the army, but had
never been promoted; for he could barely
read, and writing even his own name was, to
poor Bill, as the unknown tongues. He had
served in the Crimea, ridden in the famous
Balaclava charge, and, when his regiment came
home from Sevastopol, had volunteered to go
out to India with a regiment ordered to that
country at the time of the mutiny. Bill had two
English medals as well as that given by Turkey
for the Crimea upon his jacket, wore three good-
conduct marks on his sleeve, and was looked
upon as a pattern soldier. For some reason or
other, the young cornet took a great dislike to
Benson, and used to " naggle" him whenever he
got a chance. There was a foot parade one
afternoon, and, in his captain's absence, the
cornet commanded the troop. In passing down
the ranks, he thought he saw, or he pretended
that he thought he saw, a spot of dirt upon
Benson's pouch-belt, and asked him in the most
bullying tone possible, "Why the devil he
appeared on parade so dirty?" Now, to call
Bill Benson dirty, was something like accusing
Coutts's or Glynn's of being insolvent. Benson
coloured, and replied respectfully enough that
he had not seen the spot of dirt: which, by the
way, was behind his shoulder, and not so big,
after all, as the size of a large pin's head. The
cornet told him to "hold his d—-d tongue,
and not to answer." Bill replied again, "I
thought you asked me a question, sir." The
man standing next to Bill began to titter at
this, and the cornet ordered both men to the
guard-room, where they were confined all night,
In the morning, they were brought up before
the commanding officer, charged with insolent
conduct in the ranks. The colonel was
a good officer and a man of judgment; he at