lined hedgerows of fir and silver beech, "was
nothing than but waste land; no road that
you could call a road, not a house within
two miles, nor nothing that you would care
to look at. Now, you see, there's a church and
a parish school where the labourers' children
get edwicated, and a parsonage house, and
a post-office—and everything comfortable all
about. Ah! he's done a deal of good, he has.
He lives down here altogether now and makes
plenty of work for them that wants it."

At this point, when his communications
were waxing more circumstantial, my
companion suddenly checked himself; an
obnoxious thought had intruded and froze the
genial current of his soul. He turned round
and abruptly said:

"I don't know who you may be, sir; but I
haven't got no license for taking passengers
in my cart."

Did I look like an informer? I put my
looks to the test.

"What's your name?" I asked, pulling out
my pocket-book, and moistening the tip of
the pencil.

"Dipple," he answered, with a forced,
hysterical, mock-merry bravado.

"Christian name?"

"John."

"John Dipple, of Chobham?" I repeated
slowly, "not licensed to— "

"I say, master," he interrupted, getting
very red—that is to say, much redder—in
the face, " you don't mean to——." He could
not bring the words out; but fixed his blue
eyes on me and stared with all his might.

I laughed; and it then dawned upon Mr.
Dipple's mind that I had been joking with
him; but I still further relieved his anxiety,
by confessing to a by-gone occupation, which
furnished me with something like a reason
for the errand I was now upon.

"And so, sir, you've been in the army,"
observed Dipple; "and in foreign parts, I
daresay?"

I confessed to certain colonies, naming
North America.

"Now, sir," said he after having digested
the question he meditated for full five minutes—
"you can tell me whether they have any
laws out there—I mean, protected by 'em, as
we are?"

John Dipple! John Dipple! The parish
school which we have just passed was
certainly not built when you were a boy. I
strove to make it clear to him that the laws
of England were of equal application in the
colonies as at home—a fact which seemed
to give him some trouble to comprehend;
chiefly, I suppose, in relation to distance, or it
might be, colour—the popular notion at
Chobham probably being that the American
colonists are blacks.

With a few more brilliant queries on his
part and satisfactory answers on mine, the
remainder of the distance was beguiled. Mr.
Dipple deposited me on the common, and then
turned his horse's head towards Chertsey, in
the expectation—with no further dread of
the excise—of picking up one or two more
pedestrians bound on the same errand as
myself.

The aspect of the heath, on the fourth of
June was very different from what it has
since become. Then there were only two
or three hundred men—a few companies of
Sappers and Miners, and drafts from two
other regiments to furnish fatigue-parties.
A civilian could have made nothing of the
ground; the only signs of the forthcoming
encampment being the half-formed cavalry
stables to the right and left of the line, three
or four wells dotted here and there, and the
tents of the troops I have named, with a few
hangers-on, such as no camp can be without,
let the regulations say what they please. But
there were other evidences of something
toward, in the waggons that leisurely toiled
along the sandy road, laden with stable-
roofing, pickets for the horses, and other
necessary etcætera. The drivers of these
waggons, when they took their receipts to
be signed, invariably addressed the sergeant
on duty as "general," a rank which it was
not in military nature to repudiate; besides,
it made the teamster a happy man for the rest
of the day.

I traversed the ground in every direction,
but as what further befel me on my first
visit had little relation to the Camp as it
now is, I pass over the pleasant remainder
of the day, with the agreeable walk back to
Chertsey by a different road through some
of the prettiest lanes in England, and merely
bestow a word of grateful acknowledgment
on the cheap and excellent accommodation
which the Old Swan affords. I may, however,
observe, parenthetically, that this
accommodation has its limits; for on an after-
day, the eve of the Queen's first visit to the
Camp, the demand for roadsters so far
exceeded the supply that the aged ostler
observed to me in accents of reproach: "Blest
if I don't think that people fancies post-orses
grows on happle-trees!"

A second expedition in July, performed
by the road, showed me the Camp in full
array. There is no necessity, perhaps, for
beginning our inspection with the reveillé,
nor for continuing it until tattoo. "We will,
therefore, imagine the first trumpet-call that
lias sent the cavalry to their stables, to the
tune of "Nancy Haly," and the rouse and turnout
of the bugles breaking, with less feminine
pleading, the slumbers of the infantry, and
mustering them for private parade in front
of their respective companies' tents. Let us
also imagine the morning parade over, the
men dismissed, breakfast over, the guards
mounted, and the various minor routine
duties gone through which occupy all troops
alike, whether in camp or in barracks. We
will even suppose that there has been a heavy
field-day the day before, and that the troops