and can be, on the very battle-field, as full
of tenderness and genuine refinement as any
well-bred Lady Doris, who, in May Fair,
"lulls the sultry hours away." Who does
not wish good wives and mothers to such
men? Who does not feel that as the men
are, so may the women be; that where the
man is true-hearted and gentle, it is not in
the nature of the woman to be otherwise than
faithful and discreet?

But we know well that the character which
attaches too generally, as a stain, to the private
soldier's wife, is one that shamefully belies
her nature and the nature of her sex. We
know how this comes to pass. It is the
public policy of this country to debase the
wife of the common soldier, for the direct
purpose of making marriage odious in his
eyes. We, as a nation, are too virtuous to
say this in so many words; but we do say it
in a great many more words, and proclaim it
by our public policy. It is not thought to be
desirable that soldiers should marry: they
have little pay, and cannot afford the luxury
of any semblance of a home. Domestic ties,
it has hitherto been thought, unfit them
for their duty. Is this true? Surely that
last dark fancy is dispersed for ever by the
light we get out of the soldiers' letters, which
have been published by thousands during the
last six months. It is evident now, if it was
ever anything but clear, that home thoughts
and affections are predominant in men who
win most honour by their courage on a
scene of war. The military legislator knows
nothing whatever of the spirit of an
Englishman, who thinks him more likely to
fight well as an animal than as a man
loving his home and his country; whose
heart is directed, after the English fashion,
upon at least one strong feeling of domestic
love. The soldier will but fight the better,
when he is the hero up to the height of
whose daring, wife and child look with an
enthusiasm greater than they feel for any
Agamemnon who has had his centuries of
praise. He will not be a coward in the
sight of those who can pay him out of all
their love ten thousand times more richly than
his country can pay him for every sacrifice he
makes, and every great deed he does. He
will, for the sake of the unstinted recompense
his home affords,—for the sake of a proud
flash in his mother's eyes, of a wife's
trembling and admiring wonder,—be a lion
in the field, and he will take care also to show
the lion's generosity and to keep his soul
pure from the filth and villainy that have,
ere now, belonged to the vocation of the
soldier. For the work he does, are they not
pure-minded women whose reward he has to
earn?

We are sure, then, that the English private
soldier is improved in quality by the possession
of a decent and an honourable domestic
tie. The question of economy alone remains.
Under the present system by—which soldiers'
wives are systematically and purposely
converted into " drabs"—they are excluded as a
body from almost all means of aiding their
husbands in the establishment of anything
like home. There are, indeed, in almost every
regiment, some well-conducted women, who,
by acting as servants to officers' wives,—by
taking in washing, and in other little ways,—
render themselves helps rather than burdens
to their husbands. These women either have
borne up with a rare strength of character
against debasing influences, or they have
been protected from them by the help of
husbands gifted with unusual tact and self-
denial.

The rule is against them. Great men who
mould the fortunes of the little men in
military life, declare against purity in woman;
and, well knowing that her virtues open
fairest in the shade, contrive their destruction
by a process of exposure that we will
not venture to describe in our own words.
A sympathising lady—wife of an army
surgeon—who has often pleaded their cause with
the public,—in a little Plea for Soldiers'
Wives, recently published, states the case
thus:—" A young woman of highly moral and
respectable character,—perhaps a farmer's
daughter, or the servant of a family in good
social position,—marries, with the consent of
the commanding officer, a private in a
regiment stationed in a provincial town. She
has then a right to live in barracks; that is,
the young married woman is allowed to
occupy with her husband a sleeping room
common to several other persons,—soldiers,
single and married,—without the slightest
protection to her feelings of womanly decency
or religious habits. Appalled at the position
in which she finds herself placed, her ears
assailed on every side by ribaldry and
blasphemy, the woman perhaps sits down and
weeps; while one who has passed through
agony such as hers now is, in earlier days,
draws near, jests at her condition, and
recommends her to try the soothing influence of the
dram-shop. The poison does its work; the
poor creature's sensibilities are dulled; she
now endures the horror of her position,
and, day by day, becomes more indifferent
to it."

No day could be more fit than the present
for putting aside the public indifference to
this disgrace upon our barrack system. Vast
barracks are to be built at Aldershott, and
other new barracks on a scale hitherto
unknown to us, are, we believe, designed in
other places. We have dwelt upon the
position of soldiers' wives rather fully in a
former volume of this journal; * but we feel it
to be a duty to renew our urgent appeal on
their behalf now, when the greatest curse
under which they suffer is, in the building of
these new barracks, to be strengthened and
perpetuated, or to be removed. It is for the

* Volume iii., page 561.