the word dandy, which succeeded buck and
blood, and has been succeeded by swell?
Again, is not dandy an English corruption of
Dundee, the seat of this said canvas
manufacture? Perhaps some correspondent of
Notes and Queries will take the subject up.

There must be some very curious statistics,
if they could be hunted out, on flax and
hemp manufacture. Cotton has taken the
place of flax for many garments, and so has
woollen; and all three have been mixed. Yet
there is more flax, more hemp, and more
wool consumed than ever, in consequence of
certain trade compensations. The flax
employed for the sails of the ships set afloat by
the raw cotton and manufactured cotton
trades, must be nearly equal to the amount
displaced in shirts and shifts. The canvas
sheeting for covering bales required by
increased foreign trade must have risen to a
very formidable item in the last twenty-five
years; and if in racing England, light woollen
has taken the place of drill for trousers, the
owners of the trousers have created new
outlets for white cool drills at the Antipodes.
Scarcely a year has passed since war
interrupted the supply of Russian flax and hemp,
but already new supplies and new materials
are flowing in. India begins to be especially
rich in substitutes for hemp and flax. Jute
is one of the comparatively new materials;
it is a sort of hemp, inferior in strength, but
more of a cotton character, and is much and
skilfully used in Scotland.

THE REGIMENTAL MARKET.

AMONG the orators who have been flourishing
lately at agricultural meetings, there was
a clergyman who propounded the opinion (as
one that could not be controverted) that our
regimental system was as near perfection as
possible. Without stopping to enquire what
the reverend gentleman's opportunities may
have been of forming such a conclusion, I
shall proceed to state what my own
experience is. Having been upwards of ten years
an officer in a light dragoon regiment, I may
perhaps know nearly as much of the subject
as the reverend orator.

Why I entered the service I can hardly
define. I had no particular glow of military
ardour. It might have been because several
"men" of sixteen, or so, who were my
schoolfellows at a fashionable public school,
intended to join the army; or, more likely,
because of the glorious privilege of wearing a
uniform bedizened with gold lace; but, most
likely of all, because of the alternative my
father placed before me of either purchasing
a commission, being made sole master of five
hundred a-year besides my pay, and started
with good horses in a well-known regiment;
or of going to college, working for a degree,
and then entering the Middle Temple, to bore
my brains with law.

The choice was rapidly made, and my
name was put down at the Horse Guards for
a commission.

Commissions were very difficult to be had
in those days, even by purchase; and, after
waiting about a year and a half, and tormenting
my father to write almost every month
to the county member, and the different
general officers with whom he was acquainted,
I received formal official intimation from the
military secretary of the commander-in-chief,
that, upon paying the sum of eight hundred
and forty pounds to Messrs. So-and-so the
army agents, my name would be recommended
to her Majesty for a commission of cornet, in
the light dragoons.

Thus I was appointed to the army, not on
account of any merit of my own; not because
I was either morally or physically suited
for it; not because I knew one iota of the
profession; but first, because my father had
interest enough to get me a commission; and
secondly, because he had money enough to
pay eight hundred and forty pounds for it.

About two months after seeing my name
in the Gazette as a cornet of light dragoons,
I joined the head quarters of the regiment,
which were stationed at a manufacturing
town in the north of England. For the
first four months I was kept pretty close
to the barrack-yard, having to learn all
the various drills and exercises. It is an
extraordinary anomaly that young officers
should be taught all their duties after, and
not before, they join a regiment. I have
often seen a recently appointed cornet learning
to ride in the school—bumping round
without stirrups, continually and not gently
bullied by the riding-master, and much
laughed at by the men—who, a few hours
afterwards, was in command of a troop, or
part of a troop at stable duties, the minutiae
of which he knew less about than the horses
the dragoons were grooming. I defy the
men over whom such a youth ought to exercise
authority, to have much respect for a lad
who does not know the accidence of his
profession, and has to learn before their
eyes what all of them know perfectly, and
what many of them knew before he was born.

I got through my riding-school and drill
in about six months; and, in three more,
could take command of a troop on a field-day,
without making many more mistakes than
my neighbours. With this knowledge I
began to take a certain degree of interest
in my profession, and, had I met with encouragement
from my seniors, might have
turned out a tolerably good soldier. But, in
the light dragoons, as in almost every arm of
the service, it was considered vulgar and
intolerable to speak upon any subject connected
with duty. The lieutenant-colonel commanding
the corps was the younger scion of a noble
house, who had, by great interest and a large
outlay of money, risen to his present position
in a very few years. He seemed to consider
his regiment his own private property, and