remained with the sergeant. He did his duty. He walked up to the kneeling soldier, blew his brains out, and went back to his barracks desperate and reckless. Never, never more, was he to grasp the warm hand of a friend, never again to see his comrades' eyes brighten when he approached. He was a shunned, avoided man. Three days he bore it on the fourth he committed suicide. We submit that this is one of the most painful stories we have ever read. Even the end of the "Tale of Two Cities" is not more tragical.

:

But come, let us up and away to the Ghats with Mr. Dunlop.

"Far off the torrent called me from the cleft, Far up the solitary morning smote The streaks of virgin snow.'

Mr. Dunlop takes us up and on through the hills, leading from range to range, and giving us not only graphic and accurate descriptions of the various kinds of game to be killed, but also a highly interesting and important account of the manners and customs of our fellow-subjects in those wild regions. Her Majesty's lieges in those parts, we hear, are, in their social relations, not polygamists, but polyandrists,-the wife of one brother being common to the rest of the family; and we find, also, that this astonishing arrangement tends

to a great disproportion in the sexes. Mr. Dunlop found a village in which there were 400 boys and only 120 girls ; which he is not inclined to attribute to infanticide, but rather to nature adapting the supply to the demand. In these hills, also, the inhabitants are in the habit of getting drunk on surreptitiously-distilled whisky (a custom we have heard attributed to mountaineers rather nearer home than the Himalayas). Arriving at 8 P. M. at a village, he was informed that it was useless to attempt to see any one on business that night, as they all were, or ought to be, drunk. The women do all the work. As for the men, they toil not, but curious to relate, they do spin; in fact, they do nothing else, except get drunk. They go about with a yarn round their body, in a state of obfuscation, and spin away till they are too drunk to see. Taking it all in all, we should say that no state of society in the world approximates so closely to "Queer Street," as the higher ranges of the Himalayas.

And so, with many a pleasant story, and many a scrap of valuable information, we are led up over the dizzy snow slopes, and under the gleaming glaciers, into the Himachul, on the heads of the Sutledge in Thibet,-the land of everlasting snow, the haunt of the Ovis Ammon and the Bunchowr.

To a student of the Law in Chambers on a bright day in May, seeking for mental illumination by the "gladsome light of Jurisprudence," there will ensue. at times, after declarations and pleas duly drawn, and evidence advised upon, a decided distaste for "Chitty's Practice," to try to learn law out of which seems very like reading "Liddell and Scott" to learn Greek. His thoughts, perhaps, wander to his last Position-drill, (for of course he is a Volunteer,) and he tries doing a little drill at the same time, by reading, sitting on his right heel, "as a rear-rank kneeling;" which attempt proving both uncomfortable and unsuccessful, "Chitty's Practice" has to be transferred to the refractory heel for a connecting-link and cushion, and being taus fully occupied, cannot be any longer read. So by way of lighter reading, and in defiance of Chief Justice Wilmot's dictum that "the Statute-Law is like a "tyrant, where he comes he makes all "void; but the Common-Law is like a "nursing-father, and makes void only "that part where the fault is, and saves "the rest," he turns to an early volume of the Statutes, and remembering Mr. Froude's history of those times, opens at the reign of Henry VIII. to see if it is

possible to make out what a Volunteer of the 16th century did, and thought, and was like.

They are more than ever interesting now, those quaint picturesque old Statutes, belonging as they do to the turning-point of English history, after the death of the middle ages-times of as redundant external vigour and enterprise, and of greater change and development of "inner life," than even these times of railways and telegraphs; when the country had had half a century of comparative peace (as we have had since the French war), to recover from the civil wars which had destroyed at once the feudal aristocracy of the country and the weapons with which they fought.

The long-bow was slowly yielding to the "handgonne" and the "hagbut," as Brown-Bess has been driven out by the Enfield and the Whitworth.

Fondly and pertinaciously did the government of those days cling to the tradition that the strength of England was in the long-bow; and, when war and threatened invasion menaced from one or other of the two great empires of the Continent, passed act after act against the use of "crosbowes and hand-gonnes," and making constant practice with the long

bow compulsory upon "every man being "the King's subject within the age of "sixty years," adding minute directions for the supply of bows, and the erection of practice-butts in every village in the country.

In 1514 was passed a statute (confirming a previous one), enacting that "no person from henceforth shote in "any crosbowe, or any handgonne, un"less he have land and tenement to the "yerely value of 300 marke."

years later this shooting-qualification is reduced to £100 a year. In 1534 a special permission is granted, as a protection against their border enemies, to the inhabitants of the "Countrees of Nor"thumberland, Durisme, Westmerland, "and Comberland to kepe in their houses " crosbowes and handgonnes for defence "of theire persones goodes and houses "against Thefes Scottes, and other the

Kynge's enemies, and for clensing and "scouring of the same only, and for none "other purpose." A tacit admission this, that the long-bow was not the best weapon after all, and that the "thefes Scottes" required some more formidable weapon.

But, alas! Volunteers, in those days as well as in these, sometimes forgot their mission of "clensing and scouring the Kynge's enemies," and used their weapons for even worse purposes than "shooting the dog;" for in 1541 we find that "divers malicious and evil-disposed "persons of their malicious and evil-dis

"men, yeomen, servingmen, &c. to shote "with any hand-gune, demyhake, or "hagbut, at any butt or bank of earth "onlye, in place convenient for the same ".. wherebye they may the better ayde "and assist to the defence of this Realme "when nede shall require."

The first mention this, of butts for ball practice. But it seems they were not enough used, for again in 1548 we find an act, described in the Act of William III. (which repealed it,) as forbidding any one "under the degree of a Lord of the Parliament to shote any more pellets than one at any one time." It seems very hard that a Lord of Parliament's shoulder should have been subjected to the recoil of a charge of two bullets at once, and the "Statutes Unabridged," on being referred to, do not bear out the description. The Act is "againste the shootinge of hayleshote," and runs thus,-" Forasmuch

... as not onelye dwelling-houses, "dove-cotes and churches are daylye da"maged... by men of light conversacon, "but also there is growen a customable "manner of shotinge of hayle-shott, where'by infynite sorte of fowle . . . is killed "to the benefitt of no man.... Also the "sd use of hayle-shott utterly destroyeth "the certentye of shotinge which in

warres is much requisite, be it therefore "enacted that noe person under the

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degree of a lorde of the Parliament "shall from hencefore shoote with any "handgonne within any citie or towne at

any fowle or other marke upon any "church house or dove-cote; neither "that any person shall shote in anye place anye hayle-shott or anye moe pellotts (bullets) than one at one "tyme, upon payne to forfayte for everie "tyme tenne poundes, and emprisonment "of his bodye during three months."

But the churches were disturbed not only by "pellotts" from without, but (like our St. George's-in-the-East) by rioters from within. Nor were they (as there is good hope will be the case at St. George's,) to be calmed by the devotion and ability of one clergyman, understanding the wounded instincts of both sides, and dealing gently, and patiently,

and firmly with each. In 1552 sterner measures were needed; for we find that, "Forasmuch as of late divers and 66 many outrageous and barbarous beha"viours and acts have been used and "committed by divers ungodly and ir"religious persons by quarrelling, brawl"ing, fraying, and fighting openly in "Churches and Church-yards, it

is enacted that if the offence be by words only, the offender shall be excommunicated; but that "If any person "shall strike any person with any "weapon in Church or Church-yard, "or draw any weapon in Church or "Church-yard, to the intent to strike

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another, he shall be adjudged to have "6 one of his ears cut off. And if the person so offending have none ears whereby they should receive such a punishment, that then he or they "to be marked and burned in the "cheek with an hot iron having the "letter F therein, whereby he or they "may be known or taken for Fray"makers and Fighters."

It would be an endless, though not uninteresting, task to trace out all the Acts bearing upon topics so familiar to our own days; but there they areSewers Acts, Poison Acts, Wine-Licenses Acts, and what not.

The long-bow must soon have almost disappeared, for we find English artillery in the ships of Queen Elizabeth's captains superior beyond all comparison to any that could be brought against it, till, with our usual confidence and oversecurity, allowing it to be exported freely, Spanish ships came to be armed with English metal; and in 1601, in a debate on the subject, we find Sir Walter Rawleigh complaining, "I am sure hereto"fore one ship of Her Majesty's was able "to beat twenty Spaniards; but now, by "reason of our own ordnance, we are "hardly matched one to one"

Already half demoralized by such unlawful studies, how is a luckless lawstudent to resist when one fine morning there comes an offer from the war-office of a place in the volunteer class of musketry instruction at Hythe. There is nothing for it but to leave the briefs

unread on the table and go. Two or three hours travelling through the meadows and hop-grounds of Kent, and he is at the focus and head-quarters of the rifle movement, and the present nineteenth soon drives out all thought of the past sixteenth century. The town is filling fast with Volunteers, who come in by coach-loads after every train, and soon settle down into comfortable little lodgings in various parts of the town.

They muster for the first time, to the number of eighty, next morning on the parade-ground in front of the barracks, and are told off into nine squads or sections, grouped, as far as practicable, according to counties. The Scotchmen, (no longer "Thefes Scottes and Kynge's enemies,") take post on the right as section No. 1. Next come the Norfolk, Suffolk, and Cambridgeshire Middlesex, which sends a large quota, makes up, with Surrey and Sussex, Nos. 3 and 4. Devon, Cornwall, and Somerset, make up No. 5, and complete the right wing. In the left wing are four sections from the Midland, Northern, Southern, and South-eastern counties.

men.

It was a picturesque sight that morning, the nine many-coloured groups on the fresh-mown grass. In front of the barracks is a broad terrace of gravel, with a lawn sloping gently down from it towards the road, from which it is separated by a row of fine elms; and under their shade each squad is drawn up in line facing its Instructor, whose red coat stands out in pleasing contrast of colour against the bright green grass; while at the further end are a group or two of regulars, drilling one another and getting the "slang" by heart, under the auspices of the adjutant, and amongst them two or three magnificent figures in fez or turban, negroes and mulattoes from West India regiments.

Of the volunteers scarcely two uniforms are alike. Black or dark-green seems to have least to recommend it. It soon shows dirt and wear, is hotter in hot sun without being warmer in cold weather, and against most back-grounds is quite as visible as red, with a more clearly defined outline. Silver-lace, and

such tawdry ornamentation, soon gets shabby with Hythe use. Chains and whistles did not often appear, their only known use being to bring the dogs within easy range. On the whole, the least visible colour is the government brownish-grey. Everything depends upon the back-ground; and the background is more likely to be of that colour than of any other. Roads, beaches, sandy rock, dry fallows, &c., are more or less brownish-grey; and even under the greatest disadvantage, as when seen against light green, a body of grey men, lying still in long grass at six hundred or seven hundred yards distance, might easily be mistaken for a flock of sheep, or so many pieces of rock or stone.

On the other hand, it is quite an open question whether it is desirable to be so invisible. At first it was laid down that Volunteers were to act only as skirmishers, or as half-drilled irregular sharpshooters, resting on the regular troops for support. But their number now far exceeds that of the regular army present at one time at home, and in case of war and impending invasion would be increased three or fourfold at least, so that it is to be hoped we may count upon having on an emergency at least 300,000 well-trained Volunteers. Now 300,000 men extended in files at skirmishing distance, six paces, or five yards, apart, would form a line of skirmishers 426 miles in length. Supposing half this force to be not engaged, and of the remainder half, or 75,000, to form the reserves, and a quarter, or 37,500, to be in support, there would still remain a line of front always ready to face the enemy of 37,500 men, or more than fifty-three miles of skirmishers, capable of being reinforced or relieved at any point and at any moment-a force absurdly out of proportion to the numbers of the regulars in line. It is clear that, if all are to be available, they must be prepared to act exactly as regulars, to take any place and perform any evolution in the field of battle that may be required of them. And here is the use

of the old red-coat.

What a relief to

the volunteer officer, in the excitement of being under fire for the first time, and in the blinding smoke and confusion of the battle, to know that a red-coat covers a friend, and all other colours a foe! What a horrible suspense to await with cocked rifles the approach of a body of men with no distinctive appearance, some eager to fire on them, others as certain that they are friends; or if the right word (to fire or to cease firing,) has been given, each man forming his own opinion and acting upon it, in the consciousness (and this is our one weak point,) that his commander has little, if any, more intelligence and knowledge and experience than himself!

As to shape, the best is something looser than a tunic and closer-fitting than a blouse. The 6th Wiltshire is excellent; but about the best specimen is one that was made for the captain commanding the 19th Middlesex, but which he could not persuade his corps to adopt. Under this a man may wear (if he likes) as many waistcoats as George IV., and thereby avoid the inconvenience of a great coat. A desire to look smart and soldierlike has been the reason for many corps adopting the tight wadded tunic. Some have gone so far as to adopt the shape and fit of a boy's jacket, which really in a portly Briton looks too scanty for propriety.

Dandyism unfortunately bids fair to be almost as mischievous amongst volunteers as red-tape once was in the army, in the matter of uniform; and, as it is not likely to be extirpated in a hurry, it must be taken into account as an inevitable evil. But why does dandyism still crave after the Tight? One had hoped that the days of self-torture by means of tight coats, tight boots, and tight stocks were over. Are not the two loosest of modern dresses also the most graceful and becoming; namely, a lady's riding-habit, and a clergyman's surplice (the latter, at least, as worn by undergraduates, without hood or scarf or other incongruous symbol of mundane learning)?

The great diversity of dress might be a serious evil in the field. Could not a