This disinterested testimony to the character of Lord Raglan, so much misrepresented and abused, has become valuable, indicating the estimation in which he was held by such a man as Napier. It is gratifying to find that both Lord Fitzroy aud the Duke were equally sensible of the high qualities of the latter. Napier, indeed, was ready for any emergency, and always entered into every duty and every enterprise with the same energy and goodwill. Such a nature as his could not contemplate the misery and suffering prevailing around him without the deepest sympathy, and his letters of the period are all pervaded by a generous compassion for the poor; but, at the same time, he adopted every precaution for the preservation of the public peace, and even drew out his plans for ulterior operations, in the event of the Chartists endeavouring to carry their mad designs into effect. He found able coadjutors in two of his subordinates, Colonels Wemyss and Hew Ross. He thus compares the latter with Belted Will Howard :"The belted man had however only to contend with border hordes, Hew Ross, who is as good a soldier as he, has to guard against men whose object is to gain their just rights, and are only wrong because they cast away their real strength-reason." His consideration for the poor was ever breaking out-"I like Nottingham: the poor people are good, and were they fairly treated, they would be perfectly quiet. Thank God, we have had no row, and not a drop of blood has been spilled. The gentlemen here are so good as to give me credit for this, which I am not sure of deserving, save from my great desire to prevent mischief. They are here generous to the poor, and do much; but it will not do the rich manufacturers are too hard a set." These opinions he did not keep to himself, but communicated to persons in authority, as the result of his personal observations, and not thinking, in the honesty of his intentions, that the truth could give offence. But he appears to have received a friendly admonition, which was not without effect. "Lord Fitzroy and Lord Hill," he says, 66 are very cautious, they do not like the least political opinion being expressed, and I will not expose myself to a second hint. But how an officer holding my high situation can do his duty without forming opinions, and decided ones, on the state of the country, is not easy to say.'

Amidst the harass and distractions of his command, while he cherished the sentiments of a patriot, and discharged his duties as a soldier, he never lost sight of his obligations and natural feelings as a parent. The "two spiritual fountains" were still playing in his bosom, mingling their jets in one basin, and thus they chastened and corrected each other. His journal on April the 6th contains this entry :"Walked out with my two merry, little, affectionate girls: I fear they are idols, but cannot help it: the godly tell us we must have no idols. Perhaps they are right; but for all that, fathers and mothers will have them, and I have no idea of being singular in that respect."

In April, 1841, Napier established himself at Calvelly Hall, an ancient place, where he dreamt of passing the remainder of his days with his two children. But his life was yet to be occupied by great events, big with import to his country. Scarcely had he taken possession of his new residence, when he was offered an appointment on the Indian staff, and consulting his brother William as to his acceptance of it,

received the characteristic counsel to go if he felt a call for such a service; if not, to remain at home. Of course, he felt a call, when there was work to be done, and a head and hand wanted to do it; and, as we all know, he went accordingly.

He arrived in India in the height of the excitement caused by our disasters at Cabul. Lord Ellenborough, whose discerning eye at once singled him out, applied for his advice in this conjuncture, and elicited from him a very able paper in reference to the course that ought to be followed. It was not Napier's fortune to be employed in Affghanistan, but he found a sphere more worthy of his genius in Scinde. Here, though poor as Job, he fairly astonished the natives by refusing a present of £6,000, offered to him by the Ameers, who had been wholly unaccustomed to such probity on the part of British officials; and the impression thus made was heightened by the equitable spirit he invariably manifested. Even on the march, he would permit no excess, either in his soldiers or officers; and his rigour on this point is exhibited in the following characteristic order, on the subject of hard riding :

"Gentlemen as well as beggars may, if they like, ride to the devil when they get on horseback; but neither gentlemen nor beggars have a right to send other people there, which will be the case if furious riding be allowed in camp or bazaar. The major-general calls the attention of all the camp to the orders of Lieutenant-Colonel Wallace, 18th ult., and begs to add, that he has placed a detachment of horse at Captain Pope's orders, who will arrest any offender; and Captain Pope will inflict such fine or other punishment as the bazaar regulations permit. This order is to be published through the cantonments by beat of drum for three successive days, and Captain Pope is not empowered to let any one off punishment, because, when orders have been repeated and not obeyed it is time to enforce them without obedience an army becomes a mob, a cantonment a bear-garden. The enforcement of obedience is like physic-not agreeable, but at times very necessary."

The memorable desert expedition, terminated by the destruction of Emaum Ghur, the stronghold of the Ameers, was, perhaps, the most remarkable military operation of modern times. Sir William Napier compares it with the desert march of Marius against Jugurtha's town of Capsa, and the illustration is happy and forcible. Wellington struck off its points with his usual telling brevity. "Sir Charles Napier's march on Emaum Ghur," said the great Duke, "is one of the most curious military feats which I have ever known to be performed, or have ever perused an account of in my life. He moved his troops through the desert against hostile forces; he had his guns transported under circumstances of extreme difficulty, and in a manner the most extraordinary, and he cut off a retreat of the enemy, which rendered it impossible for them ever to regain their position."

On the 18th of February, 1843, was fought the famous battle of Meanee, which raised the English name in India to its highest point of glory, and, in its results, added to our dominion a noble territory. History records few battles so distinctive in their features, and won under circumstances so eminently adverse. The force of the enemy,

composed of the flower of a brave nation, was twenty times the strength of the assailants; and, moreover, was strongly intrenched; but Napier, now sixty years of age, and not exempt from the ills which such an epoch is heir to, made no scruple of attacking them, and achieved an unparalleled victory. His whole career in Scinde is a memorable passage in our Indian annals. Its conquest by arms was glorious, but, in our estimation, it was surpassed by its conquest through peace-by the wise, uncompromising, incorruptible administration, which, after so much contention, brought the subdued Ameers to offer a tribute of admiration and gratitude to their conqueror. What was a pension or what a peerage in comparison with such a testimony from a vanquished enemy? But neither peerage nor pension would Napier accept, unless as a reparation from the East India Company, which he had so faithfully served, and by which he was so shamefully used. General Outram, who is now a favourite, but whose part in these transactions appears to have been very equivocal, may one day experience similar treatment. Meanwhile, what we read here does not impress us with any high expectations of his destiny.

Our remarks must now close; yet it would be unfair to withhold acknowledgment of the genius and diligence which, rising superior to the calls of advancing years, of domestic afflictions, and, if rumour speaks truly, of delicate health, has given to the world these entertaining volumes, and to the army so faithful a portraiture of one of its ornaments. But the highest compliment we can pay to Sir William Napier is to say that he has realised the idea with which he set out, and given us "the story of a man who never tarnished his reputation by a shameful deed of one who subdued distant nations by his valour, and then governed them so wisely, that English rule was reverenced and loved, where before it had been feared and execrated!" And now we await its conclusion.

:

S. W. F.

A FEW REMARKS ON VOLUNTARY ENLISTMENT AND ARMIES OF RESERVE.

BY AN OFFICER OF THE ROYAL ARTILLERY.

THE palpable failure of voluntary enlistment, under existing regulations, to fill our ranks with eligible recruits during the late war, seems likely to give rise to many suggestions for preventing the recurrence of similar inconvenience in future. It would seem, however, to be forgotten in this, as in many other instances, that the circumstances under which this failure took place were in a great measure of an exceptional character; and that there were elements, with regard to the publicity of everything connected with the army and the character of its operations, which had never existed on any former occasion, and which cannot be omitted in the consideration of anything connected with the subject now.

The presence of newspaper correspondents at the seat of war is one

of these. Although that innovation may have been attended with many advantages which the country, having once enjoyed, would have been unwilling to part with, and which it may have been fortunate for the army, as it so happened, were allowed to have weight, it could not, under all the circumstances of the case, have been countenanced and permitted without some detriment to recruiting. As long as operations in the field are attended with no extraordinary amount of suffering, or rather, it may be said, while that which exists and which is usually attendant on war is lost sight of in the occurrence of stirring and glorious events, newspaper correspondents can do little or no harm. On the contrary, the vivid descriptive powers of these professional writers applied to the varied scenes of active campaigning, and to those encounters with the enemy which, however bloody and fatal they may be, only fire the imaginations and excite the enthusiasm of the young and the enterprising, tend greatly to animate rather than in the least degree to check the military ardour of recruits. There is generally a great deal of glory, and much to attract and interest the minds of men in such details. The glowing descriptions of the soldier's life on active service, the change of scene, and the excitement which accompanies it, together with the mention of individual acts of heroism, unnoticed in more formal despatches-all these have their stimulating effects alike upon the army in the field and upon the population at home. The former is incited to great deeds, under the full knowledge that such deeds will be made known and receive a world-wide circulation; while the military spirit of the latter is stirred and excited to its very depths by the exploits of the army daily recounted to it when judgment and patriotism, and an absence of maudlin sensibility (springing from an ignorance of the real nature of war and the suffering more or less inseparable from it) direct and animate those who have the responsible task of recording these narratives. It is a question whether, under these circumstances, the instances in which mischief may result from publicity are not infinitely overbalanced by the good obtained. This is, however, only the favourable side of the picture, and the case is altogether reversed in some respects when a campaign takes a course like that in the Crimea― when there is nothing to chronicle about an army but its sickness, its misery, and its suffering-when the scene of its action is confined to a dreary plateau in the midst of a severe winter-and when its contests with the enemy are of an isolated and unimportant nature— the gaining of some few feet of ground for a fresh trench or battery, or in the repulse of some feeble sortie; when, in fact, there is nothing to animate description or to act upon the national pride, but, on the contrary, everything to alarm and depress it.

It is in this state of things, even if everything else is well managed, that newspaper writers become dangerous, and when they should either show discretion, or the general in command sufficient firmness to drive them from the army.

Men will be found in abundance willing enough, under fair en couragement, to come forward as soldiers, and to take their chance of wounds or death, if, in addition, there is a fair prospect of glory and

ir to be obtained; but no one, with a will of his own and discreo guide it, will care to take service with an army the authorities ich are held up as incapable, and in which intense suffering and ipated disaster are made to appear the most prominent features. his was set forth and described by practised writers for a long od during the late war, and became the fireside reading of every ige in England.

is no wonder, then, under such circumstances, that voluntary stment failed; and it would be absurd in us to meet such an extional case and such a combination of unhappy events as may never ur again, to make radical and sweeping changes in our military titutions, or to throw discredit upon voluntary enlistment, without iving to carry it out in a better manner than we have yet done. e half of the money squandered and wasted upon foreign legions, d which yielded no beneficial results whatever, if properly applied, ould have enabled the Secretary for War to have made something ore than an empty boast of our free institutions, and the absence of e press-gang for our navy, or of the ballot for the militia. We ould not have been driven to enlist mere boys, who sickened and ed as fast as they were sent out to the seat of war; or men with ckets of leave, to disgrace the soldier and lower the profession in the yes of the country up to the present moment. There was more misanagement in this, and more discredit, than in anything between Balaklava and Sebastopol, although somehow or other less has been aid about it. A blue book to show how much we paid for foreigners, vho never drew a sword or pulled a trigger in our behalf, would show how much we might have done in encouraging Englishmen to come forward to fight their own battles, and saving the disgrace, in a popular war, of handing them over to other people. In the early stages of the war, and even after accounts first reached home from the Crimea, bad as the soldier's prospects were if he became wounded or disabled, recruits were not wanting. The popularity of the war and the enthusiasm engendered by it, as well as the consideration shown to the military profession, even in its lowest grades, which was almost entirely deceptive and temporary, made men thoughtless as to other risks. was only when action with the enemy ceased, and the press teemed with such accounts as made all England stand aghast with mingled feelings of shame and horror, that men began to reflect and to count their chances; and it was then that voluntary enlistment, based on miserable and penurious principles, doling out to the disabled soldier a bare subsistence, failed. The country saw where the defect lay, and hence the patriotic fund, and a host of other private subscriptions, to make it good.

It

It is, however, the Government that must take up this matter, if voluntary enlistment is to be maintained in time of war. It is our pension warrant, and not our mode of enlistment, that requires revision. The man who is wounded so as to make life (short of the natural instinct for it which all possess) more a burden than an enjoyment to him, must have a liberal provision made for him in the broadest and not in the narrowest sense of the word; and no man who