THE BRITISH GRENADIER.
WHAT is the British Army to look like, now that "the Clothing Colonel" has been extinguished ? The question naturally excites some anxiety in conservative minds, who fear that the respectable automaton which is red in its upper half and white or black in its lower half, which moves with such precision and so respectably fills the upright coffin called a sentry-box, is to be succeeded by some wild and weird hordes altogether alien to our ideas of re- gularity and discipline. But the Guards have won victories with- out their pigtails, and may perhaps prevail without pipeclay. It might be a dangerous experiment to substitute white for red in the national flag or in the prevalent colour of the British Army ; but after all, it is not the tailor makes the man in the military sense. As we have before said, in most countries, and at most times, the costume of the soldier has sprung from the prevalent national costume of the day, adapted to the particular wants of a peculiar life, and to the desire for setting forth the physical qualities of the military profession as strongly as possible. It is the desire to puke men look square in the shoulders and compact in the hips— in other words, to look as manly as possible—which has suggested epaulettes and coats or jackets fitting tightly to the frame. A cold country, and a rainy one to boot, suggests the necessity of a coat which fits closely under the chin ; service in a hotter climate has on the other hand suggested an adaptation of that clothing for freer ventilation ; and there is no reason why both objects should not be attained in the same jacket. But amongst us at the present day a new element has been in- troduced into the fashioning of civil clothes, and therefore into the basis of all costume. Modern improvements in industry have promoted division of employments; a strict application of com- mercial principles has dictated the cutting down of price, but still more the cutting down of original cost, so as to compete in what seems the" cheapest market" for the purchaser and yet to buy in a cheaper market of labour. Of all prize vegetables, none, we conceive, has been cultivated to more gigantic proportions than the tailor's cabbage ; yet it is not only in the saving of cloth—it is also in the saving of labour. Clothes at the present day are es- sentially made not to fit the wearer, but to fit the arrangements of the vendor. There is a tendency in our civil costume more and more to assimilate to slop clothing—to make any man wear a coat which might fit any other man about his size ; and thus human beings are converted into imaginary creatures of the great tailoring establishments. At one time we used to laugh at the pictures of the "fashions" for their remote resemblance to the human race ; but now-a-days the sarcastic tailor might point to the picture and say that he has made the human race conform to his portraiture. Upon the whole, the soldier of all days and times has contrived to look well—to have something of a dignified fierceness about him : the Greek, whose half-naked frame was able to wield the shield and sword, to use the bow and spear with activity while he made most of the portable defence ; the Roman, who added to the body armour, shortened the sword, and cultivated a closer combat; the mounted warrior of the middle ages, who hacked at the rabble that could not penetrate either his privilege or his coat of steel; the jerkined bowyers of the Plantagenets, or the cuirassed and booted warriors of the Stuart wars,—in these types of soldiery, and many more, we have an infinite variety, but always a manly and martial aspect ; and all constructed the military costume on the national basis, adapted to the use of their weapons and of their limbs. In our day, however, with the accumulated resources and require- ments of many ages, we put new trials upon the soldier. The British "private" is expected in the charge of bayonets to possess the personal vigour and audacity of the Roman, whose general told him to cut close into the face of his enemy ; he must fall in with the celerity of the march which Charles the Twelfth taught to the armies of Europe ; he must exercise the accuracy and sharp look-out which were wont to be exclusively exacted from the rifleman ; and with all these things, he must keep the dogged steadiness which the British soldier has displayed at all times. He wants therefore sound heart, the easy command of his limbs and of his senses, and minimized burdens. The robe which suits the Arab would be to him not ease but encumbrance ; the stock, which does well enough on parade in a cold day in St. James's, hinders his eyesight with swelling veins, and checks the free bend of his body. It does not follow, however, that laxity and ease are identical. No two men require more freedom of limb than the batman on the cricket-ground, or the harlequin of the pantomime ; yet both are closely dressed. A compact dress, too, sets forth best the manly proportions of a picked corps. We have no wish, therefore, to see imported into the British Army a general assortment of antiquated doublets, like those which make the Middlesex Militia resemble the Shoe-black Brigade promoted, nor the bornous of the mounted Arab ; but we are quite sure that the remodelled British soldier needs be as little different from the British soldier that we have known, as the man is when his limbs are stiff with freezing cold or freed by vigorous action. An up- right, well-built, compactly-clothed man, in a red coat, should still be the model of the British soldier.
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