MILITARY POLICY AND INSTITUTIONS OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE.
[TO TRY EDITOR Cl THE "SPECTATOR."]
SIR,—With reference to your notices of Major Pasley's work, perhaps the following extract from a letter written by Jane Austen to her sister• Cassandra, January 1813, may interest some of your readers :—
"My mother is very well. . . . We quite run over with books. She has got Sir John Carr's "Travels in Spain," and I am reading a society octavo, an "Essay on the Military Police and Institu- tions of the British Empire," by Captain Pasley of the Engineers, a book which I protested against at first, but which upon trial I find delightfully written and highly entertaining. I am as much in love with the author as I was with Clarkson or Buchanan, or even the two Mr. Smiths of the city. The first soldier I ever sighed for; but he does write with extraordinary force and spirit."
We may cap our cor•r•espondent's timely quotation with two
others from the same volume : " And what are their Biglands and their Barrows, their Macartneys and Mackenzies, to Captain Pasley's essays on the Military Police [Policy] of the British Empire and the Rejected Addresses ?" (end of the letter quoted by Mr. Boyd) ; and " I detest a quarto. Captain Pasley's book is too good for their society. They will not understand a man who condenses his thoughts into an octavo" (letter to Cassandra, Feb. 1813). Pasley was evidently much in Jane Austen's mind just then. Her whimsical humour cannot hide her admiration of the soldier-philosopher.—En. Spectator.]
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