Iittrarti ettnutup.
CHANGE IN A. RECRUIT, AND WHY.—A year or two passes, and you meet the same lad again—if indeed ho is the same. For a strange change has come over him : he walks erect, he speaks clearly, he looks you boldly in the face, with eyes full of intelligence and self-respect ; he is become civil and courteous now ; he touches his cap to you " like a soldier " ; he can af- ford now to be respectful to others, because he respects himself, and expects you to respect him. You talk to him, and find that the change is not merely outward, but inward ; not owing to mere mechanical drill, but to something which has been going on in his heart ; and, ten to one, the first thing that he begins to talk to you about, with honest pride, is his regiment. His re- giment ! Yes, there is the secret which has worked these wonders; there is the talisman which has humanized and civilized and raised from the mire the once savage boor. He belongs to a regiment; in one word, he has be- come the member of a body. The member of a body, in which if one mem- ber suffers, all eider with it; if one member be honoured, all rejoice with it. A body, which has a life of its own, and a government of its own, a duty of its own, a history of its own, an allegiance to a sovereign, all which are now his life, his duty, his history, his allegiance : he does not now merely serve himself and his own selfish lusts—he serves the Queen. His nature is not changed, but the thought that he is the member of an honourable body has raised him above his nature. If he forgets that, and thinks only of himself, be will become selfish, sluttish, drunken, cowardly, a bad soldier ; as long as he remembers it, he is a hero. He can face mobs now, and worse than mobs : he can face hunger and thirst, fatigue, danger, death itself, because he is the member of a body. For those know little, little of human nature and its weakness, who fancy that mere brute courage, as of an angry lion, will ever avail, or availed a few short weeks ago, to spur our thousands up the steeps of Alma, or across the fatal plain of Balaklays, athwart the corpses of their comrades, upon the deadly throats of Russian guns. A nobler feel- ing, a more heavenly thought was needed, (and when needed, thanks to God, it came,) to keep each raw lad, nursed in the lap of peace, true to his coun- try and his Queen through the valley of the shadow of death. Not mere animal fierceness ; but that tattered rag which floated above his head, in- scribed with the glorious names of Egypt or Coruna, Toulouse or Waterloo, that it was which raised him into a hero. He had never seen those vic- tories; the men who conquered there were dead long since ; but the regi- ment still lived, its history still lived, its honour lived ; and that history, that honour, were his, as well as those old dead warriors' ; he had fought side by side with them in spirit, though not in the flesh; and now his turn was come, and he must do as they did, and for their sakes, and count his own life a worthless thing for the sake of the body to which he belonged ; he, but two years ago the idle, selfish country lad, now stumbling cheerful on in the teeth of the iron hail, across ground slippery with his comrades' blood, not knowing whether the next moment his own blood might not swell the ghastly stream. What matter ? They might kill him, but they could not kill the regiment ; it would live da and conquer ; ay, and should conquer, if his life could help on its victory ; and then its honour would be his, its reward be his, even when his corpse lay pierced with wounds, stiffen- ing beneath a foreign sky.—.King8ley's Sermons for the Times.
EFFECTS OF STEAM ON SEAMANSHIP.—A steam voyage is no school for seamanship. A young officer may cross the Atlantic half-a-dozen times, and never see a manceuvre beyond the simplest routine. An enterprising youth, ambitious of distinction in his profession, might study seamanship with more advantage on the pier at Hungerford. Through the charm of a few magical sentences—' ease her," back her,' stop her," turn ahead,'—a kind of ma- rine abracadabra,—all the feats of nautical skill and science aro now per- formed by any man who has the average ability of a cabman. As regards the seamanship of the service, the delight of the thing is gone; the interest is quenched by the utter simplicity and facility of the task Formerly the conversation in the ward-room was of winds and currents, of the pro- spects of the voyage, the progress of the ship. Now all this is at an end. The huge steamer gets under way ; officers devoutly pray for a foul wind, to save bother with the sails; the course is given—' turn ahead' ; the good ship proceeds on her steady, undeviating track, and the most enthusiastic seaman is beat by the monotony of the thing. 'What is she doing ? ' 'Eight and a half, and I think it's going to rain.' The nautical conversation can get no further, and is given up. The crew, to divert their minds from mischief, are kept labouring in vain to scrub the great blackamoor white ; and, as far as seamanship is concerned, the whole vehicle might just as well be an omnibus.—Cambridge Essays.
CHARACTERISTICS or RUSSIAN Max.—Russia is the incarnation of en- croaching and conquering absolutism. She is the chief branch and the so- knowledged head of the great Sclavonian race. The fundamental principle of her government is that of arbitrary power and autocratic will. Her self- appointed mission is that of territorial aggrandizement and despotic propa- gandism. She has no elements of civil liberty in her institutions. Her people, whether nobles or peasants, are alike serfs. Her administration is notoriously at once the most corrupt and the most oppressive in the world— worse than that of Turkey, inasmuch as it is more systematic, more power- ful, more universally penetrating, and better organized. Liberty of thought and liberty of action are alike proscribed. No citizen may leave the country even for a time without paying for the permission to do so. No citizen may resent or resist official tyranny or extortion without the prospect of dying by the knout, or being exiled to the snows and mines of Siberia. What civili- zation is suffered to exist is only that of manner and of luxury : it can only be superficial, because if it went deeper—if it included cultivation of the intellect or the conscience—it would be dangerous to the established bar- barism. A supreme authority—iron in its rigid severity, leaden in its be- numbing weight—presses upon all the springs of a better life. Such at least is the notion of Russia which is rooted in the minds of our people, and indeed of all the Liberals of Europe.—Narth British Review.
FIRST SPELLING.—In tracing the genealogy of the Fielding., it is observ- able that the name was originally spelt Feilding. The elder branch of the family have preserved up to this day the same orthography. It is related of the novelist, that being once in the company of the Earl of Denbigh, his lordship was pleased to observe that they were both of the same family, and
asked the reason why they spelt their names differently. cannot tell, my lord; replied the wit, unless it be that my branch of the family were the first that knew how to spell:—Lawrence's Life of Fielding.
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