"I shall be late on duty," said our hero, putting on his clothes. "You neglect it sadly, Sir." "I mean on parade, Madam." "I mean no matter where, Sir-parade. officers are more for show than actual service." Now our hero was not exempted by the law of Moses,* or any other law, from martial duty, nor do we think he wished for any such exemption. Filled with the glowing fire of heroism, and, perhaps, devoid of all conjugal fire (as two years are a pretty tedious matrimonial journey), he harnessed on his armour, and caparisoned his horse, which seemed to pant like himself for the onset, but proved a cursed sorry, scurvy, scabby jade in the end. *"What man is there that hath betrothed a wife, and hath not taken her? Let him go and return unto his house, lest he die in battle, and another man take her." Deut. c. xx. v. 7. CHAPTER VIII. "Ah me! what perils do environ "Of all his glories, a dog-trick.". Hudibras. OUR great man was now a general-thirty years of age; and entrusted with the charge of thirty thousand bodies-not souls;-no, he had unfrocked, that is, given over the cure of souls in this world, for that of sending them to their rendezvous in the next. It could not be denied that there were many older and wiser heads in the service, to whom the command would have been entrusted with much more propriety, and under whom our young colonel might have served an apprenticeship in the trade of war; but he spurned at the idea of being taught any thing by his friends, and he was too soon taught a trick or two by his enemies. There were enough of plain, roughhewn veterans who had given proofs of their capacities to form, and resolution to execute, the greatest military designs; as well as of their penetration to discover, and activity to defeat, the deepest machinations. These men were soldiers, and, as such, would have possessed the unshaken confidence of their soldiers; but they had been long neglected, as merit was no longer considered as a claim to military employment. Partiality and favoritism at first supplied its place, and, at length, commissions and preferments were only to be attained by a liberal expenditure of money. Hence the service became mere parade, and the whole business was a mere scarlet-cloth business. The officers were, in general, men proper enough for show, and very little more, if we except female duty; but the men were men—such as Shakspeare says, 'leaving their wits with their wives, and being provided with great meals of beef, would eat like wolves, and fight like devils.'-It should seem as if the Freeland directors made so sure of success, that any thing would answer the purpose of a general, and their general was a thing indeed. Well, well-let them look to it, when, as Shakspeare says, all those legs, and arms, and heads, chopped off in a battle, shall join together in the latter day, and cry all-we dy'd at such a place;-some swearing, some crying for a surgeon; some upon their wives left poor behind them; some upon the debts they owe; some upon their children rawly left.'-Let them look to it, we say, who appointed such a gawky Master of the Ceremonies in the field of honour. They imagined that the Gulls resembled Picrochole's followers, whom the scout Tripet affirmed to be but rascally rogues, plunderers, thieves, and robbers, ignorant of all military discipline, and that they might boldly set forward unto the field, it being an easy matter to fell and strike them down like beasts;'—but they totally overlooked those sage maxims of Gargantua, who asserts that, according to right military discipline, you must never drive your enemy to despair; for that such a strait doth multiply his force, and increase his courage, which was before broken and cast down: neither is there any better help for men that are out of heart, toiled and spent, than to hope for no favour at all. The Allies drove the Gulls to the extremity of despair, till, having raised the devil, they were afraid to look him in the face. Our General and his troops were ferried across the moat, and their first exploit was to throw themselves into a fort belonging to the Bighose, named Billstadt, which the Gulls were then besieging. These new defenders dealt such desperate blows on the assailants from the ramparts as soon obliged them to retreat. Our General then marched to join the Eagles, and as the Freelanders acted only as auxiliaries, he was not to strut as commanderin-chief; but out of compliment to the wellknown valour of the Freelanders, the Eaglecommander had the complaisance to yield to them the post of honour, that is to say, the |