Strike up, drums louder, fifes shriller,
aggravate the strain with metallic lungs,
trombones and bassoons, for here is the colonel
commandant of the regiment on his charger!
He is but a scarlet and gold man like his
brother officers, yet it strikes me I shall bear
him in remembrance for many a long year.
Though his face is indistinct in the (increasing
yet still faint) light, I shall still call him to
mind, I think, by his horse. You never forget a
man on horseback. I cannot instance the great
Duke of Wellington as a proof of this equestrian
connection with memory, for he was as
well known all over England off his horse as
on—in his blue frock and white ducks, in his
Field-Marshal's uniform and his peer's robes,
in his queer Trinity-house dress and cocked
hat, and his preposterous costume as
Chancellor of the University of Oxford. There
was no mistaking that old hero anywhere,
and he was as recognisable in the hessians
and whiskers of eighteen hundred and twelve
as in the snowy hair and faultless English
gentleman's dress of eighteen hundred and
forty; in the bronze medal as in the unheard-
of hat and cloak in which Mr. Wyatt has
stuck him a-top of Decimus Burton's archway;
but take his groom, that sober, grave-
paced domestic with the red waistcoat, who
followed with the umbrella. Take him
without his horse, and he was nothing—a
mere item of domesticity easily to be
confounded with the porter of an insurance office,
or any one of the portly servitors who, with
their well-fed waistcoats, block up the small
apertures in the doorways of lordly
mansions. But on his horse once seen he was
never to be forgotten. On Constitution Hill,
at the Horse Guards, at Apsley House Gate,
in Sir Edwin Landseer's picture of the field
of Waterloo, there he was unmistakeable—a
type of individuality. What would the goblin
trooper in Lenore be without his ghastly
charger? The horse makes the man. I
remember a worthy old friend of mine,
a Catholic priest (he loved a rubber of
backgammon after Sunday vespers dearly, good
man!) who in his youth had witnessed
the cruel campaign of 1813, when Napoleon
was contesting the soil of Champagne rood by
rood with the Allies, and each victory that he
gained was a draught of the life-blood of
France. It was my Abbé's fate, as a mere
child, to see the great man once, and once
only. He passed through my friend's native
village at the head of his decimated Guards.
The Abbé had not the slightest recollection
of what Napoleon was like. He could not
even remember the grey great coat, the little
hat, the star of the legion. But he could
remember the Emperor's horse. That white
charger, the embroidered housings, the very
splashes of mud on its flank were ever vividly
present to his mind, he said, and would be to
his dying day.

Marching, still marching to the "Girl I
left behind me," to the "British Grenadiers,"
to "Rule Britannia," to some other tunes of
recent introduction, which are not patriotic,
which are not inspiring, which are simply
jingling and nonsensical—come the Pioneers—
Gracious! how can these men, stalwart as
they be, manage to get along in this
tremendously heavy marching order. Suppose
now, brother six-foot (say in the Tithe office
or the Bank of England) the authorities were
to put you into scarlet blanketing, heavy
shoes, and a tremendous bearskin. Suppose
you had to carry on your back a knapsack
with its kit, or accompaniments of shirts,
socks, towels, gloves, soap, pipeclay, sponges,
button-brushes, and the multifarious et
ceteras known as "regimental necessaries;"
likewise a canteen for water, and a great
coat, neatly rolled up into the form of a
sausage. Also by your side a bag containing
your beef and biscuit. Also a cartouch box,
with its heavy belts and rounds of ammunition.
To say nothing of a musket and
bayonet, a bill-hook, and that huge hatchet.
How would you pioneer, or sap, or mine, think
you, with all the cumbrous paraphernalia about
you; with your chest hampered with straps
and buckles, with your windpipe half
throttled in a leathern stock? It is
recorded of a life-guardsman—a Waterloo man
—that, being asked by the finest and fattest
gentleman in England, in what sort of
costume he would like to fight such another
battle as Waterloo, he answered, "in my
shirt-sleeves, an it please your Majesty."
Would not some of these heavily laden Pioneers
now, like to march to Turkey in ponchos, and
wide-awakes? If one of them were to fall
down, would he ever be able to get up again?

Marching, still marching in serried columns
—marching as one bayonet, one bearskin, one
foot, one man—come the long array of these
tremendous grenadiers. Very dissimilar is
their style of procedure to that of the open
order and careless manner of carrying the
musket, adopted by our lively neighbours
across the channel. Ours is a business
march, a pounds shillings and pence march,
befitting a commercial nation. High, erect,
and proud among the bayonets are the
glorious flags on which more victories
are yet to be emblazoned. Marching come
the captains at the head of their
companies, the trim subalterns holding their
swords daintily, but marching as cheerfully
as they would to Almack's, or to their clubs.
There are young lads here who not many
months since had fags at Eton, and "tick" at
the sweetstuff shops. There are here
mothers' darlings, heirs to coronets,
dandies of Belgravian drawing-rooms. Many
of these youths have, I daresay, beneath
their martial gorgets, embroidered bracelets
and crochet purses, and fillagreed
handkerchiefs, the purchases of fancy fairs, or
the gifts of sisters, cousins, or sweethearts.
What boots now the unrivalled dog that
killed so many rats in so few minutes, the