by placing the flat of his sabre across the youngster's breast as he stormed up alongside. Reverting to the Rifle Brigade, it was the officers' Mess of this regiment which, when the pursuit of Ney's masterly handled troops after the Redinha brought the 95th upon the heels of a weary French battalion, accepted a truce "for one night only," and entertained the hostile officers at dinner. It is recorded that at the next dawn neither retreat nor pursuit suffered in speed by reason of the preceding "guest night." But chivalry glowed as hot as valour in those brave days of old. Did not Soult, standing on his last barrier, the Pyrenees, publish a General Order laudatory of the British army which had hustled him from end to end of Spain? And did not Wellington, espying across the narrow space between the armies at Zabaldica the burly form of his opponent, "fix his eyes attentively upon him," and exclaim, "Yonder is great commander!"

a

before his fifteenth wound stayed his mighty arm.

Next for some who were stout not only of courage and limb. Who was the colonel of the Black Watch,3 who, finding himself inconveniently bulky for lying down under the hail of lead at Fontenoy, elected instead to stand for the rest of that fatal day, "like an invincible Ajax," holding the regimental Colours in place of a subaltern? If the 43rd dealt in young heroes, the Black Watch boasts of stout ones. In America, in 1776, another Daniel Lambert, a Major Murray, when beset by three eager rebels, was unable to reach around himself to draw his sword, which had slipped beneath his embonpoint. therefore wrenched a weapon from one of his opponents, and with it put the three to flight. The same officer had to be borne up the crags of Fort Washington, so scant of breath was he; but the men who came back to carry him, in response to his panted "Oh! soldiers, will you leave me?" had all they could do to keep close to him when at the top he thundered after the flying foe.

He

Here, amongst "great" men, may well be remembered him,* "round and small," who, outpaced and "pumped" during a momentary retirement at Sabugal, kept off the closely pursuing dragoons with levelled but silent musket, and when chidden by his officer for not firing, had to confess that he

2 Andrew Green. Private Patrick Lowe. 31

"wasn't loaded, at all, at all!" Cæsar spoke more sense than he knew when he said, "Let me have men about me that are fat."

Now for some more questions. What general,1 in obedience to orders, ran up and drove his sword into the belching palisade at Blenheim before he gave with his expiring breath the word to "fire"? Who was he who, after killing four sepoys who were hacking at a comrade's prostrate body, was refused the Victoria Cross because he was a colonel ?2 Who, again, was he who was four times recommended for the Cross, but never obtained it owing to the necessary papers being lost at the War Office? Who met the Burmese general in single combat under the sunny walls of Rangoon in 1824, slew him, and, like a Homeric hero, assumed his victim's gold-hilted sword and jewelled scabbard ? 4 Who held Scylla with 200 men, wedged in between the treacherous sea on one side and 6000 French on the other?

Of even greater prowess than the aforementioned lieutenant of the Rifle Brigade was Samuel Johnson, who, in the act of rescuing a beloved officer at Belle Isle, reeled off what his great namesake would have recognised as a hexameter of slain

1 General Rowe (Scots Fusiliers). 2 Colonel Hagart, 7th Hussars.

foemen, a line of six; greater still Trooper Shaw, who lengthened the verse by three at Waterloo; midway between stands the Seaforth Highlander who "slew seven with his claymore" before he was struck down by a cowardly blow from behind: this at El Hamet, where he was one of a detachment of 275, of whom all but thirty were killed. Name now the captain' who, at the Alma, was "slanged" by his general for leaving his Company to capture single-handed a fieldgun and its team complete; also, if you can, the cornet $ who was similarly “d—d and admired" for precisely the same breach of discipline at Balaklava.

Who, now, was that "Old Agamemnon" who scrambled aloft and hauled down the ensign of the San Josef before that vessel was actually captured, to the delight of the "mighty seaman, tender and true," who was busy below, showing the world how one prize may be taken from the decks of another? Who were the two privates who, with almost fantastic valour, attempted to take Magdala, alone? 10 Who was that miraculous corporal" who, having his neck nearly cut through in the treacherous attack by the Sinhalese at the Kandyan

3 Lieut. J. Bonham, R.A.

11 Corporal Barnsley.

10 Bergin and Magnor, 33rd Foot.

his hands throughout an unimaginable flight of ten days, at the end of which he greeted an astounded officer (did he salute, I wonder: probably, it was in 1803) with the observation, "The troops in Kandy are all dished, your honour!" Somewhat similar was a tale told to me in South Africa by an eyewitness, how, when two adjacent soldiers had their left and right arms respectively neatly taken off by a shell which passed between them, one of them, either in agony or with some spasmodic recollection of "healing by first intention," snatched at a falling limb and pressed it tightly to the empty socket, only to find that he had seized the wrong disjectum, and was attempting to graft upon his own left shoulder the right arm of his comrade! Smile not incredulously, reader. Was it not Kinglake who saw a soldier throw away a severed foot with the annoyed remark that it " was of no further use to him"? and did not I myself, renovare dolorem, behold a poor ruined creature apparently putting himself together with a

show of carefulness before he died amongst the crackling bushes by the riverbed below Vaal Krantz? There is nothing that does not happen in action.

Mention of South Africa impels us to ask who were they, Gunner and Guardsman1

back, and the book may be "borrowed from the library

who illumined the field of Bakenlaagte, already aflame with valour in every part, the one by ordering the guns to shell the very ground where his own helpless body lay, the other by sauntering smiling to certain death in order to make the many deaths around him less bitter?-just as "Redan Massey" (is he remembered?) had lounged about on the blasted glacis to encourage the men.

Questions like these crowd to the lips. They come from all parts and from all periods. What trooper was it who, unhorsed at Fontenoy, and unable

to secure another mount, begged the Welsh Fusiliers to allow him to carry a musket in their ranks, emerging from the fray-one of only nine survivors of his adopted Company-only to find himself cold-shouldered by his proper comrades, who, until undeceived by the Fusilier captain, believed he had been "funking"? Who asked, and nobly answered, the famous question, "What the devil shall we do now?" when at Balaklava he found his command hemmed in by a forest of Russian lances ? 3 Name that hero who saved an important despatch from capture by the American "rebels" of 1776, by thrusting it deep into a gaping wound-the paper and not the

Lord George Paget.