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worsted baskets, cushions, and footstools for her. What a good fire there is in her room when she comes to pay you a visit ! The house during her stay assumes a festive, neat, warm, jovial, snug appearance, not visible at other seasons. You yourself, dear sir, forget to go to sleep after dinner, and find yourself all of a sudden (though you invariably lose) very fond of a rubber.1 What good dinners you have-game every day, Malmsey, Madeira, and no end of fish from London. Even the servants in the kitchen share in the general prosperity; and, somehow, during the stay of Miss MacWhirter's fat coachman, the beer is grown much stronger, and the consumption of tea and sugar in the nursery 2 (where her maid takes her meals) is not regarded in the least. Is it so, or is it not so? I appeal to the middle classes. Ah, gracious powers! I wish you would send me an old aunta maiden aunt―an aunt with a lozenge on her carriage, and a front of light coffee-coloured hair 3-how my children should work work-bags for her, and my Julia and I would make her comfortable! Sweet, sweet vision! Foolish, foolish dream !

THACKERAY.

1807-1863.

1 A rubber, Une partie de whist, un rob.-2 The nursery, La chambre des enfants.3 Front of light coffee-coloured hair, Un tour de cheveux café au lait.

EXTRACTS IN PROSE.

PART IV.

Selection from the French Examination Papers for the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, the Direct Commissions, the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, and the Civil Service of India.

SANDHURST, July 1858.

COLONEL, afterwards Sir John Moore, had the command of the party which stormed and carried Fort Mozello, the principal outlet to the city of Calvi, in the island of Corsica. Daybreak was the time chosen for the assault, and that no alarm might be given to the garrison, the soldiers were ordered not to load, as it was resolved to attempt it by the point of the bayonet. Colonel Moore, with a chosen body of troops, had proceeded about halfway, when the enemy, whose attention had been diverted by a false attack, at last perceived their danger, flew to arms, and discharged a volley of grapeshot which, however, did little execution. Colonel Moore continued to press forward at the head of his men, leaving behind the wounded and dying, and was entering the walls, when a bombshell bursting struck him to the ground. Fortunately, however, he instantly recovered himself, and notwithstanding the great effusion of blood, he pressed on, and after a most obstinate and sanguinary conflict, the enemy was compelled to surrender. Nothing but the most consummate skill and determined bravery could have stormed a fortress garrisoned

by some of the best troops of France, commanded by an old experienced general, and furnished with every necessary for vigorous resistance. When General Stewart, the commander-inchief, who was a witness of the attack, perceived the grenadiers ascending, he rode up to the fort, and quitting his horse, mounted the breach. Finding the troops in possession of the place, he flew into the arms of Colonel Moore. The surrounding soldiers shouted and threw their hats into the air for joy.

SANDHURST, December 1860.

As we lived near the road, we often had the traveller or stranger to visit us, to taste our gooseberry wine, for which we had great reputation; and I profess, with the veracity of a historian, that I never knew one of them find fault with it. Our cousins, too, even to the fortieth remove, all remembered their affinity, without any help from the herald's office, and came frequently to see us. Some of them did us no great honour by these claims of kindred; and we had the blind, the maimed, and the halt amongst the number. However, my wife always insisted that, as they were the same flesh and blood, they should sit with us at the same table, so that, if we had not very rich, we generally had very happy friends about us; for this remark will hold good through life, that the poorer the guest the better pleased he ever is with being treated; and as some men gaze with admiration at the colours of a tulip or the wing of a butterfly, so I was by nature an admirer of happy human faces. However, whenever any of our relations was found to be a person of very bad character, a troublesome guest, or one we desired to get rid of, upon his leaving my house, I ever took care to lend him a riding-coat, or a pair of boots, or sometimes a horse of small value, and I always had the satisfaction to find that he never came back to return them. By this the house was cleared of such as we did not like; but never was the family of Wakefield known to turn the traveller or the poor dependant out of doors.

GOLDSMITH.

I Do not remember to have met with any instance of modesty with which I am so well pleased, as that celebrated one of the young prince, whose father, being a tributary king to the Romans, had several complaints laid against him before the Senate, as a tyrant and oppressor of his subjects. The prince went to Rome to defend his father; but coming into the Senate, and hearing a multitude of crimes proved against him, was so oppressed, when it came to his turn to speak, that he was unable to utter a word. The story tells us that the Fathers were more moved at this instance of modesty and ingenuousness, than they could have been by the most pathetic oration; and, in short, pardoned the father for this early promise of virtue in the son. This little historical fact affords an example not only of modesty, but of a becoming assurance; qualities which are both amiable, and may very well meet in the same person. Without assurance, this prince would never have undertaken to plead before the most august assembly in the world; without modesty he would have pleaded the cause he had taken upon him, though it had appeared ever so scandalous. ADDISON.

DIRECT COMMISSIONS, July 1858.

WHEN Lord Nelson sailed for Copenhagen, and the destination of the fleet was sufficiently known, some Danish soldiers, who were on board the Amazon frigate, went to Captain Riou, and requested that he would get them exchanged into a ship bound on some other service; they had no wish, they said, to quit the British navy, but they entreated that they might not be led to fight against their country. There was not in the British navy a man who had a higher, or more chivalrous, sense of honour and duty than Riou. The tears came into his eyes while the men were addressing him; he ordered his boat instantly, and did not return to the Amazon till he had procured their exchange. It was in this action that the gallant Riou fell. The frigates were hauling off, and at the moment the Amazon showed her stern to the

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enemy, he was killed. Almost his last words were an expression of regret at being obliged to retreat. What," said he, "will Nelson think of us?"

DIRECT COMMISSIONS, December 1859.

Ar the retreat of Rebec, in 1524, where the Chevalier Bayard fell, he was discovered wounded under a tree by Bourbon, who led the foremost of the enemy's troops, and who expressed pity and regret at the sight. "Pity not me," exclaimed the highspirited Chevalier, "I die as a man of honour ought, in the discharge of my duty; they, indeed, are objects of pity, who fight against their king, their country, and their oath." The Marquis de Pescara, passing soon after, manifested his admiration of Bayard's virtue, as well as his sorrow for his fate, with the generosity of a gallant enemy. Finding that he could not be removed with safety from that spot, he ordered a tent to be pitched there, and appointed persons proper to attend him. He died, however, notwithstanding their care, as his ancestors for several generations had done, in the field of battle.

Pescara ordered his body to be embalmed, and sent to his relations; and such was the respect paid to him that the Duke of Savoy commanded that his body should be received with royal honours in all the cities of his dominions. In Dauphiné, Bayard's native country, the people of all ranks came out in procession to meet it. PERCY'S Anecdotes.

DIRECT COMMISSIONS, January 1861.

On the 21st of June 1711, Swift informs Stella, "I went at noon to see Mr Secretary at his office, and there was Lord-Treasurer; so I killed two birds, and we were glad to see one another, and so forth, &c. The Secretary and I dined at Sir William Wyndham's, who married Lady Catherine Seymour, your acquaintance, I suppose. There were ten of us at dinner. It seems in my

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