Means of recreation are few; of exercise none; of instruction limited. The soldier's habits are sedentary where they ought to be active. He is led into vice and intemperance. He has no means of occupying his time profitably. He complains of the weary sameness and ennui of his life. This, together with his diet, and allowance of spirit and malt liquor, is bad for his health-physical as well as moral health.

Now certain of these enumerated evils cling almost necessarily round the life of a soldier elsewhere than in India; but in the soil of that country the creepers grow faster to choke the tree, get less chopped at, if one may so say, as they span the doomed sapling; nay, seem in some instances to be considerably digged about, and dunged, and watered at the roots, by those whose duty it is to cut and root them up, if possible, altogether. The direct interest of the Russian government in the manufacture and consumption of 'vodki,' has often been flung in its face by Western writers, when treating of the demoralization produced among the peasants by habits of intemperance. The military administration of India lies open to the same reproach, with a difference, which, if honourable to its disinterestedness, is ludicrously discreditable to its consistency and its practical wisdom. 'Means of recreation,' says the Report, are few.' But it seems inconceivable that what few there are depend for their existence upon hard drinking among the soldiery, for whose moral and physical benefit they are intended to provide. The sale of spirits is a government monopoly, lest the soldier should swallow drams adulterated with stramonium and other intoxicating drugs. But the canteen, or government taproom, sells spirits at an enhanced price, and thus creates a fund. This fund finds the soldier in cap-covers, lest when the rum is in his head, the sun should smite upon it with too terrible a stroke. But it also provides him with such amusement as there may be. If there is a fivescourt, a skittle-ground, even theatre, as at Jullundur, costing £300, the troops may thank the canteen fund-that is, their own

a

diligence in dram-drinking-for the recreative indulgence. It is a generous and unselfish fund at most times, and will 'grant any reasonable request a commanding officer may make.' Still it must exist and flourish in order to grant requests reasonable or not: and, therefore, it would seem that if military public opinion at any station should agree with the Commission in considering means of recreation 'few,' it has the remedy, to a certain extent, in its own hands. Let it keep men up to their mark, see that every soldier on the muster roll avails himself of his unquestioned privilege, and swallows his two drams, his eighth of a quart bottle of raw spirits every day. Means of rational recreation will soon be procured with ease. The administrative military wisdom of India being such, it is a serious reflection to make, that India will henceforth be the normal school of the British army on foreign service. Seventy-three thousand Europeans is the proposed establishment of troops in India, and as many as ninety-four thousand have been serving there of late. The Report tells us that at the present death rates alone, to say nothing of sickness and invaliding, 5037 recruits from home will be needed annually to fill up vacancies. There are not wanting 'competent persons' to affirm that in the normal condition of our man market, it will be hard to provide them. But supposing that in practice this difficulty should disappear, and considering how large a proportion, about

one

fourth, of the whole army will henceforth be stationed in India, it is serious indeed to think how soon and how completely moral and physical mischiefs engendered there will permeate the whole of our military establishments. Four years out of eleven would nearly represent the time of exposure of each regiment to Indian influences, on which our army may now reckon. But as some corps never go to India, the service will fall more heavily upon the rest.

The matter, therefore, is no less urgent than serious; for the new

' roster,' which calls our troops there in turn, works without the tardiness of an Executive Commission. It is, happily, true that since the beginning of the present year such a Commission, compounded of Indian-office and War-office Commissioners, has put its shoulder to the wheel. It is also, most happily, true that the appointment of Sir John Lawrence to the post of Governor-General has done much to put the matter on a right footing with the authorities in India, thus giving fresh vigour to the hope of continuous improvement. Yet Parliament can hardly be absolved by these circumstances of good omen from the duty of keeping sedulous watch over the progress of the reforms recommended by the original Commission of Inquiry. Indian subjects are special, we know. An Indian debate is not always, we might say, not often, full, eager, earnest, as that which set Montalembert to write the record of its course and conduct, and to flaunt it in the face of men who sneered at the parliamentary government which they themselves had forfeited. But this is not an Indian subject, properly so called. If it admit of no debate, it surely should not empty benches when broached within the walls of Parliament, nor fall flat upon the public ear when echoed in the press. are the wrongs, and wants, and woes of Englishmen in India; comrades of those, nay, sometimes those themselves, whose dauntless deeds and whose unflinching valour held all the world, as well as Britain, breathless with fearful wonder in those dread weeks of the great mutiny. The Sepoys' fire never thinned their ranks much faster than does from week to week, and month to month, an organized maladministration.

These

Napier's strong word stands truer now than ever:

This inhuman drain upon public life and health and upon the public treasury constantly goes on, and the soldiers able to remain in the ranks are but half the strong fellows they would be if properly lodged.

Such barracks are expensive no doubt: so are sick soldiers; so are dead

soldiers.

But the difference of these expenses is, that the first is once and done with; the second goes on increasing like compound interest, and quickly outstrips the capital.

Here is the place, it seems to us, for supplementing his words by those of Sidney Herbert in the Westminster Review. It was thus he wrote of the Report of the first Royal Military Commission upon the sanitary condition of the British army, one year after its publication, and after the subsidence of the first emotion it had caused:

The only fear was, that the almost universal assent with which the report was received, would be fatal to the practical adoption of its recommendations; that the subject would die out for want of controversy; and, in the silence of universal consent, that the pressure would be wanting which would set in motion the cumbrous torpor of the vast department on whose action the adoption of the reforms indicated must depend. The English people, however, cannot afford to let this subject die out; and it is only by discussion that they can maintain their property in it. Large administrative offices, if inclined to shelve a question, have wonderful facilities for doing it. It is done without parade or ostentation, with a respectful silence; but the interment is none the less complete. Other subjects arise which, however ephemeral in their character, have an interest for the hours during which they last, and the public gaze is diverted from the graver matter which is kept in the back ground.

'He, being dead, yet speaketh' with all weight and authority belonging to the man who had ruled beforehand that very 'department on whose action' the practical reform was then depending; and who afterwards, when once more at its head, roused its 'cumbrous torpor,' and guided that reform to an admirable result. The question is so thoroughly, as we have said, an English question, that were the public mind well seized of it, the Indian specialty which clings to it could not affect, damage, or endanger its homely interest. But, after all, that very specialty does surely fix a claim on the attention of every larger, nobler, and more thoughtful English mind. Because, and not although, it is an Indian question,

ISSY had honoured me with her

CIS

company at luncheon, and, while plying her knife and fork assiduously, favoured me with her opinions on things in general. She was in a somewhat speculative mood. "I haven't growed yet,' she observed. The black dog at the farm has quite stopped growing but I haven't stopped-how's that? It's good for growing to stand in the rain without your hat-that's the way the pigs get fat. There are twelve little piggies-did you know? only old Grumphy eat two-and my bantam cock is laying his eggs in the white goose's house-isn't he ridiculous? I was at Nancy Brown's yesterday, having fried potatoes, and forgot my boots. I do declare, here's Horace-what a plague he is, to be sure, to come when we're dining! I thought you had been with Letty, Horace?' she said, as that young gentleman entered the room, and then she returned to her knife and fork without taking further notice of him.

That ingenuous young gentleman, however, declared that he had not been with Letty (a transparent fiction, for the two had been visible in the shrubbery half an hour before, and how he eased his conscience, I don't.know), but that he was going down to shoot whaups at the Mussel Pier, and had come round this way to take me with him. Horace was the son of old Dr. Lovelace the Rector, and (of course, like the rest of us in these parts) one of Letty's lovers. The Rector's parish lay quite at the other side of Hazeldean, so that he could not be considered exactly a neighbour, though few days elapsed when his son, on leave' from the metropolis, might not be seen helping Letty to water her flowers, or the Captain to arrange his birds. The Rector was a polished churchman of the old school, who played a good hand at whist, and did not vex himself with the spiritual controversies of a younger generation. He could be

quietly and majestically indignant if you trumped his winning suit; but on the whole his temper was even and bland; he was not anxious to play the inquisitor; and though personally rather inclining to the High Church party (in so far, at least, as a love for old books and old habits and old wine was involved), he would no more have dreamt of trying to turn Mr. Stanley or Mr. Maurice out of the church than he would have dreamt of turning them out of the club. The one act would have been quite as offensive to his natural courtliness as the other; for these gentlemen having been regularly introduced and ballotted for, had as good a right to remain in the 'Athenæum' as he himself had, and no man-lay or cleric -was entitled to impeach their honesty. The church was wide enough for them all, he would say. He frankly confessed that-being satisfied with St. Paul-he had little acquaintance with modern theology; nor did he care for argument; even when attacked by the Doctor, he seldom showed fight, unless for the odd trick. When the Doctor asserted that Churches took as naturally to persecution as ducks to the water, the Rector would content himself with replying that men of an intolerant disposition were to be found in other professions (the medical, of course, being excepted); when the Doctor eloquently denounced the bondage of subscription, the Rector, filling his tastefully-cut claret-glass-bunches of grapes and vine leaves formed the pattern-with '41, would remark tranquilly that he had never felt the worse for it; and it was evident that he spoke the truth. It was difficult to come to close quarters with this courteous, highbred, well-dressed, old-fashioned, impalpable gentleman; and so the Doctor found it. There was a good deal of the father in the sononly it might be doubted whether an additional five-and-twenty years