the receipt of instructions from head-quarters to make use of it. For our census is just now very accurately kept; and the name and condition of every man in every parish, between the ages of sixteen and sixty, are just as well known to the overseer as his own name and age. A machinery for rendering the ballot operative may there fore be found by any who care to seek for it.

It has been urged by Blackwood, that not on any account should youths drawn-whatever their condition in life—be allowed to provide substitutes. We doubt the expediency of so stern a law, except in the last emergency. In ordinary times, and for conditions not exceptional, we see no reason to refuse to such as are desirous of claiming it, the privilege of hiring substitutes. We must not forget that the personal superintendence of employed capital is essential to the healthy conduct of labour. For the sake of the poor, therefore-not in order to screen the rich-our own leaning is in favour of the system of substitutes, because, if the head of a firm be drawn, his removal from the concern might shut it up; whereas, it continues to find employment for many artisans, the master being left to manage his own affairs, while one of the body pockets, perhaps, a good round sum while discharging the military obligations from which his master is exempt.

Many other points occur to us, every one of which deserves notice; but we cannot, within the space at our disposal, touch upon even a few of them, except very briefly. If the army of defence is to be rendered effective, care must be taken to bring it, from time to time, into direct communication with the imperial garrison. For example: the militia which is called out in each military division, after devoting two months to company and bat

talion drill, ought to be brigaded in a corps of instruction throughout the third month with the regular troops, or portions of them, occupying the district. In like manner, the volunteers will gain immensely if they can be persuaded to give up three or four days every sum. mer to manœuvres on a grand scale, with both militia and regulars. We are not blind to the difficulty of finding everywhere proper fields for such manoeuvres. England is in a state of such high and general cultivation, that wastes, on which to pitch tents for ten or twelve thou sand men together, are hard to find.

Yet they may be found in Hampshire, in Surrey, in Kent, in Devonshire, in Cornwall; and Lan cashire and still more Yorkshire abound with them. At all events, let us take advantage of such places wherever they lie. For the best preparation for real war is the habit of moving masses of men here and there, with their supplies following them, not backwards and forwards over some well beaten parade ground, but wherever the country will admit of the operations of the three arms. And no man knows better how to move them than his Royal Highness the Com mander-in-Chief, or is better pleased to do so.

And now, though conscious that we have done but imperfect justice to a subject of which the importance cannot be over-estimated, we feel ourselves constrained to withdraw from it, after we bring within a narrow compass the marrow of the various points which it has been the object of this article to impress upon the Government and the Le gislature.

1. We must begin our reform in the military system of the country by bringing home our troops from the colonies, leaving garrisons only in Gibraltar, Malta, and Bermuda.

2. This important step must be followed up, or possibly preceded,

by the reconstruction of a separate European army for service in India. This army will be provided, partly by the regiments now serving in that part of the world, partly by recruits raised for service there. A liberal bounty, increased pay, and the promise of land on which to settle, will get you as many men willing to serve for twenty-one years continuously as you can require.

3. Having drawn in our foreign garrisons, and completed the AngloIndian army, we must proceed to eliminate from the ranks all privates whose service has reached six years complete, with as many noncommissioned officers as desire to go home on similar terms. These will constitute at once an army of reserve, for you keep them on furlough, during peace, till they complete their twelve years. Muster them periodically, and use them, if required, to teach the militia their duty. The moment war comes they return to their standards.

4. We must raise the strength of our regiments actually serving, and diminish at the same time the number of corps, effecting thereby a considerable saving in money, and making the army itself doubly efficient. As to the officers reduced by this arrangement, they will suffer less than at first sight might be supposed. A good many will pass into the Indian army. A good many will be employed in paying and mustering the men upon furlough. A good many will accept commissions in the militia, espe

cially if allowed, while the militia is out for training, to draw their halfpay in addition to their pay as militia-men. Some may seek and find employment with the armed police which the colonies must raise for their own protection. Others will doubtless be glad to find themselves relieved from duties in which they never took any lively interest. And if a residue there be, to whom the change of system brings unmixed evil, all that can be said in their case is, that the loss to them is gain to the country. We give them what we can, our sympathy and compassion. Their fate is a hard one, but it is inevitable.

5. A reorganisation of this sort in the matériel of the army will necessarily imply a complete shaking up of the staff and of the administrative departments connected with it. How this is to be effected, and what benefits may be expected from it, we shall not at the present moment stop to point

out.

But on one point our mind is made up, that so long as the great change of all-the attainment of the object pointed out in this paper

is evaded, the Secretary of State may do what he pleases with the War Office and its system of audit and accounts, but he will not give us what we have a right to demand -an army on its peace establishment effective, yet comparatively inexpensive; and a reserve capable of raising it, on the first threatening of war, to the strength which is necessary to maintain the honour of the country.

VOL. LXXVII.-NO. CCCCLXI.

S S

to whose eighth son Vajramukut happened the strangest adventure.

One morning the young man, accompanied by the son of his father's pradhan or prime minister, rode out hunting, and went to a great distance into the jungle. At last they unexpectedly came upon a beautiful 'tank' of a prodigious size. It was surrounded by short thick walls of fine baked brick; and flights and ramps of cut stone steps, half the length of each face, and adorned with turrets, pendants, and finials, led down to the water. The substantial plaster work and the masonry had fallen into disrepair, and from the crevices sprang huge trees, under whose thick shade the breeze blew freshly, and on whose balmy branches the birds sang sweetly; the grey squirrels 2 chirrupped joyously as they coursed one another up the gnarled trunks, and from the pendent llianas the longtailed monkeys were swinging sportively. The bountiful hand of Sravana had spread the earthen rampart with a carpet of the softest grass and many-hued wild flowers, in which were buzzing swarms of bees and myriads of bright-winged insects; and flocks of water-fowl, wild geese, Brahmini ducks, bit

terns, herons, and cranes, male and strip of brilliant green that belted the long deep pool, amongst the broad-leaved lotuses with the lovely blossoms, splashing in the pellucid waves, and basking happily in the genial sun.

The prince and his friend wondered when they saw the beautiful tank in the midst of a wild forest, and made many vain conjectures about it. They dismounted, tethered their horses, and threw their wea pons upon the ground; then, having washed their hands and faces, they entered a shrine dedicated to Mahadeva, and there began to worship the presiding deity.

Whilst they were making their offerings, a bevy of maidens, accom panied by a crowd of female slaves, descended the opposite flight of steps. They stood there for a time, talking and laughing and looking about them to see if any alligators infested the waters. When convinced that the tank was safe, they disrobed themselves in order to bathe. It was truly a pleasant spectacle

'Concerning which the less said the better,' interrupted Raja Vikram in an offended tone.4

-But it did not last long. The raja's daughter-for the principal

maiden was a princess-soon left her companions, who were scooping up water with their palms and dashing it over one another's heads, and proceeded to perform the rites of purification, meditation, and worship. Then she began strolling with a friend under the shade of the small mango grove.

The prince also left his companion sitting in prayer, and walked forth into the forest. Suddenly the eyes of the raja's son and the raja's daughter met. She started back with a little scream. He was fascinated by her beauty, and began to say to himself, 'O thou vile Cupid, why worriest thou me ?'

Hearing this, the maiden smiled encouragement, but the poor youth, between palpitation of the heart and hesitation about what to say, was so confused that his tongue clave to his teeth. She raised her eyebrows a little. There is nothing which women despise in a man more than modesty, for mo-des-ty

A violent shaking of the bag which hung behind Vikram's royal back broke off the end of this offensive sentence. And the warrior king did not cease that discipline till the Baital promised him more decorum in his observations.

Still the prince stood before her with downcast eyes and suffused cheeks: even the spur of contempt failed to arouse his energies. Then the maiden called to her friend, who was picking jasmine flowers so as not to witness the scene, and angrily asked why that strange man was allowed to stand and stare at her? The friend, in hot wrath, threatened to call the slaves, and to throw Vajramukut into the pond unless he instantly went away with his impudence. But as the prince was rooted to the spot, and really had not heard a word of what had

been said to him, the two women were obliged to make the first

move.

As they almost reached the tank, the beautiful maiden turned her head to see what the poor modest youth was doing.

Vajramukut was formed in every way to catch a woman's eye. The raja's daughter therefore half forgave him his offence of modAgain she sweetly smiled, disclosing two rows of little opals. Then descending to the water's edge, she stooped down and plucked a lotus. This she worshipped; next she placed it in her hair, then she put it to her ear, then she bit it with her teeth, then she trod upon it with her foot, then she raised it up again, and lastly she stuck it in her bosom.2 After which she mounted her conveyance and went home to her friends; whilst the prince, having become thoroughly desponding and drowned in grief at separation from her, returned to the minister's son.

'Females!' ejaculated the minister's son, speaking to himself in a careless tone, when, his prayer finished, he left the temple, and sat down upon the tank steps to enjoy the breeze. He presently drew a roll of paper from under his waistbelt, and in a short time was engrossed with his study. The women, seeing this conduct, exerted themselves in every possible way of wile to attract his attention and to distract his soul. They succeeded only so far as to make him roll his head with a smile, and to remember that such is always the custom of man's bane; after which he turned over a fresh page of manuscript. And although he presently began to wonder what had become of the prince his master, he did not look up even once from his study.

He was a philosopher, that young man. But after all, Raja Vikram, what is mortal philosophy? Nothing but another name for indifference! Who was ever philosophical about a thing truly loved or really hated? -no one! Philosophy, says Shankharacharya, is either the gift of nature or the reward of study. But I, the Baital, the devil, ask you, what is a born philosopher save a man of cold desires? And what is a bred philosopher but a man who has survived his desires? A young philosopher?-a cold-blooded youth! An elderly philosopher ?-a leucophlegmatic old man! Much nonsense, of a verity, ye hear in praise of nothing from your rajaship's Nine Gems of Science, and from sundry other such wise fools.

Then the prince began to relate the state of his case, saying, 'O friend, I have seen a damsel, but whether she be a musician from Indra's heaven, a maiden of the sea, a daughter of the serpent kings, or the child of an earthly raja, I cannot say.'

'Describe her,' said the statesman in embryo.

'Her face,' quoth the prince, was that of the full moon, her hair like a swarm of bees hanging from the blossoms of the acacia, the corners of her eyes touched her ears, her lips were sweet with lunar ambrosia, her waist was that of a lion, and her walk the walk of a kinggoose.1 As a garment, she was white; as a season, the spring; as a flower, the jasmine; as a speaker, the kokila bird; as a perfume, musk; as a beauty, Kamadeva; and as a being, Love. And if she does not come into my possession I will not live; this I have certainly determined upon.'

The young minister, who had heard his prince say the same thing more than once before, did not attach great importance to these

1

awful words. He merely remarked that unless they mounted at once, night would surprise them in the forest. Then the two young men returned to their horses, untethered them, drew on their bridles, saddled them, and catching up their wea pons, rode slowly towards the raja's palace. During the three hours of return hardly a word passed between the pair. Vajramukut not only avoided speaking; he never once replied till addressed thrice in the loudest voice.

The young minister put no more questions, for,' quoth he to himself, 'when the prince wants my counsel, he will apply for it.' In this point he had borrowed wisdom from his father, who held in peculiar horror the giving of unasked for advice. So, when he saw that conversation was irksome to his master, he held his peace and meditated upon what he called his ‘daythought.' It was his practice to choose every morning some tough food for reflection, and to chew the cud of it in his mind at times when, without such employment, his wits would have gone woolgathering. You may imagine, Raja Vikram, that with a few years of this head-work, the minister's son became a very crafty young person.

After the second day the Prince Vajramukut, being restless from grief at separation, fretted himself into a fever. Having given up writing, reading, drinking, sleeping, the affairs entrusted to him by his father, and everything else, he sat down. He used constantly to paint the portrait of the beautiful lotusgatherer, and to lie gazing upon it with tearful eyes; then he would start up and tear it to pieces and beat his forehead, and begin another picture of a yet more beautiful face.

At last, as the pradhan's son had foreseen, he was summoned by the