niscences; and for this reason I am
bound to apologise for the seeming transgression of my last chapter.
Most true it is, that were I to relate the entire of my life with a
similar diffuseness, my memoir would extend to a length far beyond what
I intend it to occupy. Such, however, is very remote from my thoughts.
I have dwelt with, perhaps, something of prolixity upon the soldier-life
and characteristics of a past day, because I shall yet have to speak of
changes, without which the contrast would be inappreciable; but I have
also laid stress upon an incident trivial in itself, because it formed
an event in my own fortunes. It was thus, in fact, that I became a
soldier.

Now, the man who carries a musket in the ranks may very reasonably be
deemed but a small ingredient of the mass that forms an army; and in our
day his thoughts, hopes, fears, and ambitions are probably as unknown
and uncared for as the precise spot of earth that yielded the ore from
which his own weapon was smelted. This is not only reasonable, but it is
right in the time of which I am now speaking it was far otherwise. The
Republic, in extinguishing a class, had elevated the individual; and
now each, in whatever station he occupied, felt himself qualified to
entertain opinions and express sentiments which, because they were his
own, he presumed them to be national The idlers of the streets discussed
the deepest questions of politics; the soldiers talked of war with all
the presumption of consummate generalship. The great operations of a
campaign, and the various qualities of different commanders, were the
daily subjects of dispute in the camp. Upon one topic only were
all agreed; and there, indeed, our unanimity repaid all previous
discordance. We deemed France the only civilised nation of the globe,
and reckoned that people thrice happy who, by any contingency of
fortune, engaged our sympathy, or procured the distinction of our
presence in arms. We were the heaven-born disseminators of freedom
throughout Europe, the sworn enemies of kingly domination, and the
missionaries of a political creed, which was not alone to ennoble
mankind, but to render its condition eminently happy and prosperous.

There could not be an easier lesson to learn than this, and particularly
when dinned into your ears all day, and from every rank and grade around
you. It was the programme of every message from the Directory; it
was the opening of every general order from the ge