ff his day's
work; but the language, with its occasional half-flights into a poetry
of about the standard of an Eton boy's verses, its crude moralizings,
and imperfect applications of old proverbs and fables, has not been
altered, nor, so far as there can be said to be one, has the method.
It is trusted, therefore, that, remembering that the main object in
the editor's mind has been to let the venerable hero tell his story in
exactly his own words so far as his meaning can be thereby made out,
no one will take any unnecessary pains to count up how often the words
"likewise" and "proceed" are repeated in these pages, or to point out
that the general style of the book combines those of Tacitus, Caesar's
Commentaries, and the Journeyings of the Israelites. Nor, it is to be
hoped, will any one be too severe in his comments on the fact that to
the mind of a man in Lawrence's position the obtaining of a pair of
boots was apparently quite as important an event as the storming of
Badajoz, or the finding of a sack with a ham and a couple of fowls in
it as the winning of the battle of Waterloo.

Interesting perhaps the book will prove as giving some of the details
of what our soldiers had to undergo in those old times of war.
Hardships they now have to endure, and endure them they do well, but
all must be thankful to know that they are far better off than their
forefathers; who, unsuitably clad, half starved, and with their
commissariat such even as it was disgracefully mismanaged, and yet
forbidden very often under pain of death to pick up what they could
for themselves, submitted on the shortest notice to punishments which
would nowadays call forth the indignant protests of hosts of newspaper
correspondents; and still in spite of all fought stubbornly through
every obstacle till they had gained the objects for which they had
been sent out. What wonder can there be that under all these
circumstances we should find our hero somewhat hardened in his
estimate of human sympathies, and not altogether disinclined to view
everything, whether it concerned life or death, or marriage, or
parting or meeting, all in one phlegmatic way, as occurring as a
matter of course? What ought to strike us as more curious is that he
was only reduced to that level of intellect where he thought even
that much of anything at all besides his actual eating, drinking, and
sleeping.

But to go on further would be to depart from the original intention of
le