hint about a broken leg was not
altogether foreign to my own apprehensions. I had recollected of late,
with no slight uneasiness, that for this sort of service a horse was
quite as indispensable as a man; and, as already hinted, I had more than
doubts as to my own equestrian capabilities. However, I comforted myself
with the reflection, that out of the fifty or sixty yeomen whom I knew,
not one had ever sustained any serious injury; and I resolved, as a
further precaution against accident, to purvey me the very quietest
horse that could be found anywhere. Steadiness, I have always
understood, is the characteristic feature of the British cavalry.

My correspondence that morning was not of the legal kind. In the first
place, I received a circular from the commanding-officer, extremely
laudatory of the recruits, whose zeal for the service did them so much
credit. We were called upon, in an animated address, to maintain the
high character of the regiment--to prove ourselves worthy successors of
those who had ridden and fought before us--to turn out regularly and
punctually to the field, and to keep our accoutrements in order. Next
came a more laconic and pithy epistle from the adjutant, announcing the
hours of drill, and the different arrangements for the week; and
finally, a communication from the convener of the mess committee.

To all these I cordially assented, and having nothing better to do,
bethought me of a visit to the Bogles. I pictured to myself the surprise
of Edith on beholding me in my novel character.

"She shall see," thought I, "that years of dissipation in a barrack or
guardroom are not necessary to qualify a high-minded legal practitioner
for assuming his place in the ranks of the defenders of his country. She
shall own that native valour is an impulse, not a science. She shall
confess that the volunteer who becomes a soldier, simply because the
commonwealth requires it, is actuated by a higher motive than the
regular, with his prospects of pay and of promotion. What was Karl
Theodore Koerner, author of the Lyre and Sword, but a simple Saxon
yeoman? and yet is there any name, Blucher's not excepted, which stirs
the military heart of Germany more thrillingly than his? And, upon my
honour, even as a matter of taste, I infinitely prefer this blue uniform
to the more dashing scarlet. It is true they might have given us tails
to the jacket," continued I soliloquising, as a young vagabond who
passed, hazarded