ends his disappointed life on a
threadbare half-pay.

When I read in the GAZETTE such announcements as 'Lieutenant and Captain
Grig, from the Bombardier Guards, to be Captain, vice Grizzle, who
retires,' I know what becomes of the Peninsular Grizzle; I follow him in
spirit to the humble country town, where he takes up his quarters,
and occupies himself with the most desperate attempts to live like a
gentleman, on the stipend of half a tailor's foreman; and I picture to
myself little Grig rising from rank to rank, skipping from one regiment
to another, with an increased grade in each, avoiding disagreeable
foreign service, and ranking as a colonel at thirty;--all because he has
money, and Lord Grigsby is his father, who had the same luck before him.
Grig must blush at first to give his orders to old men in every way his
betters. And as it is very difficult for a spoiled child to escape being
selfish and arrogant, so it is a very hard task indeed for this spoiled
child of fortune not to be a Snob.

It must have often been a matter of wonder to the candid reader, that
the army, the most enormous job of all our political institutions,
should yet work so well in the field; and we must cheerfully give
Grig, and his like, the credit for courage which they display whenever
occasion calls for it. The Duke's dandy regiments fought as well as any
(they said better than any, but that is absurd). The great Duke himself
was a dandy once, and jobbed on, as Marlborough did before him. But
this only proves that dandies are brave as well as other Britons--as
all Britons. Let us concede that the high-born Grig rode into
the entrenchments at Sobraon as gallantly as Corporal Wallop, the
ex-ploughboy.

The times of war are more favourable to him than the periods of peace.
Think of Grig's life in the Bombardier Guards, or the Jack-boot Guards;
his marches from Windsor to London, from London to Windsor, from
Knightsbridge to Regent's Park; the idiotic services he has to perform,
which consist in inspecting the pipeclay of his company, or the horses
in the stable, or bellowing out 'Shoulder humps! Carry humps!' all which
duties the very smallest intellect that ever belonged to mortal man
would suffice to comprehend. The professional duties of a footman are
quite as difficult and various. The red-jackets who hold gentlemen's
horses in St. James's Street could do the work just as well as those
vacuous, good-natured, gentlemanlike, rickety lit