hat he was authorized by the existing state of things to
confidently predicate his own success on these estimates.

It is not easy to underrate the professional standard of the English
officer a hundred years ago. That some were good cannot be denied; that
most were bad is very certain. As there was no school of military
instruction in the realm, so no proof of mental or even of physical
capacity was required to enable a person to receive and to hold a
commission. A friend at the Horse Guards, or the baptismal gift of a
godfather, might nominate a baby three days old to a pair of colors.
Court influence or the ready cash having thus enrolled a puny suckling
among the armed defenders of the state, he might in regular process of
seniority come out a full-fledged captain or major against the season
for his being soundly birched at Eton; and an ignorant school-boy would
thus be qualified to govern the lives and fortunes of five hundred
stalwart men, and to represent the honor and the interests of the empire
in that last emergency when all might be depending on his courage and
capacity. Even women were thus saddled upon the pay-lists; and the time
is within the memory of living men, when a gentle lady, whose knowledge
of arms may be presumed to have never extended beyond the internecine
disputes of the nursery, habitually received the salary of a captaincy
of dragoons. In ranks thus officered, it was easy to foresee the speedy
and sure triumph of competent ability, when once backed by patronage.

So long, however, as his dependence upon his father endured, it was
useless for Andre to anticipate the day when he might don the king's
livery. The repugnance with which his first motion in the matter was
greeted, and the affectionate opposition of his mother and sisters, seem
to have at least silenced, if they did not extinguish his desires. And
when the death of his father, in 1769, left him free to select his own
pathway through the world, a new conjuncture of affairs again caused him
to smother his cherished aspirations.

The domestic relations of the Andre family were ever peculiarly tender
and affectionate; and in the loss of its head the survivors confessed a
great and a corroding sorrow. To repair the shattered health and recruit
the exhausted spirits of his mother and sisters, the son resolved to
lead them at once away from the daily contemplation of the grave to more
cheerful scenes. The medicinal waters of Derbyshire we