illiant,--but at times so absurd,--even they have been altered. They
have had their day, and most of them are fit now only for fancy-balls
and old-clothes' shops. Nothing is so short-lived as a good uniform; it
varies with the taste of a commander-in-chief, or a commander-in-chief's
toady; or the fancy of some royal favourite. It's like the wind in the
Mediterranean; you never know what is coming upon you till you are in
the midst of it; and so it is with your uniform. Get a new one, and the
probability is that you will not show it on parade half-a-dozen times
before a new regulation is out, and then more work for the tailors. Be
it so, then; military costume, like all other kinds, is doomed to
change; let us aim only at keeping its vagaries within something like
the limits of common sense.

The infantry of our own army--the successors of those noble fellows that
walked across Spain--have no better covering for their backs than the
scanty and useless coatee; in this they parade, and in this they are
supposed to fight. Behind, two little timid-looking skirts descend any
thing but gracefully; they are too small to have any grace in them; and
a pair of sham cotton epaulettes, or large unmeaning wings, are
supposed, by a pleasing fiction of the military tailors, to adorn their
shoulders. Now, this garment, we contend, is neither ornamental nor
graceful: were it cut down into the common jacket, it would be better;
were the excrescences at the shoulders removed, it would be more seemly;
it has no warmth in it, and offers little or no protection against the
rain. No soldier, who has been reduced to his coatee in a campaign, but
must have sighed after his original smock-frock, or any other outer
covering that had at least some pretensions to being useful. Since,
however, the idea of defending the body of the foot-soldier by steel or
leather is given up, the two things requisite in a serviceable coat are
warmth and convenience. No coatee nor jacket can be warm enough for the
British service, exposed as the men are to all varieties of climate; and
infinitely more to cold and wet than to sunshine. In India, and in some
of the colonies, a lighter kind of clothing may be indeed necessary; but
for the common use of the army, a coat is wanted that shall be a
protection against wet and cold, and yet not inconvenient to the
wearer--making him comfortable, in fact, while it allows him free use of
all his limbs and muscles. For the heavy i