re that this fine nation, so full of private pugnacity and of
public deliberation, might find in circumstances a sudden pretext for
doing something gallant and striking.

Meanwhile I watched the soldiers whenever an opportunity offered.
My opportunities, I confess, were moderate, for it was not often my
fortune to encounter an imposing military array. In London there are a
great many red-coats, but they rarely march about the streets in large
masses. The most impressive military body that engages the attention
of the contemplative pedestrian is the troop of Life Guards or of
Blues which every morning, about eleven o'clock, makes its way down to
Whitehall from the Regent's Park barracks. (Shortly afterward another
troop passes up from Whitehall, where, at the Horse Guards, the guard
has been changed.) The Life Guards are one of the most brilliant
ornaments of the metropolis, and I never see two or three of them
pass without feeling shorter by several inches. When, of a summer
afternoon, they scatter themselves abroad in undress uniform--with
their tight red jackets and tight blue trousers following the swelling
lines of their manly shapes, and their little visorless caps perched
neatly askew on the summit of their six feet two of stature--it is
impossible not to be impressed, and almost abashed, by the sight of
such a consciousness of neatly-displayed physical advantages and by
such an air of superior valor. It is true that I found the other
day in an amusing French book (a little book entitled _Londres
pittoresque_, by M. Henri Bellenger) a description of these majestic
warriors which took a humorous view of their grandeur. A Frenchman
arriving in London, says M. Bellenger, stops short in the middle of
the pavement and stares aghast at this strange apparition--"this
tall lean fellow, with his wide, short torso perched upon a pair of
grasshopper's legs and squeezed into an adhesive jacket of scarlet
cloth, who dawdles himself along with a little cane in his hand,
swinging forward his enormous feet, curving his arms, throwing back
his shoulders, arching his chest, with a mixture of awkwardness,
fatuity and stiffness the most curious and the most exhilarating....
In his general aspect," adds this merciless critic, "he recalls the
circus-rider, minus the latter's flexibility: skin-tight garments,
simpering mouth, smile of a dancing-girl, attempt to be impertinent
and irresistible which culminates only in being ridiculous."