should not be more often disposed to take up his residence in Her
Majesty's barracks. There is a certain street-corner at Westminster
where the recruiting-sergeants stand all day at the receipt of custom.
The place is well chosen, and I suppose they drive a tolerably lively
business: all London sooner or later passes that way, and whenever
I have passed I have always observed one of these smart apostles of
military glory trying to catch the ear of one of the dingy London
_lazzaroni_. Occasionally, if the hook has been skilfully baited,
they appear to be conscious of a bite, but as a general thing the
unfashionable object of their blandishments turns away, after an
unillumined stare at the brilliant fancy dress of his interlocutor,
with a more or less concise declaration of incredulity. In front
of him stretches, across the misty Thames, the large commotion of
Westminster Bridge, crowned by the huge, towered mass of the Houses of
Parliament. To the right of this, a little _effaced_, as the French
say, is the vague black mass of the Abbey; close at hand are half
a dozen public-houses, convenient for drinking a glass to the
encouragement of military aspiration; in the background are the
squalid and populous slums of Westminster. It is a characteristic
congregation of objects, and I have often wondered that among so many
eloquent mementos of the life of the English people the possible
recruit should not be prompted by the sentiment of social solidarity
to throw himself into the arms of the agent of patriotism. Speaking
less vaguely, one would suppose that to the great majority of the
unwashed and unfed the condition of a private in one of the queen's
regiments would offer much that might be supremely enviable. It is
a chance to become, relatively speaking, a gentleman--more than a
gentleman, a "swell"--to have the grim problem of existence settled
at a stroke. The British soldier always presents the appearance of
scrupulous cleanliness: he is scoured, scrubbed, brushed beyond
reproach. His hair is enriched with pomatum and his shoes are
radiantly polished. His little cap is worn in a manner determined by
considerations purely aesthetic. He carries a little cane in one hand,
and, like a gentleman at a party, a pair of white gloves in the
other. He holds up his head and expands his chest, and bears himself
generally like a person who has reason to invite rather than to evade
the fierce light of modern criticism. He enjoys, mor