possessed a greater portion than myself. I was eight years in the army, during which time I associated less with people out of the army than any soldier that I ever knew. This partiality I have always retained. I like soldiers, as a class in life, better than any other description of men. Their conversation is more pleasing to me; they have generally seen more than other men; they have less of vulgar prejudice about them; to which may be added, that, having felt hardships themselves, they know how to feel for others. This does not, indeed, apply but to those who have seen service, or who depend solely upon their merit for their success. Amongst soldiers, less than amongst any other description of men, have I observed the vices of lying and hypocrisy. I do not recollect a single instance of a soldier in any corps, having betrayed, or given up, or exposed, another soldier, even for the sake of saving himself from most terrible punishment; and, as for selfishness, a soldier, who would not give his dinner, his day's provisions, to a comrade in want, would be looked upon as an unnatural brute. It is not to be expected that such generosity of feeling should be found amongst the mass of mankind: those who have not known the vicissitudes and the many wants of the soldier's life, cannot be expected to have the soldier's feeling: I have known the one, and I possess the other; and, notwithstanding I have now been accused of hankering after nothing but base lucre,' upon this feeling I have always acted. Aye, and upon this feeling I shall have been known to have acted, too, in spite of all that can be done to misrepresent me to the army. . . .

Lover as I am of base lucre,' no soul in distress was ever sent empty from my door, be the cause of that distress what it might. But, to soldiers, and their wives and children; to every creature bearing the name or mark or sign of military

service about it, I, nor any one belonging to me, ever omitted to show particular marks of compassion and kindness. I wish the public could now pass in review before them all the unfortunate soldiers that have come to my door and those who have been to the door of the man who has called me the 'traducer' of the army. Would to God that this exhibition could take place, and that an inquiry could be made as to the reception that each had met with! I should not be afraid of the comparison, though he represents me as the enemy of the army; as a man whom the army calls upon the Judges to punish.

Late in October, or early in November last, returning home in the dusk of the evening, I found our village full of soldiers. There were about five hundred men (a number nearly equal to the whole population of the parish), who had arrived at Portsmouth, last from Portugal; many of whom had been at the battle of Talavera, and had served in both the arduous and fatal campaigns in Spain; and most of whom had suffered either from sickness or from wounds actually received in battle. These men, who had landed at Portsmouth that same morning, had marched eighteen miles to Botley, where they found for their accommodation one small Inn and three Public-houses. All the beds in the whole village, and in the whole parish to its utmost limits, including the bed of every cottager, would not have lodged these men and their wives and children, and all the victuals in the parish would not, of course, have furnished them with a single meal, without taking from the meals of the people of the parish. The stables, barns, and every other place, in which a man could lie down out of the way of actual rain, were prepared with straw. Every body in the village was ready to give up all his room to these people, whose every garment and limb and feature bespoke the misery they had undergone. It was

rather unfortunate that both myself and my wife were from home when they arrived in the village, or I should have lodged a company or two of the privates at least. I found the greater part of them already gone to their straw lodging, and, therefore, I could do nothing for them; but, I brought two of the officers (the Commanding Officer and another) to my house, not having spare beds for any more, upon so short a notice. The next day, which happened to be a Sunday, the whole of the officers, thirteen or fourteen in number, lived at my house the whole of the day; and of all my whole life, during which I have spent but very few unpleasant days, I never spent so pleasant a day as that. After a lapse of sixteen years, I once more saw myself at table with nothing but soldiers; nothing but men in red coats; and I felt so happy at being able to give them proofs of my attachment. I never, upon any occasion, so much enjoyed, never so sensibly felt, the benefits of having been industrious and economical. My guests, on their part, soon found that they were at home, and gave full scope to that disposition to gaiety, which prevails amongst soldiers, and particularly after long-endured hardships. It was the first whole day of their being in England from the time they had quitted it; and certain I am, that not a man of them has since seen a happier. On the Monday morning, before day-light, my whole family, children and all, were up to prepare them a breakfast, and to bid them farewell; and, when they left us, the Commanding Officer, who was a modest and sensible Scotchman, observed, that he had, in his life, heard much of English hospitality, but that, at Botley, he had seen and felt it.-Political Register, 1810.

10. To the Labouring Classes of this Kingdom.

ECONOMY means, management, and nothing more; and it is generally applied to the affairs of a house and family, which affairs are an object of the greatest importance, whether as relating to individuals or to a nation. A nation is made powerful and honoured in the world not so much by the number of its people as by the ability and character of that people; and the ability and character of a people depend, in a great measure, upon the economy of the several families which, all taken together, make up the nation. There never yet was, and never will be, a nation permanently great, consisting, for the greater part, of wretched and miserable families.

Education means breeding up, bringing up, or rearing up; and nothing more. This includes every thing with regard to the mind as well as the body of the child; but, of late years, it has been so used as to have no sense applied to it but that of book-learning, with which, nine times out of ten, it has nothing at all to do. . . .

The education that I have in view is, therefore, of a very different kind. You should bear constantly in mind, that nine tenths of us are, from the very nature and necessities of the world, born to gain our livelihood by the sweat of our brow. What reason have we, then, to presume, that our children are not to do the same? If they be, as now and then one will be, endued with extraordinary powers of mind, those powers may have an opportunity of developing themselves; and, if they never have that opportunity, the harm is not very great to us or to them. Nor does it hence follow, that the descendants of labourers are always to be labourers. The path upwards is steep and long, to be sure. Industry,

care, skill, excellence in the present parent lays the foundation of a rise, under more favourable circumstances, for his children. The children of these take another rise; and, by and by, the descendants of the present labourer become gentlemen.

This is the natural progress. It is by attempting to reach the top at a single leap that so much misery is produced in the world; and the propensity to make such attempts has been cherished and encouraged by the strange projects that we have witnessed of late years for making the labourers virtuous and happy by giving them what is called education. The education which I speak of consists in bringing children up to labour with steadiness, with care, and with skill; to show them how to do as many useful things as possible; to teach them to do them all in the best manner; to set them an example in industry, sobriety, cleanliness and neatness; to make all these habitual to them, so that they never shall be liable to fall into the contrary; to let them always see a good living proceeding from labour, and thus to remove from them the temptation to get at the goods of others by violent or fraudulent means, and to keep far from their minds all the inducements to hypocrisy and deceit.

And, bear in mind, that, if the state of the labourer has its disadvantages when compared with other callings and conditions of life, it has also its advantages. It is free from the torments of ambition, and from a great part of the causes of ill-health, for which not all the riches in the world and all the circumstances of high rank are a compensation. The able and prudent labourer is always safe, at the least, and that is what few men are who are lifted above him. They have losses and crosses to fear, the very thought of which never enters his mind, if he act well his part towards himself, his family and his neighbour.