mathematics may, speaking generally, be studied in any civilized place; but these studies must be, in the main, local; and it is seldom, in the history of scientific discovery, that a Humboldt can devote whole years to travel, while an English soldier must travel far and wide. Natural history, too, you may well advance both by rod and gun. Only lately we have been told that M. Agassiz has discovered already hundreds of fishes, hitherto unknown, in the Amazon alone. Englishmen are widely famous for the energy and pluck they show in hunting wild animals, and many a poor Hindoo villager blesses the day when first a party of English officers pitched their tents near, and slew their dreaded tigers. This same hunting expedition might enrich a private natural-history collection. at home, or add valuable specimens to your local museum, or even supply a deficiency in the already overladen shelves of our great national collection.

A man must have some employment in the army over and above his profession. Happily Englishmen have too superabundant energies to spend hours making and smoking cigarettes, as a Spanish gentleman will do. There is this further argument to encourage you to take up some study;

that if you don't, you are sure to take up with some mischievous amusement, or learn to idle and fritter away your time in a manner unworthy of any reasonable man. You know how constantly men have to leave the army from debt contracted entirely out of idleness and a silly recklessness either in gambling or horse-racing. Our gardens will grow something: put in good seed, work and cultivate them, and you will have a plentiful return; neglect them, and they won't remain passive, growing neither good nor evil; it only depends upon the nature of the soil what sort of weeds will flourish there: therefore, don't give them a chance; fill up the ground-every inch of it— with whatever suits your turn of mind: first giving place to those studies which I have tried to show you it is your absolute duty to prosecute, and which alone can fit you for the higher ranks of the honorable profession you have chosen.

To sum up, then, in few words, my previous arguments: you have, in the vast extent of the British territories, a wider range for general observation than any members of any other profession can have. You have, from the nature of your duties, an immense amount of time at your dis

don't

posal; you are sure to misuse that time if you employ it well-there is no middle path. You have chosen a profession where the minimum of knowledge required by regulation is small; but that required to make a man a good officer is really considerable, and therefore you are bound in honor to acquire that knowledge. These studies are both interesting and very unrestricted, giving you so free an option that it is impossible that you should not have a taste for some. And, finally, your very amusement and observations in foreign countries may be of the greatest service toward increasing the general stock of human knowledge, to which it is equally a pleasure and an honor to add, inasmuch as the experience of history teaches with unvarying uniformity that whatever adds to the knowledge adds to the happiness and the security of our race. We were born to be the lords of created nature; only ignorant nations are its slaves; but this supremacy is only to be won and maintained by studying the laws of nature, by ever accumulating fresh stores of knowledge and none have a grander or richer field to work than those whose duties call them to brave every climate, and watch over the interests of our fellow-subjects in every quarter of our globe.

VI.

AN OUTLINE OF THE LIFE OF C. J. NAPIER.

IN

the toughest and bloodiest of all his many

battles, "the day he overcame the Nervii," Cæsar tells us how he was completely surprised by the enemy, and forced into a general engagement without having made the slightest preparation to meet the danger. Of his troops, some were at work with mattock, spade, and axe-true Roman weapons as much as spear or sword-fortifying the camp; some were scattered farther a-field looking for materials for the chevaux-de-frise for the rampart; some had not yet arrived on the field; no scarlet flag, the signal for battle, was displayed, no bugle-calls sounded, no speech made to the soldiers, no watchword passed;-and the imperial historian adds, so short was the interval, and so rapid the enemy's assault, that most of this was left undone. Then what in the world saved his army from being doubled up, crushed, and swept into space by the

most ferocious and resolute of all the Gallic tribes? Let Cæsar's own words reply; none can be terser or more to the point: "his difficultatibus duæ res erant subsidio, scientia atque usus militum." The two things which saved them were the soldiers' scientific and practical knowledge of war; they understood the theory, and had already tested it in practice; they brought both to bear upon the crisis, and converted imminent ruin into a decisive victory.

"Scientia atque usus "—there lies the key to all success in every profession; in the army remarkably so. And I now propose to give you a sketch of the life of a soldier, whose brilliant career was, by his own admission-his own boast rather-due to the honorable and persevering study of the art of war, and of all other branches of knowledge that would throw any light upon the main study of his life.

And let me not be mistaken. I do not hold up Charles James Napier as a pattern man, or even as a perfect soldier: a soldier in a constitutional country at least ought to possess more self-control, to show less contempt for the foolish opinions of those by whom he is surrounded and by whom he