country grandees in their carriages, dashing girls
on horseback, and three or four young Guards'
officers who came to scoff, and remained to prey
—upon the luncheon. To pass this lot was the
great ordeal. " Keep up, rear rank!" " Steady
in the centre!" " Touch to the left, Jenkins;
where the deuce are you going to?" The first and
second companies went by splendidly. " Weally,
not so bad now, for quill-drivers and mechanics,"
says young Lithpson of the Bombardiers to Jack
Gorget of the Body Guards, mauve. Jack nods
approvingly; then, as the third company
advances, headed by Tom Exlex, who was in the
Spanish service under General Evans and wears
his Sebastian medal and San Fernando cross on
his breast, Jack says earnestly, though
ungrammatically, " Hallo, what's this swell's
decorations?" " 'Pon my soul I can't say," answers
Lithpson; "pwobably some weward for
supewiour penmanship."

But we could afford to laugh even at such
bitter sarcasm as this, so well were our
evolutions performed, and so heartily were they
applauded. Finally, we were drawn up in line,
and, amidst the cheers of the populace, Lady
Dulciss advanced, followed by a portentous
servant bearing the bugle on a cushion. Lady
Dulciss is a very fine woman: a kind, benevolent,
motherly-looking lady, and I've no doubt she
made an excellent speech. It was intended for
the entire regiment, but she delivered it in a
confidential tone to Jack Heatly, who stood in
front of her, and all we caught was "Britannia,"
"bugle," " Grimgribber," and " call to arms."
Then she presented the bugle gracefully to
Jack, who, in his intense nervousness, instantly
dropped it, and she and he and Sir Gregory and
the portentous footman all struggled for it on
the ground. Then the band played " God save
the Queen," the people cheered louder than
ever, and we broke off and went in to lunch.

CHINESE FIGHTING MEN.

ALTHOUGH China possesses an enormous army
on paper, and a very considerable one in reality,
it may be doubted whether, before Admiral
Hope's gallant but fatal affair at the mouth of
the Peiho river, our arms have ever been fairly
encountered by Chinese soldiers. This requires
explanation, but the explanation is at hand.
Among the other features of that gigantic
system of shams which the Celestial Empire
has degenerated into, one of the most
noteworthy, if not the most prominent, is the army.
If the Pekin Gazette is to be believed, the
Brother of the Sun and Moon possesses an
effective force of three millions and a half of
troops! These colossal numbers are sometimes
permitted to vary on a sort of sliding scale, but
the effective force of China is seldom, if ever,
reduced below a nominal amount of three millions.
No Army List is published in China- at least,
the writer could hear of none, either among the
Hong-Kong merchants or the native Cantonese
—and it is very difficult to elicit any particulars
with reference to this tremendous host: which
is supposed to be at this moment mustering
somewhere along the line of the Grand Canal to
pour down with overwhelming force upon the
Fanquis, or English barbarians. And, indeed,
if such an army did exist in an effective condition,
the fate of our expeditionary force,
averaging, as it will, only from fourteen to twenty
thousand rank and file, would inspire
apprehension at home, even with the largest allowance
made for the weight of British valour and
discipline. An old, deeply-rooted opinion is prevalent
in England that the Chinese are poltroons.
This is unjust and erroneous. The Chinese
not only possess a passive courage, which bears
them up amid frightful tortures and the
preliminaries of a cruel death, but they will confront
danger with perfect gaiety. Who that has seen
the Canton coolies of our Land Transport
Service, cracking jokes, laughing, and capering with
uncouth merriment under the fire of their
countrymen, can doubt that a Chinaman may
be as devoid of cowardice as any one? The
camp followers in India are singularly timid
and liable to panics, and in the Sutlej campaigns
I have known hundreds of them rush among
the very sabres of the Sikh horse in irrational
terror. But so cool and light of heart are Chinese
transport coolies—carrying their weighty loads by
bamboo sling-poles under a smart fire of match-lock
balls and cannon-shot—that a body of
them, if raised and organised, would prove
highly efficient. Yet these are the cousins
and brothers of the very enemies who fly
with such agile pertinacity before the assaults
of our people, and who are routed from strong
positions by the mere tramp and hurrahs of the
"foreign devils," as they have been taught to
call us. The fact is, there is little danger of
defeat: the Chinaman, like other Orientals,
is born to obey, and is a good servant to a
good master; his courage, his endurance of
peril and wounds, are totally conditional on the
example set him. With officers of ability and
dash to lead him, he can behave very well
indeed; but the military mandarins are, for the
most part, very sorry officers, and command
neither affection nor respect. The vices inherent
in any despotism have sapped the personal
bravery which they might be supposed to have
inherited from their barbaric ancestors, and
peculation, timidity, and corruption of every
kind, combine to effect the ruin of the army.

China is not, and, happily for mankind, has
never been, a military nation. Any other
nation numbering three hundred millions of
citizens would, countless ages ago, have overrun
the whole earth; would have carried the
Dragon standard to Rome and Athens; and have
taught the philosophy of Confucius and the
worship of Buddha, from the Hoang-hoto the Thames.
The Chinese, fortunately, adopted a policy of
exclusion. This has kept their neighbours free,
but has weakened their own prowess to an
incalculable degree. Although caste is not an
institution of China, yet custom has rendered
callings hereditary. Thus the shoemaker is the
descendant of shoemakers, the barber a grand-