their trials; but it is plain to the simplest intelligence that their time, for themselves and their country, would have been better employed at home than dodging and ducking from the furies of corporals or captains. Here are some impressions culled from a young soldier's notes, sent to me by a scientific student, whose time was lamentably squandered in his year of futile service.
"Monotony is not the only thing a soldier complains of. I remember suffering many fits of indignation and of fury, principally in the beginning. A most remarkable thing about the army is that you are punished, not only for your own faults, which is quite right, but also for those of each of your comrades; and so you are responsible for the behaviour of the whole army—six hundred thousand men. Suppose you are at Brest. You will not, of course, be hanged if a soldier at Marseilles misbehaves, but if a soldier on leave a hundred leagues off comes back tipsy and obstreperous, the leave you hoped to have will perhaps not be given, and the time you might have employed in a pleasanter manner will be spent in cleaning the floor with the bottom of a bottle, without wax. These vicarious punishments occur much oftener in your own regiment, above all, in your own company; so that the nearer the sinner is to you the more threatening is he; and if you have the ill-luck to
