becoming marksmen; and the preparatory drill is gone through cheerfully, in the conviction which every sensible man entertains, that there can be no true soldiering without discipline, whatever men may be as marksmen.
The spirit is cordial, as far as it goes, and unanimous wherever roused. The interest is in the solemn question how far such preparation corresponds with the need, if it is needed at all. It sets the heart glowing to see thousands of citizens fitting themselves for a stem new duty, — diligent in drill, and dexterous with the rifle; but we cannot do without millions of indigenous soldiers, or without all known methods of defence. If we need any, we shall need alL If we saw the whole adult population hastening on its military education, the exhilaration might be of a deeper tone than our fathers used in their volunteering, but perhaps it could not be too grave for the occasion. The more serious it is, the stronger is the certainty that it will continue to be exhilaration, under all circumstances, secure from degenerating into mere alarm.
Our nation will have acquired a kind of new life when millions of us feel, for the first time, that our right arms can keep our heads; and that the men of any district can guard the homes, and the women and children of that district. Instead of the dreary fluctuating apprehension about certain very distinct horrors which we used to feel when we were threatened from abroad, we shall be conscious of a growing clearness about what to expect and what to do, and fear will ooze away just as courage does from a perplexed and blinded man. We shall not be wild enough to suppose that any raw force can withstand a practical army, be the cause as holy as it may; but we may expect, as volunteers, to set free our regular troops for the measured warfare, to guard every point that an enemy can attack, and to punish all intruders on our sacred soil.
The great point will be achieved in the rousing of the citizens. English determination and pertinacity will do the rest. We are already safer than we have been hitherto, and every day of activity will add to our security. The Glasgow volunteers were the first to wait upon the Queen. The Edinburgh volunteers lined her road to Holyrood. Thus we have something to show in the autumn of 1859. The guardians of London and its commerce and treasures are in training: and they ought to be an army in themselves, if the foe should ever come within sight of our great city. The strains of military music and the reverbera- tion of arms can be propagated over the land very rapidly; and British hearts beat high and steadily when the ear catches the echo of either. English- women can and do help. Some have money to impart; all have sympathy. Our Queens are not the only brave women in England. There are millions who would “think it foul shame,” as Queen Elizabeth did at Tilbury Fort, that an enemy should gain an advantage over us because we prefer peace to war.
It will not be the women’s fault if any invader is invited by our unreadiness, or allowed to return by our want of handiness in disposing of him. We do, and always shall, prefer peace to war; we do, and always shall, desire to be friends with the French especially. But if we are compelled to meet old friends as enemies, we must do it in an effectual way. We do, in our hearts, believe and know that our country and national life are better worth defending than any others in the world; and our defence must therefore be the best in the world. Ships or men, whenever and what- ever comes to assail our rights, liberties, and homes, must never go back. The time is come for every Englishman to seek his post as a citizen- soldier, and make himself fit to maintain it, in peace or war, or suspense between the two.
AN INCIDENT OF DARTMOOR.
The parish of Lydford in Devonshire, is said to be the largest parish in England: its extent ought to be measured in square miles instead of acres, for nearly the whole of the great Forest of Dartmoor is included within its boundaries.
Dartmoor is no longer, if it ever were, a forest, in the ordinary meaning of the term, for there is scarcely a tree upon it; but it is a splendid waste, where a man may walk twenty miles on end, and see nothing but granite rocks, and heather, and mountain-streams, and bogs, save where from some hill-side the bare stone walls of some moorland farm, the dark, sharp outlines of which lie stretched like a map before him on the other side of the valley, or a group of white-washed houses near a bridge, give some signs of human habitation. The pale green fields and patches of turnips look ten times more desolate, struggling as they are for existence with swamp and rock, than the primeval moor beyond, which partakes of a certain grandeur clothed in nature’s own rich colours.
But if Dartmoor is wild now, a hundred and thirty years ago it was wilder, and in that enormous parish some difficulty occurred in reaching the parish church. I n the present day there is an orthodox church at Princetown (the convict establishment), and dissenting chapels have arisen in lonely places; and these places of worship have graveyards in which the moor- men can bury their dead; but a hundred and thirty years ago every funeral had to go to Lydford church, ten, fifteen, twenty miles over hill and valley, rock and mire. The curious old ‘‘Leech-path“ by which they took their weary journey is still in existence, and may be seen winding its melancholy way through tie wildest morasses on the moor. Bog on every side, you can turn neither to the right nor left, but on the Leech-path there is firm footing. This was the Church-walk of the old moor-men before roads were known, and along it, on the shoulders of their neighbours, or the back of mountain pony, were the ancestors of the present race borne to their last home in Lydford churchyard.
In the early part of the last century one Syddall of Exeter was called on important business to Tavistock. The distance by road was sixty miles at least, but not more than thirty across the moor; Syddall was a bold man, and moreover pressed for time, so he determined to ride across the moor.
It was winter, and snow had fallen, and still lay