this necessity well. Vagacius, who wrote in the fourth century, declared that an army raised without regard to the proper choice of its recruits, was never yet made a good army by length of service, and he warns us against the error of looking for great height among young soldiers. From his statement it would appear that the minimum height of the young Roman soldier was not more than 62.9939 inches, and in our own day the height of the young French soldier for general infantry service is only 61.41855 inches. In the Roman army, too, other conditions were respected. The military authorities of those days proportioned the period of probation for recruits to their physical capacities. Before a Roman conscript was finally approved, he underwent a probation of four months’ duration. When at the end of that period it was proved he had activity and strength to enable him to surmount the hardships of a soldier’s life, and that he appeared possessed of the requisite mental capacity, and a due degree of courage, the military mark was indelibly imprinted on his hand. But with us, as we have already shown, such precautions have not hitherto been taken. The result of an improper selection of “growing lads,” and the injudicious exercise through which they are put,—as they have not been trained according to true physiological principles,—have rendered them in the first instance incumbrances to the military hospitals, and, if the system has not led to the premature death of the young recruit, he is sooner or later thrown upon the civil population with one or more of his vital organs injured for the remainder of his life. The service of such young men, observes Dr. Aitken, in his valuable lectures on the subject, who are no sooner out of the hospital than they are in again, can only be regarded as merely “nominal” service, and the “strength" of an army, if composed of such material, can never constitute a very formidable phalanx.
Happily this subject is attaining some degree of consideration amongst the authorities at the Horse Guards—and not before it is time, nor before it has been thrust upon them from various quarters, and especially from their own generals. Lord Hardinge complained that many of the men who were sent to the East as a reserve were young recruits, and that instead of being composed of bones and muscle, they were almost all muscle. However, his was not a bitter complaint, for he felt satisfied that he could make very good soldiers of them in two months. He imagined, however, that fixing the age at nineteen would give him the requisite “bone and muscle.” He overlooked the fact that in sixty days the young recruit may break down so completely under the exertion, that before two years pass over his head he may be a dead man, or, having spent most of his time in hospital, he may be discharged from the service for heart or pulmonary disease, and thus become a permanent burden upon the civil population during the remainder of his life. There is, fortunately, a growing conviction both at home and abroad—and this, it must be observed, is the hard lesson of experience—that men are in general unable to surmount the fatigue of a military life under twenty years of age. Recruits of eighteen years of age, says M. Coche, are commonly unfitted for the duties of an army; if they do not possess unusual strength, they pass two or three, or even four years out of service in the hospital, if they are not discharged the service before that time. Sir James McGrigor records, that the corps which arrived for service in the Peninsula were always ineffective and sickly in proportion as they were made up of men who had recently joined the ranks; and he made a calculation in the field that 350 men who had served in the field four or five years were more effective than 1000 who had just arrived, unused to the harassing duties of service. Many examples are also to be found in the records of our Russian experience in 1854, which proves that young and growing lads are much less able to endure the fatigue of marching than mature men. When the Duke of Newcastle informed Lord Raglan that he had 2000 recruits ready to send him, he replied that “those last sent were so young and unformed that they fell victims to disease, and were swept away like flies; he preferred to wait.” The Duke of Cambridge tells us that the young men suffered two or three times as much as the men who had been there all the time, and Sir De Lacy Evans also states in the fifth report on the army before Sebastopol, that the drafts sent to him were composed of men too young.
Such is the testimony borne against the evil practice of selecting men who have not the necessary physical strength. As Napoleon said, they are only fit to encumber the road-side. In countries where the conscription drags into the military net any number, and where the population have no choice when they have drawn the numero noir, but to follow the career of a soldier, this question is of comparatively slight importance; but in this country, where “soldiering” is purely gratuitous, it is altogether another matter. We have to pay a high premium for our men; they have to be induced by a pecuniary bribe to enter the service, and when they are enrolled they each cost us, as we have already stated, 100l. per annum. If then it is a matter of urgent importance that the health of the soldier should be carefully looked after when he has been enlisted, much more essential is it that he should be free from flaw when he enters. It behoves, therefore, the authorities at the Horse Guards, now that they are cognisant of the principles on which recruits ought to be selected, to see that none are admitted but such as can answer faithfully to these scientific requisitions.
SECOND SIGHT.
Strong of limb, and fleet of foot, with crisp, auburn curls, with cheeks like hard red apples, and eyes glowing like stars, Angus McLean was surely not likely to be the victim of nervous disease. His family said he had the gift of second sight. But we have been accustomed to consider these “children of the mist,” even when they happen to belong to the stronger sex, to be weak, even as hysterical women. Their bodies we suppose to be emaciated, their nerves without tone, and if they see into the next world, we judge it is because the vail of flesh is fretted so thin by
