first we believe to be a real injury to the service as well as to the officer; the hardship of the second is imaginary, while it brings with it some real advantages.

An assistant - surgeon enters the service after boyhood has passed away, when the community of sleeping and dressing upon the maindeck cannot fail to be painful to one unused to such a regimen from early youth. The refusal of a cabin furnishes a plausible excuse, if not a solid reason, for neglecting those professional studies which the service requires that a medical officer should never cease diligently to prosecute. As to admission to the wardroom, that is now conceded to assistant-surgeons after three years' service, and we confess ourselves unable to see the reality of a grievance in the obligation imposed upon a youth, fresh from the medical schools, to endure for that short period the society of future admirals, secretaries, masters of the fleet, and of present gentlemen of high rank, in the gun-room of one of her Majesty's ships. To a young man of limited means, on the other hand, we conceive it to be a real advantage to be so circumstanced that he need not enter the wardroom mess until he can have saved money enough to enable him to do so comfortably, and without incurring debt. We make these remarks in the hope that they may finally tend to remove some misapprehension; certainly with no want of sympathy for the medical profession, and still less with any failure of respect for the naval medical department, which we well know, when the hour of need shall come, will not be found unworthy of the high character it has attained under its present able and respected head.

So much for the navy; and few of our readers will think even so much necessary to prove what every British man believes, that its organisation, no less than its materiel, are equal to the occasion. The general opinion is not the same with respect to the other service; nor have the occurrences of the last few months tended to remove the doubts which most men entertain as to the efficiency of our military system. Scarcely has that system been tried in actual service before it has been found that its organisation is altogether imperfect; its departments are incompetent; its controlling head is overburthened with other and incom

patible duties, and the details of its arrangements are cumbersome and mischievous. Within a few weeks, and, as it were, in presence of the enemy, the Secretaryship for War has been divorced from that for colonial affairs, and organic changes have been initiated in the management of the army; and what adds a peculiar untowardness to these events is the obvious fact that the changes have not been adopted under any conviction of their necessity, but have been forced upon the authorities by the activity of newspaper correspondents and the pressure of opinion from without. The " clothing colonels" have been abolished, the Guards have been paraded without stocks, the tight coatee has been condemned-but only after a desperate struggle, and with an unwillingness which plainly shows that the new measures will need the superintendence of new men. That this is so, is proved by the simple facts, that although a board of general officers for the superintendence of the clothing of the army is an old and permanent institution of the country, the breast and arms of the soldier's coat cannot be loosened, or its skirts widened, without previous inquiry being made into the habits of military nations; and that "consideration" is necessary before the commanding mind can be made up upon the grave question of the moustache. While this important point is under discussion, the newspaper correspondents are placed upon the list of suspects; and whether the pen or the razor shall be driven out of the camp, probably causes as much agitation in the souls of our warrior-chiefs as the distant booming of the Russian guns.

It is not our intention now to enter into the minutia of the many complaints against the management of the army of the East; but upon three important points very grave charges have been advanced-and no one can doubt have been to a great extent substantiated and to these we shall address a very few remarks. The artillery is admitted on all hands to be very insufficient in force; and recent accounts state that it is greatly inferior to the Russian in weight of metal. Between the French and English armies, it appears that no more than forty-five guns could be mustered for service at Varna; and a letter from a correspondent of the Morning Chro

nicle, now before us, states that sixpounder British guns are to be opposed (should a meeting take place) to Russian nine-pounders. Even the Times owns to an earnest wish that our artillery was double its present strength, and assigns the necesssity for that wish as a reason for avoiding field operations at the present time. Is this a blunder, or an unavoidable result of the insufficiency of our force of artillery, or of the want of means of transport? The question, of course, will be asked, and we trust the possible answer may be satisfactory.

Everyone is familiar with the statements of the Times correspondent at Gallipoli, with reference to the commissariat and medical departments, and we need not repeat them at length. Everyone also knows that, notwithstanding the denials of ministers in both Houses of Parliament, these statements have been proved to be true. There were no commissariat arrangements made preparatory to the arrival of the troops; there was no sufficient commissariat staff; there were no hospital arrangements; there were no medical stores or comforts. The purveyor's staff consisted of an hospital sergeant with a sovereign in his pocket, of which he could not get change, and consequently could not procure the merest necessaries for the sick. All this, and much more, has been proved beyond a doubt. And here again questions must be askedWhy has this been so? what has been done to set matters right? As to the commissariat failures, we believe they may be accounted for by the fact of there being practically no Secretary for War, without a necessity for throwing blame upon the department. There being no one to look after the general interests of the army; the commander-in-chief being employed in distributing commissions, the adjutant-general in assigning stations, and the clothing-colonels in computing off reckonings; the commissariat department was allowed to fall into abeyance. There has practically been no commissariat for several years-only a few Treasury- clerks, employed in totting up figures and checking defaulters in the public offices. A commissariat staff cannot be improvised, and hence the absence of one at Gallipoli.

But the failures in the medical arrangements cannot be so explained. There is, and has been, a directorgeneral, and a complete staff, in active working order what have they been about? This question also needs an answer; and when it shall be vouchsafed, we trust it will contain a satisfactory explanation of the present state of the department. It certainly does seem strange that, if the head of it be competent to his duty, so obvious and well-known an arrangement as that of an hospital-corps should have been forgotten, or left to be suggested by a gentleman not employed on the medical staff, and that the organisation of it should be committed to him. It seems not less strange that the Secretary for War should be kept in such thick ignorance of this branch of the army, as to be led to state, within the last few days, that an ambulance corps was an entire novelty, likely to provoke the imitation of continental nations, the fact being that it was in effective operation under Barons Percy and Larrey in the French army fifty years ago. There is another circumstance in this case for which also we find it extremely difficult to find any satisfactory explanation. About the year 1840, a medical officer of high rank and very distinguished name was sent to Turkey by Lord Palmerston, in charge of a party, for the purpose of ascertaining the state of military medical arrangements there, and of forming, if possible, an efficient medical staff in the Turkish army. That officer. is, we believe, very much senior in rank. to the present director-general, and has greatly the advantage of him in military experience. He is also, as we understand, in health and vigour. Was his advice or assistance asked in the conduct of the medical arrangements for the army of the East? If not, why not? But failing time and space warn us to conclude, which we do with the expression of a sincere hope that the Duke of Newcastle may improve the leisure now secured to him, and turn his acknowledged great talents from the work of ordering, and hoping for the accomplishment of his orders, to that of examining into the capabilities of the departments of the army, and the competency of their several heads.