was his first earthly dignity, looked as if they had pushed this feeling into fierce or stern excess. In fact, along with the untrained state of passion incidental to their general habits, they brought into the field the darkest religious prejudice. The darkest we say, for they could not enlighten themselves, much less others, with an account of why they hated; perhaps, not even with an account of the faith that was in them;" antipathy to the prevailing creed of the country often forming the greater portion of their own.

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In military outfit they were as imperfect and as shabby as in mental order. Uncombed locks strayed, along with glances not of the gentlest expression, from beneath the peak of the helm; their jackets were soot-stained, their uncleansed and smoke-dried boots crippled up knees unused to such control-indeed, in some instances, worsted hose were the only defence the leg could boast. Very often a single rusty spur served the unbooted cavalier, who, however, might vindicate his omission of the other, upon the principle of a certain well-reasoning poet, according to whom, if one side of a horse be compelled to travel, its fellow will not lag behind. And their untrained, shaggy steeds stocd under them, spiritless and inert, drowsily enjoying, with closed eyes and necks poked downward, the "stand at ease," allowed before the arrival of the General. Not

a whit puffed up did they seem at the new and ennobling service they were called to fill: not a whit transformed, in spirited imaginings, into chargers, merely because a very rusty scabbard chafed against their ribs.

Our inspection of the infantry now commences. The military heading its line were only part of a regiment quartered in the county: they were attended, however, by a band.

Many will recollect that, at the time we treat of, the dressing of a soldier's head, for parade or review, was the business of a morn.. ing. Powder and pomatum should have been the ingredients used at his toilet, but the private's scanty pay obliged him to substitute flour and soap. A compost of these matters having been abundantly mixed with the hair, he combed his locks at either side into two goodly chevaux-de-frize, leaving at top a léte-toupée; the whole much resembling, in miniature, a fortress on a hill, defended by lower outworks. But this was not all. The soldier further wore half way down his back, a queu, a tail long enough for many among the monkey tribe; while the grenadier displayed between his brawny shoulders, an iron-bound packing box, containing, or supposed to contain, hair, of the polishing and adjusting of which he was bound to be as careful as of his more valuable acc utrements. There was

some sense, though of a tardy growth, in the order that dispensed with these curious appendages to manhood and soldiership; and at the time of its promulgation, a punster did not lose the opportunity of observing that, in any future affray, the soldiers of his Britannic Majesty could never again "turn tail."

Upon the review-field our militia marched into line without a hair awry. Their casques, half-way between the succeeding cap and the horseman's helm, sat precisely above the chevaux-de-frize. In all other respects, too, they showed like soldiers of that day. Coats, belts, pouches, white small-clothes, and tight black leggings, glittering with buttons, were spruce and debonnair. The sun flashed from the polished barrels of their muskets; the prim feathers stood perpendicularly in their caps; the'r chins rested easily on their stocks.

But we cannot yield to these men more praise than that excited by their outward show of discipline. In habits and conduct, as soldiers, they had been debauched, and were a part of the force previously described by Abercrombie as "licentious and disorderly.”

Called to conflict, soon after they were embodied, not against equal foes, from whom the danger to be expected in attack renders necessary a systematized courage, but against nightly insurrectionists, who fled from regular contests, and who were to be put down by piecemeal vengeance, they had acquired, perhaps as a matter of course, notions of military service destructive of discipline. In the particular instance before us, sectarian hatred gave energy to this half-bandit feeling. In the name of God, as well as in the name of the King, cabins were razed, and, sometimes, the unresisting peasant met the fate of a resisting one, without much danger incurred, on the part of the slayer, of being called to account for the accident..

As the yeoman cavalry of Wexford took the post of honour near the regular dragoons, so the yeoman infantry of that town stood next to the militia.

It has before been hinted, that many soldiers from the town of Wexford allowed themselves to be enrolled for his Majesty's service, rather to give a proof of their loyalty, of which readiness to take up arms was the test, than on account of any great liking they felt for the new profession, or indeed any fitness they displayed for the hot struggle of the battle-field. This remark will hold particularly good for the corps now passing under inspection. We remember one, at least, amongst them, who bore his musket strictly in this sense, and in this only. He was content to give the demon

stration of principles required by putting on a red coat, and endeavouring to learn, late in life as it was to begin, the theory of a soldier's trade; but of any step beyond this, he never entertained a notion. He attended drill as punctually as he opened his shop. But when his corps was sent to shoot at a target a memorable one, which had served for a whole month's practice, and was but little injured at the end of the campaign, he never cared to put ball-cartridge into his piece, nor could exhortation or threat compel him to do so. "Me!" he cried-" is it me?-Not I, upon my word and credit. How do I know but I might hurt some one?"

And another occurs to our recollection, who, after he had feelingly bidden his children adieu, would issue forth to the day's duty, with a face of studied quietness that seemed to say to all beholders: 66 Although I carry this musket, let no man fear injury from me."

Yet, we should admit that the front rank of this corps boasted a majority of well-dressed, well-looking soldiers, who did much credit to their native town. But they served as a screen to a number of uncouth figures in the rear; men, such as we have sketched, with so much of themselves in advance, that, at the word "close order," when they imagined they took up only one pace of ground, their covering files were pushed out of line; and other feeble wights, who literally tottered under their muskets, and took but little pride, and derived but little enjoyment, from the vain pageantry in which they were compelled to bear a part.

The corps we shall next pause to notice, was also from the county town, but of inferior caste to the former honourable company, being composed of working mechanics, or persons not of trade or business, who held with them the same social rank. The first-mentioned brought into the field the several characteristic marks of their several occupations, by which, in civil attire, they might easily be distinguished from each other. The Butcher handled his musket as if it had been a cleaver; the Carpenter as if it had been a saw; the Blacksmith, as if it had been a sledge; the barber's muscular calves betrayed him; the pale, hard-worked, and melancholy visage of the weaver was not to be mistaken; and no previous drilling of a Sunday, in the church-yard, by their Serjeant, who was parish-clerk, (with the organist for Lieutenant, and the lawyer for Captain,) could invigorate the loose-kneed Tailor, or give alertness to the Nailer's swoollen extremities.

In closing our walk of inspection with a few general glances at the whole yeomanry force, it may be said that, in very many other instances, men looked or dressed themselves exactly in keeping

with their original civil characters. The snug and sober small farmer donned his cap, distinguished rather than adorned by the waving feather, in the same fashion that he used to wear his domestic hat: a fashion which caused his ears to protrude like tiny wings, while it covered his neck behind. He contrived, too, to put on his military coat in the identical way he had, for twenty or thirty years, put on his loose frieze suit; and, while plodding to the field, his pouch thumped stoutly behind him, as if it had been a pair of saddle-bags, and his muske lolled over his shoulder like a flail. He still retained, too, the air of homely seriousness, that, in less perilous times, he constantly exhibited when, of a harvest morning, he eyed the firmament to seek early prognostics of the weather.

Nor did the parish-clerk, a character often occurring in the yeomanry ranks, lose the chilly mien of decency which piety and an empty church had long inflicted upon him: nor the parish schoolmaster his pedagogue severity of brow, now so useless where he was himself a pupil, and not an apt one either; nor the petty shopkeeper his sidelong or downward look of calculation, by which at its first assumption, he would fain have it concluded he was a man who could buy and sell at proper seasons.

Our parting glance recognises the fact, that the yeoman cavalry, along with being the most numerous of the half-volunteer force, made, on the whole, a much better figure than their infantry fellow-soldiers. It should, however, be added, that upon the day of real service, which soon followed, they were found of little use, and suffered the mortification of being eclipsed, to a certain degree, by the men whom they now outshone. Indeed, if any of the yeomanry of Ireland could lay claim, in the subsequent contest, to a sprig of laurel, it was earned exclusively by the shabbiest and most unwashed of the foot-companies that have passed under our eye; by men, whose old corderoy or frieze small-clothes, clumsy worsted stockings, and broken foot-gear, denied them, from the waist downwards, all seeming right to the name of soldiers. Nay, a leaf of the above-mentioned sprig may be awarded to corps called Supplementary, (we were ashamed to notice them before,) whose only outward pretensions to that high-sounding title came from their having dingy cross-belts huddled over their smeared working attire, and dusty muskets on their shoulders. But hereditary prejudices fitted such men better than fine clothes could have done, for the unhappy cause which called them out of their obscure abodes, to deal life or death throughout the land. And although, upon this

review day, they clutched their weapons awkwardly, a close ob server might predict that, under less formal circumstances, they were persons who would ram the cartridge home, pull the trigger with unshaken nerve, and blach not at the sight of blood, whether shed in the battle-field, or at the lonely road-side.

CHAPTER VIII.

"A flourish, trumpets! beat, alarum drums!"

THE veteran general has at length arrived, and, in obedience to some such command as is contained in our quotation, his welcome is sounded on the brazen trumpets of the dragoons to the right, and by an imposing burst of martial music from the band at the head of the militia infantry. Attention!" echoes, in tones of high command, from one officer to another along the line; and no voices shout the word louder than those of the yeoman captains. All put on their best appearance for the first glance of the general's eye. And if there be some jostling and confusion among certain corps, and some under-breath growls against them by the drilling officers, let us not be hypercritical, but rather admit that all managed as well as they could. Even the old commander, while he looked with an eye of steady, frowning scrutiny on the regular troops, smiled indulgently on the essay of the others. We fear, indeed, the smile occasionally amounted to the more palpable expression of merriment, while some individuals caught his notice.

He had ended his observation of the line, and assumed his place in its front, when Sir Thomas Hartley thought there was a good opportunity to address him on the subject which had brought him to witness the inspection.

The Baronet's salutation was politely received, and his complaint attentively listened to: and as he pourtrayed the acts of aggression for which he sought reasonable redress, the veteran glanced sternly towards that part of the line against which the facts were stated. "Order Major Danby of the Dragoons to advance," he said, abruptly turning to his aid-de-camp; and while the officer galloped across the field to obey the command, he addressed Sir Thomas Hartley.

"I have heard, Sir, upon my route, but too many circumstances