its very bone and sinew, and this mass of men-more than a third of a million, after deducting the force in Algeria-is cooped up on French soil. The British force at home is, on the contrary, of very small strength, rarely exceeding 30,000; and is so occupied by military duties and exercises, as to allow the soldier not too much leisure. Moreover, it could not be employed on public works without interfering with the labour market, which instead of demanding auxiliary aid, as it often does in France, is over-supplied by the population.

The Zouaves differ from other French soldiers in being volunteers, and how small a portion of the army is raised in this way we may learn from their number, which scarcely exceeds 9,000. They are much attached to their officers, taking particular pride in their commander, who is always a distinguished officer; and their first thought in bivouac is to provide him with a fire. Many Oriental customs have been introduced into their organization and discipline; and this has made it easier to form the auxiliary corps of Turcos, who are a sort of African Zouaves. Some of our author's stories about the Zouaves in the Crimea are rather marvellous, and we are surprised to hear of such exploits now for the first time. Of course, they were the deliverers of the English, and we are presented with an interesting account of a deputation from the Guards, headed by Lord Rokeby, waiting on the French colonel to thank him for this service. The narrative is very affecting. We give the moral in the author's own words, or rather those of his informant :-"Amongst our brave allies," says the Zouave officer who relates the circumstance, "it was -who should be first to shake hands with those they called their liberators." But no one could cope in enthusiasm with the Duke of Cambridge. He insisted on sending to his quarters-we were under the impression that he was in the camp-for some barrels of rum to regale all the Zouaves on the spot. One might conceive the duke having a bottle of rum in his possession, but to think of barrels ! It is a rum story, to say the best of it, and we may swallow as much of it as we please.

The book gives us several instances of the gallantry of the Zouaves, which are more credible, and very characteristic. It is well known what value they set upon a decoration, and what risk they will incur te prevent one falling into the hands of the enemy. In a combat in Africa a company gained the summit of a hill strongly occupied by the natives, and commenced a fierce struggle. The captain fell at the first volley, and a regular bullet storm was opened on three Zouaves, a serjeant, a fourrier, and a corporal, who were making a short cut upward through a ravine. The fourrier was foremost, but his priority gave umbrage to the serjeant, who pushed before him exclaiming, "Hey-day, Mr. Conscript, are you going to take precedence of me? Make way for your elder, and look sharp about it." fourrier knew his place, and readily dropped behind, making the military salute. The next bullet brought the sergeant down, and he fell dead in the path. The corporal stooped to raise him, and was himself laid lifeless, shot through the breast. At the same moment a bullet struck the fourrier inflicting a desperate wound, and feeling

The

himself unable to carry off his dead comrades, he snatched the sergeant's cross from his coat, and crawled into the bush, from which he made his way to his battalion. Here he appeared before the commander, and presented him with the decoration:-"You see, mon commandant," he said, "if I have not brought him back, it is because I am wounded myself; but at all events I have rescued his cross." We could wish our author had been able to tell us that the decoration so nobly brought off was conferred on its preserver.

The French soldier has never been noted for his endurance. Up to a certain point, and for a certain time, he is indeed unequalled in this quality, preserving his cheerfulness and vivacity in a far greater degree than ourselves. The Englishman breaks down in his tone much earlier, but he then suddenly rallies, and at the time when the Frenchman is done up, our fellows are ripe for anything. The Russians committed the mistake of supposing that sickness and privation had unsoldiered us when they made their rush at Inkermann, but they found that an Englishman out at elbows is one of the ugliest customers that could be met. The Sepoys fell into the same error in India, and were taught the same lesson. But there are examples of endurance in French military annals equal to any in our own. In an expedition against Abd-el-Kader, Colonel Illens was left at an advanced post, far in the interior, and cut off from every succour. The force under his command was 1,200 men, and it is wonderful how any of them ever lived to relate the tale of their sufferings. We talk of lapses in our service, but nothing in the worst time of the Crimea could equal the gross neglect in this case. They may manage these things better in France, but they do them very badly in Algeria. The 1,200 men were left in an important post, surrounded by the enemy, without any means of holding out. The provisions were damaged and insufficient, and the country being desert, they could procure no supplies; the water was hardly drinkable; the spot was pestilential, and there was a dearth of medicines. It was easy to foresee the troubles ahead, and, in fact, fever and dysentery made their appearance at once. In a few weeks there were barely sufficient men in health to mount guard, and sickness made such progress that one dying sentry relieved another. Some were reduced by want to skeletons; some died at their posts; and some went mad. It is remarkable that the first victims were the young and vigorous; then came the smokers. The plague was stayed among the latter by a happy provision of the colonel, who invented a substitute for tobacco, by compounding the leaves of the vine with those of a plant growing near, which imparted a peculiar flavour. But no substitute was to be found for what now became more and more scarce-food; and those who had not succumbed to the fever, began to fall before famine. The straits of the garrison were fully known to the Arabs, who grew bolder as they deepened, and the post was kept in continual alarm. The peril, however, gave an expiring energy to the soldiers, when others might have yielded to despair; and one man rushed singly on forty Kabylas, laid about him right and left, and compelled them to fly. Relief came at last, but not till the twelfth hour, when eight hundred of the brave fellows had been consigned

to the grave. The remaining four hundred were marching to the same destination; scarcely a hundred were in a condition to leave the station, and the colonel declares that a few months later not more than twenty were alive. Such a tale of military disaster, endured with so much patience and fortitude, can hardly be surpassed,

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We are glad to hear that the Zouaves have a good deal of kindness in their nature, though it is covered by a rough exterior. "Ah, you rascal," cried one to a wounded Russian, who was lying near him in the hospital, "you took off my right hand; but I have the left one remaining to avenge it." Nay, nay," observed a comrade, "it was fair play. He was a soldier like yourself, and was only doing his duty." "That is true," returned the mutilated hero; "I ought not ' to owe him a grudge. Here, old fellow, let us make it up"--and he extended his left hand to the Russian, and gave him a friendly clasp. The kind nature of the men is exhibited in their fondness for pets. Their pet cats have become as renowned as themselves, and certainly receive as much attention. One regiment has a pet monkey, whose master was killed in the Crimea, which so afflicted him that for a time he was inconsolable; but by degrees the caresses of the whole regiment won him back to life, and he is now regularly enrolled in the corps. He goes with it to drill, and attends its parades, and whenever he feels weary on the march, he springs on the nearest knapsack, making the soldier carry him. Our author records an act of humanity towards a wounded Russian, as an instance of the magnanimity of Zouaves. The man was himself lying disabled on the field, when he felt some returning strength, and managed to gain his feet. At this instant a Russian, who was wounded, dropped back, and feigned death, but without deceiving the Zouave, who went up to him, quietly raised his head, and gave him some water from his canteen. The Russian was reassured, and yielding to his signs, allowed him to take his arm, and they crawled together to the hospital. Here the Russian was placed in a comfortable bed, and the Zouave did not leave till he saw him in the hands of the surgeon.

Our author never misses an opportunity of having a fling at the English army; indeed, he has not a good word to say for it. The commanders are profligates, the officers scamps, and the soldiers drunkards. This is rather hard measure from a fellow-countryman-for the book professes to be written by an Englishman; and, to say truth, we do not believe that any foreigner would speak of us so ill. Imagine a Frenchman publishing a work in France treating in the same spirit of the French army! Nobody will doubt that he would be dead within a week, if he had a thousand lives. Here we are content to be amused with what we hear from these pages of our neighbours, and treat with contempt what they say of ourselves. The character of our officers and soldiers would be low indeed, if it needed defence from such an assailant; and if we entered on the task, we might hear them call out, "Save us from our friends!" It will rather surprise them to hear that they derive no benefit from their reading-rooms and libraries. Not so the French soldiers, though very few of them can read. There is, as we are constantly

reminded by our author, a wide difference between the soldier and the soldat. One is made of chalk, and the other of cheese. They are different by their birth, by their associations, by their habits of life, and therefore by their tastes and propensities; and, besides this, we must remember that though England is not deficient in educational institutions for the lower classes, she does not possess the peculiar and excellent association which overspreads France, founded some hundred and fifty years since, and known as the Freres des Ecoles Chrétiennes." No, thank Heaven! we are not so blessed. We had rather not have the libraries than have the Freres, and if the British soldier's elevation is to be put off till they appear, we hope that it will be deferred till the Greek kalends.

Our author has some very sensible observations on flogging. Corporal punishment exists in the French army; but there it is inflicted by the soldiers on one another, while it is only adjudged in the English army by courts of officers. Of the two systems we must say that we prefer our own, though bad is the best. We shall never attract a better class to the army, even by raising the pay, until flogging is totally abolished, and rendered impossible. Latterly it gave signs of becoming as common as of old, owing to the impulse it received from the classification scheme of Lord Herbert; but this has worked its own cure, and, like every other arrangement introduced by that unlucky minister, is now a dead letter. The result is a cessation of military murders-of which our author makes a great feature; and, in truth, the odium is justly ours. But the measure announced by Sir Cornewall Lewis will go far towards removing the reproach of a slack retribution here brought against us. We should, indeed, have preferred that such cases were left to a military tribunal; but we cannot guard too jealously the prerogatives of constitutional law, and the Minister for War shows a wise forbearance in keeping within their limits.

It does not appear that offences are less frequent in the French than in the English army. Flogging had nearly died out in our ranks in 1847, the lash having been applied to only forty-two men. Under the first year of Lord Herbert's system, the number flogged was 512; and instead of a total of 2,200 lashes, the return of lashes had increased to 22,655. The Frenchman is saved from many breaches of discipline by his temperance. Those committed by the Englishman arise chiefly through drunkenness. Many of the bravest soldiers in our army are slaves of the bottle, and we could mention one who signalised himself at the commencement of the operations in the Russian war, whose promotion was rendered impossible by his vile habits. But he will never, poor fellow, answer again to the muster roll. He died in the arms of glory, and we shall not rake his faults from his unmarked grave.

The author of this work has discovered that the root of all the mischief amongst us is the purchase system, and that everyone is agreed that nothing but its summary abolition will set us right. Now we have our own opinion about the purchase system, and have never scrupled about expressing it; but, unfortunately, the difficulty of dealing with it arises chiefly from the fact that it has as many advo

cates as opponents. Indeed, there is reason to believe that the majority is in favour of purchase. Unfriended officers cannot be persuaded that they would get on better under a system of promotion by merit, which is said to prevail in the French army, and which we are here told is the reason why that army is superior to our own. It is no use reasoning against deductions which rest upon this ground as if it were an admitted fact. The British army has no superior, and no friend to that of France will seek to exalt it by such an assertion, knowing that it can be so easily disproved, and that he will thus awaken recollections which, in the present friendly relations of the two countries, were better avoided. How far the inferior French officers can bear comparison with those of the English service, we may leave to the decision of Parisian journalists. Everyone will remember the famous show-up of the sous-lieutenants, which cost the editor of Charivari a hole in his liver. If that report is to be believed,-and it never received a contradiction, the blackest of our cornets and ersigns is not fit to hold a candle to them in point of vice. But we have no wish to press too hard on the author of these volumes. We say again that his book is very amusing, and when he confines himself to what he understands, it is very instructive. He is only at sea in the information he takes from newspapers and books, generalising from isolated facts, without any personal knowledge. Very often he hits the truth, but it comes with diminished force when he cannot adduce it from his own observation. The book may do mischief abroad, by giving a false view of our military strength, and the character of our military system; but it will do good at home, for it shows us all our defects magnified, and all our faults over-coloured. On the other hand, it presents us with a very complete picture of the French army, and of the military power of our neighbour. The writing is good; the narrative brisk and animated; and though we are a little provoked here and there, our attention never flags until we reach the end of the work.

S. W. F.

THE DANGERS THAT THREATEN TURKEY.

In these days of struggling nationalities and changing dynasties there are certain weak points or, what may appear to be weak points, in the European system, to which the eye of the statesman is ever directed and with no small degree of anxiety. Amongst these weakened states, Turkey claims, in a more especial manner, the attention of English politicians, and for reasons which have been so often enumerated that there seems no need to recapitulate them here. The Crimean war