private soldiers and especially of his own beloved 28th Regiment, then he cries out a little gloriously perhaps, but with a frankness, a generosity, an honest ardour of admiration which surely may win pardon from the most severe of critics. In truth it is a gallant and charming young soldier who calls to us from the beginning of the century which is now so near its close. He has waited long for friendly recognition from any but the generals who saw him fight and the young comrades who drank with him at mess and marched with him to battle. The young comrades, like the old generals, have marched the common road; and it is to a generation who knew not the author that these Memoirs modestly, but with a certain confidence, make their appeal. The ardent boy joined his regiment in 1804, at the age of fifteen; and in the next ten years he had had fighting enough to content most men for a lifetime. It is the record of these years which has lain so long in dust, and which I now offer to the reader; and I would ask him to bear in mind, as he reads, the looks and nature of the young soldier whose fortunes he will follow. He was of middle height and lightly made, but active healthy and handsome. He was eager for friendship and for fight, quick and confident in action, observing with keen accurate eyes, and so clever at languages that he picked them up on the march and conversed with the natives of Spain and Portugal and France with equal audacity and success. Perhaps more than all one finds in him that natural gaiety of heart which neither danger nor fatigue could dull, neither the want of wealth and honours nor sight of the appalling horrors of war. His young eyes beheld some deeds done at Badajoz of which the mere description has seemed to me too horrible for print. It will be held by the most bloodthirsty of readers that enough remains.