I was now fast approaching my twentieth year--a dangerous age to many unsettled in mind; and the thrilling accounts that were constantly coming home from the East, worked me up to try my luck as others had done before me, so, in the early part of January 1854, I enlisted into one of the smartest regiments of our army, the Royal Fusiliers. I selected this regiment for its noble deeds of valour under Lord Wellington, in the Peninsular. They, the old Fusiliers, had made our enemies, the French, shake on many a hard-fought field. Let the reader just look over the record of the "Battles of the British Army," or "Napier's Peninsula," and he will remember the Royal Fusiliers, as a Briton, with pride, as long as he lives. View them at _Albuera_, 16th May, 1811. I would borrow Napier's pithy language about them--"Nothing could stop the astonishing Infantry: how, inch by inch and foot by foot, they gained the heights of Albuera with a horrid carnage; swept the entire host of France from before them; gave them a parting volley, and then stood triumphant, fifteen hundred unconquerable British soldiers left out of the proud army of England, which that morning had exceeded six thousand combatants." "They had not died for nothing," for the French military historians acknowledged that ever after that they approached the British Infantry with a scared feeling of distrust, for these never knew when they were beaten. A corps like that might be destroyed, but not easily defeated. Thus, my lot was cast with a regiment that had in days of yore planted the Standard of Old England in many a "hot corner," and was destined to do it again. The deeds of the good loyal old corps had been handed down from father to son; and I found some of the right sort of stuff in it, men that would do or die, and dare everything that lay in their power to keep up the reputation of the regiment, whose motto was "Death or Victory." On joining I was about 6ft. high, very active and steady, was soon brought to the notice of my officers, and went up the ladder of promotion pretty quickly. A month or two after I had joined, had got over the goose step, and had been taught how to "catch flies," war was declared by our Government, in conjunction with France, against Russia. All regiments were at once put upon a war footing, and thousands who had an appetite for a little excitement or hard knocks, rushed to the Standard; while those who only liked pipe-claying and playing at soldiers, soon got out of the way by retiring upon "urgent private affairs." "War is honourable In those who do their native rights maintain; In those whose swords an iron barrier are Between the lawless spoiler and the weak." _Baillie._