Military dress is almost as difficult and dangerous a thing to deal with as ladies' attire; as various in its hues and forms, as fanciful in its conceits, as changeable in its fashions, and as touchy in the temper of its wearers. To pull a guardsman by his coat-tail would be as unpardonable an offence as to tread on a lady's skirt; and to offer an opinion upon a lancer's cap might be considered as impertinent as to criticise a lady's bonnet. Having, however, been bold enough to commit offences of the latter description, we will now venture to brave the wrath of the whole of Her Majesty's forces, horse, foot, and artillery, while we read those gallant gentlemen a lecture on their costume; and we will even add into the bargain that other most honourable and equally useful branch of the public force "the mariners of England;"--as for "the force," the police, truly we eschew them and their deeds. They are a perverse, stiff-necked race, who wear two abominations, round hats and short coats, and they have a villanous propensity of following you home from your club of an evening, and inveigling you every now and then to Bow Street, thrusting a broken knocker or two into your pocket as you go along, and then pestering your bewildered memory with all sorts of nocturnal misdemeanors; truly they are a race of noxious vermin; pretty well, perhaps, for the protection of the swinish multitude; but for us gentlemen, why, they "come betwixt the wind and our nobility," and their remembrance stinks in our nostrils! One thing only we know in their favour,--they dress all in one colour; their blueness alone makes them sufferable in this nineteenth century of ours, and whenever they depart from this great principle of aesthetic unity, we will bring in a bill for their suppression.