And now for the head-gear of the British Achilles: a touching and a troublesome subject, which has bothered all heads, from those of the humble wearer up to the field-marshal, who is content under the shadow--not of his laurels--but his plumes--to design any kind of uncomfortable and ugly thing that strikes his imagination, and to clap it on the cranium of steady veteran and raw recruit. Truly we have been most unfortunate, aesthetically speaking, in our military caps; and, to go no further back than Peninsular recollections,--from the conico-cylindrical cap of Vimiera to the funny little thing with a flap up in front of Vittoria and Waterloo, down through the inverted cone-shaped shako of recent days--until we have come to the very bathos of all chapellerie that now disgraces the heads of too many among our infantry regiments--all has been bad. Never, since the day when men first armed their heads for the fight, has there been seen such a paltry, ugly, useless, bastard kind of a thing as the last cap turned out for the British army. With its poke before and behind, its conical top and low elevation, it is a degraded cross between a Germano-Tyrolese cap and a policeman's hat--a bad mixture of both. May it be sent back to Germany, where the idea came from, and may it be stuffed into a barrel of sour-crout, not to come out till it is thoroughly rotted. There is only this choice for the useful and graceful covering of the foot-soldier's head; either the small slouched hat of the old Spanish infantry--a hat very liable to be turned into something slovenly and dirty--or the foraging cap of our undress--a covering most comfortable, but not quite strong enough for campaigning use, as well as for parade; or the helmet of antique form, shaped, that is to say, in some conformity with the make of the head, and more or less ornamented with crest and plume. We incline on the whole to the latter, and for two reasons: it is not so liable to get altered in shape by service as the others; it will wear well for a longer time; it is more useful in melees and against cavalry; and it is the most becoming of any. In Prussia it has lately been adopted with great success; and the appearance of the infantry there is now warlike and graceful in the highest degree. The helmet need not be made of metal; boiled leather is the proper material--ventilation and lightness can be easily provided for in it, and any degree of ornament may be superadded--crest or feathers, each is becoming.