it again when the time comes, but it would be done with greater ease and less loss if we could condescend to fight our enemy rather more with his own weapons. _Fas est ab hoste doceri_, is a maxim oftener quoted than acted upon. But to return to uniforms. The scarlet might be reserved for the guards--it has always been a guardsman's colour--the blue given to the line, the green kept for the rifles; black belts on rifle plan for all. And above all, if it can be done without too great annoyance to tailors, amateur and professional, deliver us from braided pelisses, bearskin caps, crimson pantaloons, and all such costly and unserviceable fopperies. Spend money on the well-being of the soldier, rather than on the smartness of his uniform; cut down frippery, and increase comfort. Attend less to the glitter of externals, and more to that moral and intellectual cultivation, which will convert men now treated as machines, into reasoning and reasonable creatures, and valuable members of society. MY COLLEGE FRIENDS. NO. IV. CHARLES RUSSELL, THE GENTLEMAN-COMMONER. CHAP. I. "Have you any idea who that fresh gentleman-commoner is?" said I to Savile, who was sitting next to me at dinner, one day soon after the beginning of term. We had not usually in the college above three or four of that privileged class, so that any addition to their table attracted more attention than the arrival of the vulgar herd of freshmen to fill up the vacancies at our own. Unless one of them had choked himself with his mutton, or taken some equally decided mode of making himself an object of public interest, scarcely any man of "old standing" would have even inquired his name. "Is he one of our men?" said Savile, as he scrutinized the party in question. "I thought he had been a stranger dining with some of them. Murray, you know the history of every man who comes up, I believe--who is he?" "His name is Russell," replied the authority referred to; "Charles Wynderbie Russell; his father's a banker in the city: Russell and Smith, you know, ---- Street." "Ay, I dare say," said Savile; "one of your rich tradesmen; they always come up as gentlemen-commoners, to show that they have lots of money: it makes me wonder how any man of decent family ever condescends to put on a silk gown." Savile was the younger son of a poor baronet, thirteenth in descent, and affected considerable contempt for any other kind of distinction. "Oh!" continued Murray, "this man is by no means of a bad family: his father comes of one of the oldest houses in Dorsetshire, and his mother, you know, is one of the Wynderbies of Wynderbie Court--a niece of Lord De Staveley's."