The health of the British army both at home and abroad has improved very much of late years. The British soldier is better fed, better clothed, and better lodged now than he ever was before; hence in India the mortality has been reduced by one-half, and a corresponding change has been effected in the number of admissions to our military hospitals. Still the fact cannot be overlooked that a larger amount of sickness prevails among soldiers than among civilians of the same age and rank in life, whose physical wants are less carefully attended to; and while other causes may intervene, this difference is to be attributed mainly to the habits of the men themselves. The surest test of the moral character of a regiment is the number of admissions to hospital. When a regiment is demoralised, the wards will be crowded; when a healthy moral tone prevails in the ranks, they will be comparatively empty. Drunkenness and immorality have done more to thin the ranks of the British army, and to crowd our unions with discharged soldiers, than the bullets of the enemy, the scorching sun of the tropics, the fatigues of actual warfare, or the malaria of unhealthy stations. On consulting the statistics of mortality connected with the Highland regiments when first raised, we are surprised at the small number of casualties which occurred among them. They were always first in the field of danger, and yet there were fewer deaths among them than in many regiments in time of peace. We find, for example, that the 42nd Regiment embarked for Flanders on the 18th of June, 1794, and landed at Ostend on the 26th of the same month. They shared in all the hardships of that unfortunate expedition, and took part in the disastrous retreat to Deventer, the miseries of which have been compared to the sufferings of the French after the burning of Moscow. Disease, the result of the severity of the weather and the want of food and proper clothing, thinned the ranks of the British army; many of our best soldiers sank under the accumulated hardships which beset them. The Dutch, on whose gratitude they had the strongest claims, inhospitably closed their doors against the sufferers, and refused to render them any assistance. The result was that some of the newly-raised regiments lost more than three hundred men by disease alone, while the 42nd, which had three hundred young recruits in its ranks, lost only twenty-five men, including those killed in battle, from their disembarkation at Ostend till their embarkation at Bremen on the 14th of April, 1795. This immunity from disease is to be attributed to their temperate habits as much as to their natural strength of constitution and power of enduring fatigue and privation. An amusing incident occurred while the regiment was stationed at Alost in the month of July. A party of 400 of the French cavalry entered the town, and being mistaken for Hessians, met with no resistance till they