It was formerly thought, that high-born, high-bred, and even well-educated men, were less fitted to make good officers for the ordinary course of professional work, than persons who had sprung from a lower origin, or whose education was limited to the mere technicalities of the profession, and who were without taste and without manners—men of the Hawser Trunion school, in short. But the copious experience of the late arduous war seems to have shewn, both in the army and in the navy, that the contrary is the true state of the case. And certainly, as far as my own observation and inquiries have gone, I have found reason to believe that those officers who are the best informed and the best bred, and who possess most of the true spirit of gentlemen, are not only the safest to trust in command over others, but are always the readiest to yield that prompt and cheerful obedience to their superiors, which is the mainspring of good order. Such men respect themselves so justly, and value their own true dignity of character so much, and are at all times so sensitively alive to the humiliation of incurring reproach, that they are extremely cautious how they expose themselves to merited censure. From the early and constant exercise of genuine politeness, they become habitually considerate of the feelings of others; and thus, by the combined action of these great principles of manners, officers of this stamp contrive to get through much more work, and generally do it much better, than persons of less refinement. Moreover, they consider nothing beneath their closest attention which falls within the limits of their duty; and, as a leading part of this principle, they are the most patient as well as vigilant superintendents of the labours of those placed under their authority, of any men I have ever seen. It is not that they watch their inferiors with a view to entrap and pounce upon them, but solely with the public-spirited and generous object of keeping all parties right, in order, by checking errors in the outset, before they have grown into crimes, to prevent the hard necessity of punishment. This is a pretty fair sketch of the method of acting observed by a thorough-bred, gentlemanlike, well-instructed officer; and every one who has been in command, and in protracted difficulties, or has merely been employed in the ordinary course of service, will readily admit that, with the assistance of such men, every department of his duty has gone on better and more pleasantly than it could have possibly done if the persons under his command had been of a coarser stamp.