Some persons may imagine that he forthwith addressed himself to the study of Polybius, dabbled a little in Cormontaigne, got up Napier’s History of the Peninsular War, or read the Duke’s Despatches; others, that he went down to Birdcage-Walk, and placed himself under the tuition of Colour-Sergeant Pike, of the Grenadier Guards, a warrior celebrated for his skill in training military aspirants, or that he endeavoured by some other means to acquire a practical knowledge, however slight, of the profession for which he had always been intended. The Hon. George Spoonbill knew better. The preparation _he_ made, was a visit, at least three times a day, to Messrs. Gorget and Plume, the military tailors in Jermyn Street, whose souls he sorely vexed by the persistance with which he adhered to the most accurate fit of his shell-jacket and coatee, the set of his epaulettes, the cut of his trowsers, and the shape of his chako. He passed his days in “trying on his things,” and his evenings—when not engaged at the Casino, the Cider Cellar, or the Adelphi—in dining with his military friends at St. James’s Palace, or at Knightsbridge Barracks. In their society he greatly improved himself, acquiring an accurate knowledge of lansquenet and ecarté, cultivating his taste for tobacco, and familiarising his mind with that reverence for authority which is engendered by the anecdotes of great military commanders that freely circulate at the mess-table. His education and his uniform being finished at about the same time, George Spoonbill took a not uncheerful farewell of the agonised Lady Pelican, whose maternal bosom streamed with the sacrifice she made in thus consigning her offspring to the vulgar hardships of a marching regiment. An express train conveyed the honourable Ensign in safety to the country town where the “Hundredth” were then quartered, and in conformity with the instructions which he received from the Assistant Military Secretary at the Horse Guards—the only instructions, by the bye, which were given him by that functionary—he “reported” himself at the Orderly-room on his arrival, was presented by the Adjutant to the senior Major, by the senior Major to the Lieutenant-Colonel, and by the Lieutenant-Colonel to the officers generally when they assembled for mess.