Is there any difference, O my countrymen, and what difference, between this system and the system of the English service! Amongst my friends on this side the Channel, I can also number a staff officer, whom I have known some years. A better fellow, or more honorable man than Charley Benson does not exist; but what there is in him to make a staff officer out of I never could imagine. He entered the service about five years ago, and, having an uncle a general officer in command of an Irish district, was made aide-de-camp to that relative when he had done two years’ duty with his regiment. The war in the Crimea broke out, and his uncle having good interest at the Horse Guards, got Charley named a deputy-assistant quartermaster-general with the army. What the duties of the appointment may be, I don’t exactly know, and I am very certain Charley himself does not. He writes me that he has a lot of paper-work and returns to make out; but that with a good sergeant for a clerk, he manages to make it all serene. Poor Charley! I can imagine how sorely puzzled he would be if left to his own resources with pen, ink, and paper. He can write a reasonably sensible letter when he likes, (it is not often that he does like,) but is decidedly eccentric in his orthography. As to the higher branches of mathematics, he knows nothing whatever of them. He can add up the various sums of money set down in the fly-leaves of his cheque-book, and so tell whether he has overdrawn his account with Messrs. Cox, the army agents; but beyond this his capabilities for figures does not extend. Topography, fortification, military drawing, military history, and military statistics, he denounces--when they are mentioned in his presence--by the energetic monosyllable--rot! As to military manœuvres on a grand scale, Charley says he got through his drill under the adjutant of his regiment, and what more would you have? Moreover, he is now on the staff, and having good interest, intends to remain there for some time; so what use, to him, would be any further drilling? When the war is over he is to join his uncle, an elderly gentleman, who, after having been thirty years on half-pay, was appointed not long ago to the command of an Irish district, and is now about to proceed out to India as commander-in-chief of an Indian Presidency, where he will reign supreme over a native army, of whose language he does not understand one word, in a country he has never so much as read of. In Bombay or Madras he will enjoy a salary of twelve hundred pounds a-year.