The communication of this distressing fact may stand instead of the regular Gazette, announcing the appointment of the Hon. George Spoonbill to an Ensigncy, by purchase, in the 100th regiment of foot. His military aspirations had been “Cavalry,” and he had endeavored to qualify himself for that branch of the service by getting up an invisible moustache, when the Irish agent wrote to say that no money was to be had in that quarter, and all thoughts of the Household Brigade were, of necessity, abandoned. But, though the more expensive career was shut out, Lord Pelican’s interest at the Horse Guards remained as influential as before, and for the consideration of four hundred and fifty pounds which--embarrassed as he was--he contrived to muster, he had no difficulty in procuring a commission for his son George, in the distinguished regiment already named. There were, it is true, a few hundred prior claimants on the Duke’s list; “but,” as Lord Pelican justly observed, “if the Spoonbill family were not fit for the army, he should like to know who were!” An argument perfectly irresistible. Gazetted, therefore, the young gentleman was, as soon as the Queen’s sign-manual could be obtained, and the usual interval for preparation over, the Hon. George Spoonbill set out to join. But before he does so, we must say a word of what that “preparation” consisted in. 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 Color-Sergeant Pike, of the Grenadier Guards, a warrior celebrated for his skill in training military aspirants, or that he endeavored 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 in 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 familiarizing 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 agonized Lady Pelican, whose maternal