When we look back twenty or thirty years, and consider what the army was then, and what it is now, the wonder will be, not that it is not in a better state, but that so much has been done to ameliorate the condition of the soldier. Then he was one of the veriest slaves existing, obliged to rise two or three hours before day to commence his cleaning operations. His hair required to be soaped, floured, and frizzed, or tortured into some uncouth shape which gave him acute pain, and robbed him of all power of moving his head unless he brought his body round with it. He had his musket to burnish, his cap and cartridge-box to polish with heel-ball, and his white breeches to pipe-clay, so that it generally required three or four hours hard labour to prepare him for parade; and when he turned out, he was like something made of glass, which the slightest accident might derange or break to pieces. He was then subjected to a rigid inspection, in which, if a single hair stood out of its place, extra guard, drill, or some other punishment, awaited him. When to this was added the supercilious, tyrannical demeanour of his superiors, who seemed to look upon him as a brute animal who had neither soul nor feeling, and who caned or flogged him without mercy for the slightest offence, we cannot wonder that he became the debased being, in body and mind, which they already considered him, or that he possessed the common vices of a slave—fawning servility, duplicity, and want of all self-respect; to add to this, what was his reward when worn out and unfit for farther service?—a pittance insufficient to support nature, or a pass to beg. When we consider that, in the face of long-established usages, and coadjutors of unbending and contracted views of human nature, the commander-in-chief by his persevering exertions has almost entirely abolished those numerous vexations—when we see gentlemanly feeling and attention to the soldier’s best interests encouraged among the officers of the army, and the change wrought in the moral and military character of the soldier by these means,—is it to be wondered at that every individual in the service is attached to the Duke of York, and looks up to him in the light of a father and a friend. Few generals of whom I have ever either heard or read, enjoyed the esteem and affection of the troops under their command, more than His Royal Highness.