We had great fun with the recipes for cooking rations which appeared in the papers. M. Soyer's were good and simple, but every one of them had been found out by experiment months before, and were familiar, however little successful, to every camp cook. The recipes which taught the men how to make rations palatable by the help of a "sliced turkey," nutmegs, butter, flour, spices, and suet, were cruel mockeries. Can any one tell us why the army was _compelled_ to eat salt pork? Why was this the only meat except beef that was served out? The lean was always very hard and tough, and required great care and trouble in cooking to make it masticable--the fat was ever in undue proportion to the lean, and was far too "rich" for a debilitated stomach. Are "pigs" a national institution, to be maintained at any cost? Is the flesh of the bull a part of the constitution? A soldier is a very dear animal. A crop of them is most difficult to raise, and once they have been fully grown, and have become ripe soldiers, they are beyond all price. Had we not abundance of meals in our warehouses, of vegetables, of all kinds of nutritious preparations, to bestow on those who were left to us, and who were really "veterans," for in the narrow limits of one campaign they had epitomized all the horrors, the dangers, and the triumphs of war? The ration, with its accessories of sugar, tea or coffee, tobacco and rice, was sufficient, as long as it was unfailing, and while the army was in full health; but it was not sufficient, or, rather, it was not suitable, when the men were debilitated from excessive labour. What was the cost to the country of the men of the Brigade of Guards who died in their tents or in hospital of exhaustion, overwork, and deficient of improper nutriment? The brigade mustered in the middle of February very little over 400 men fit for duty. It would have been _cheap_ to have fed the men we had lost on turtle and venison, if we could have kept them alive--and not only those, but the poor fellows whom the battle spared, but whom disease took from us out of every regiment in the expedition. It was the _men_ who were to be pitied--the officers could, in comparison, take care of themselves; they had their bât-horses to go over to Kamiesch and to Balaklava for luxuries; their servants to send for poultry, vegetables, wine, preserved meats, sheep, and all the luxuries of the sutlers' shops; and they had besides abundance of money, for the pay of the subaltern is ample while he is in the field. Sir George Brown arrived on the 12th, and Lord Raglan went down to meet him, and returned with him to head-quarters. The gallant old officer seemed to have quite recovered from the effects of his Inkerman wound, and was well received by his Division.