As a youth he was passionately devoted to sport, and when that momentous question the choice of a profession came up for consideration, sport decided it in favour of law, for the somewhat original reason that the young gentleman had observed that lawyers seemed to enjoy the longest holidays! He had begun his studies, and was on his way to St Andrews to enter on a new course when an incident occurred which diverted the current of his thoughts. He met a batch of French prisoners of war being removed from one garrison to another, whose misery affected him so much that he was instantly seized with the idea of becoming a soldier. The particular form in which the inspiration took him was that he put himself in the position of one of these prisoners and imagined himself the hero of his own and his comrades' deliverance. His studies at St Andrews, perturbed by the new passion, made indifferent progress. The historic golf-links afforded some relief, acting as a kind of neutral soothing medium between antagonistic aspirations. But the final solution of his troubles came from a famous piece of water which is there, called the Witches' Pond. The virtue of this water was great in the barbaric age when the curse of witchcraft lay heavy on the land. The suspected person was thrown into the water. If she floated, her guilt was proven and she was incontinently burned; if she sank, it proved the high specific gravity of flesh and bone. Happy thought! The young man would subject his life's destiny to this convenient ordeal. He would jump into the pond, and either sink as a lawyer or emerge as a soldier! After this original form of baptism, initiation into the mysteries soon followed, and the young soldier saw much active service during the Napoleonic wars in the Peninsula and in the Low Countries. He missed Waterloo through being on other duty, and in the piping times of peace which followed that decisive battle an idyllic life at Richmond seemed to bound the horizon of his unsatisfied ambition for some fifteen years. From a totally unexpected quarter the call to arms reached him in his retreat, and suddenly roused all his sleeping energies. The offer of a commission in the service of the young Queen of Portugal met with an eager response, and Shaw entered heart and soul into the service of Donna Maria. As well as being an active soldier, Major Shaw was a lively correspondent, and it is from his letters to his family that we get the most brilliant flash-lights on the incidents of his military career generally, and more particularly on that exciting portion of it which most concerns the subject of these volumes. These letters were edited and published by himself at the close of the operations in Spain. Colonel Hodges, who commanded the foreign brigade in Portugal, and seems to have left the queen's service in a huff, also published a narrative of the campaign, of which, however, the historical value is not enhanced by its apologetic and explanatory motive.