And now we hear the fifes and drums of her Majesty’s Grenadiers. They pass on the other side; and a crowd of idlers, their hearts jumping to the music, their eyes dazzled, and their feelings perverted, hang about the march and catch the infection—the love of glory! And true wisdom thinks of the world’s age, and sighs at its slow advance in all that really dignifies man—the truest dignity being the truest love for his fellow. And then hope, and faith in human progress, contemplate the pageant, its real ghastliness disguised by outward glare and frippery, and know the day will come when the symbols of war will be as the sacred beasts of old Egypt—things to mark the barbarism of bygone war; melancholy records of the past perversity of human nature. We can imagine the deep-chested laughter—the look of scorn which would annihilate, and then the smile of compassion—of the man of war at this, the dream of folly and the wanderings of an inflamed brain. Yet, oh, man of war! at this very moment are you shrinking, withering like an aged giant. The fingers of Opinion have been busy at your plume—you are not the feathered thing you were; and then that little tube, the goose quill, has sent its silent shot into your huge anatomy; and the corroding INK, even whilst you look at it, and think it shines so brightly, is eating with a tooth of rust into your sword. That a man should kill a man and rejoice in the deed—nay, gather glory from it—is the act of a wild animal. The force of muscle and the dexterity of limb which make the wild man a conqueror are deemed, in savage life, man’s highest attributes. The creature whom, in the pride of our Christianity, we call heathen and spiritually desolate, has some personal feeling in the strife—he kills his enemy, and then, making an oven of hot stones, bakes his dead body, and, for crowning satisfaction, eats it. His enemy becomes a part of him; his glory is turned to nutriment; and he is content. What barbarism! Field-marshals sicken at the horror; nay, troopers shudder at the tale, like a fine lady at a toad. In what, then, consists the prime evil? In the murder, or in the meal? Which is the most hideous deed—to kill a man, or to cook and eat the man when killed?