conclusion to it in a pot of ale. If there happen to be four or five privates in the room, our Sergeant increases in importance from the circumstance—just as a cat becomes great from the introduction of a litter of puppies. Our Sergeant is more than ever the leading gander of the flock—the king-herring of the shoal—the blue-bottle of the swarm—the pebble of the sand—the G of the gamut. He has now additional hearers of the tales of his prowess, and, if he but give the wink, companions who saw him face the breach and spike the cannon. His rank next becomes the subject of discussion; and looking very complacently at his arm, he tells of some dreadful exploit in which he earned his stripes. “And doubtless, Sergeant, not before you deserved them,” ventures a small, quiet wight in the corner, who will have his fling, though at the expense of his liquor; for ere he concludes his remark he gives the Sergeant his glass—just as a schoolboy, who twitches the trunk of an elephant, throws to the animal a peace-offering of apples—whilst the privates inwardly laugh at the joke, and get rebuked for again enjoying it on parade to-morrow morning. Just as the Sergeant’s opponents are nearly all slaughtered, a little Italian boy, bearing a tortoise, adroitly glides into the room to display the testaceous wonder; or he has with him a bust of Napoleon, at which our Sergeant bristles up, looking, indeed, seriously fierce at plaster of Paris. Here he utters some half-audible wish that he had not received a bullet in the last charge, and then——Now, however, our Sergeant takes an opportunity to pour forth his learning—he mangles five words of French; the Italian shakes his head, and holds forth his hand; the Sergeant swears at him for an impostor, ignorant of his own language. It drawing late, our Sergeant calls for his reckoning, and, learning the amount, with an affected air of destitution avows he has no money; he has not a piece of silver about him, unless it be that at his breast—and here he carelessly lifts up with one finger a Waterloo medal;—then he draws out a watch, once the property of a French general slain by our Sergeant, and asks if that will serve for the amount? At length, however, the money being shaken from a yellow silk purse, our Sergeant, after a salutary admonition to the privates, goes off, as he says, to visit a friend in the Ordnance. [Illustration: He is, indeed, unbent. ] Now this is the utmost stretch of our Sergeant’s amiability; and he departs with a consciousness of having made himself remarkably agreeable, at the same time that he has maintained the proper dignity of the army. To-morrow he is stiff and stately again, performing his old duty of setting up in due order men for the sport of War, that fearful skittle-player. And, indeed, how great must be the satisfaction of the Drill Sergeant when he thinks that, by his kindly solicitude, his Majesty’s subjects will “die with decency” and “in close order.” Soothing reflection!