The immense importance of very great attention to the ball practice[5] of this branch of the service, is too obvious to require an enforcing observation; but it ought to be impressively remarked, that good practical aim is not to be acquired _only_ in front of the target, _but to the full as much_ in the every day drill firings, with or without blank cartridge. It is not the case that careful firing is provoked by the sight of an enemy; on the contrary, arithmetical calculation has repeatedly proved, to the blush of the good soldier, that under no circumstances are balls so wildly and carelessly thrown away as in those moments when the fortunes of empires are thrown away along with them. In action, the greater number of the musquets are pointed _generally_ at masses of dust and smoke, and not _precisely_ at the dark active figures which they envelop. For these reasons, on the drill field, instead of the loose careless practice too common in this particular, the soldier, and especially the skirmisher, should be unsparingly compelled to go through the motions of aiming and firing at a precise object, as accurately as if at actual ball practice, until the habit be engraven too deep on his mind to be obliterated by any circumstances of confusion. III. Daring courage, as an acknowledged essential to the thorough soldier of every class, it would scarcely have been necessary to have noticed in the present enumeration, did not an opinion appear to obtain, much on the continent and with some in Great Britain, that light troops are required to exercise it in a less desperate degree than men at close order. Foreigners, when extended, often spend systematically much time in long shots and shy fighting, and give way, as a matter of course, before troops in weightier formations. In the British service this opinion does not prevail; there is no good reason why it should, and it is of great importance to the thorough efficiency of skirmishers that it should not. The British soldier is as much a grenadier at heart, with a green tuft in his cap skirmishing through a wood, with no close support but his tried and trusty rear-rank man, as he is in designation, when mounting a breach, under a black bear-skin, with ten thousand bayonets at his back. In extended order he is just as ready, as at any other time, to fix his bayonet and dash to close quarters, if the enemy, on tolerably equal terms, will stand for him; and if his piquet be pressed by a heavy attacking column, he sees no more reason than at any other time, to surrender an inch of ground, as long as he can stand upon it. Very remarkable instances of this kind occurred during the Peninsular war.[6]