I have made this digression chiefly to show the strength of human nature, and what mere man may perform by pride and constitution alone. Man may certainly be as violently roused by his vanity, as a lion is by his anger; and not only this, avarice, revenge, ambition, and almost every passion, pity not excepted, when they are extraordinary, may, by overcoming fear, serve him instead of valour, and be mistaken for it even by himself; as daily experience must teach every body that will examine and look into the motives from which some men act. But that we may more clearly perceive what this pretended principle is really built upon, let us look into the management of military affairs, and we shall find that pride is no where so openly encouraged as there. As for clothes, the very lowest of the commission officers have them richer, or at least more gay and splendid, than are generally wore by other people of four or five times their income. Most of them, and especially those that have families, and can hardly subsist, would be very glad, all Europe over, to be less expensive that way; but it is a force put upon them to uphold their pride, which they do not think on. But the ways and means to rouse man's pride, and catch him by it, are nowhere more grossly conspicuous, than in the treatment which the common soldiers receive, whose vanity is to be worked upon (because there must be so many) at the cheapest rate imaginable. Things we are accustomed to we do not mind, or else what mortal that never had seen a soldier, could look without laughing upon a man accoutred with so much paltry gaudiness, and affected finery? The coarsest manufacture that can be made of wool, dyed of a brickdust colour, goes down with him, because it is in imitation of scarlet or crimson cloth; and to make him think himself as like his officer as it is possible, with little or no cost, instead of silver or gold lace, his hat is trimmed with white or yellow worsted, which in others would deserve bedlam; yet these fine allurements, and the noise made upon a calf's skin, have drawn in, and been the destruction of more men in reality, than all the killing eyes and bewitching voices of women ever slew in jest. To-day the swine herd puts on his red coat, and believes every body in earnest that calls him gentleman; and two days after Serjeant Kite gives him a swinging wrap with his cane, for holding his musket an inch higher than he should do. As to the real dignity of the employment, in the two last wars, officers, when recruits were wanted, were allowed to list fellows that were convicted of burglary and other capital crimes, which shows that to be made a soldier is deemed to be a preferment next to hanging. A trooper is yet worse than a foot soldier; for when he is most at ease, he has the mortification of being groom to a horse, that spends more money than himself. When a man reflects on all this, the usage they generally receive from