Every town was, in fact, a sort of garrison; in one place you might hear the ‘tattoo’ of some youth learning to beat the drum; at another place some march or national air being practised upon the fife, and every morning at five o’clock the bugle-horn was sounded through the streets, to call the volunteers to a two hours’ drill from six to eight, and the same again in the evening; and then you heard the pop, pop, pop, of the single musket, or the heavy sound of the volley, or distant thunder of the artillery; and then sometimes you heard the ‘Park’ and the ‘Tower,’ guns firing to celebrate some advantage gained over the enemy. As soon as these volunteers were taught (by the _regulars_) how to load and fire, they were set to practise ‘ball firing;’ and when these regiments were thought to be pretty well instructed in all points, they were inspected by general officers; and if the inspecting officer thought them sufficiently advanced, a day was appointed, and they were marched off to a ‘grand review.’ “I was but a boy--a little boy at that time--but I had a sharp critical eye for all those military movements, and used to be much amused at the occasional blunders of the ‘awkward squads;’ and as I often had the opportunity of witnessing the regulars ‘exercise,’ I judged of and compared the evolutions of ‘my father’s regiment’ by this standard; and I remember feeling considerable pride and pleasure when I saw the ‘Loyal St. Giles’s and St. George’s Bloomsbury Volunteers’ wheel out of the old gate of ‘Montague House’ (then the British Museum, and the site of the present building), to march to Hyde Park to be reviewed, where they acquitted themselves in so soldier-like a manner as to gain the approbation of the reviewers, and, of course, of themselves. “When Napoleon I. was once speaking of the people of Great Britain, he contemptuously called them ‘a nation of shopkeepers.’ This was told to George III., and when he reviewed the Metropolitan Volunteers in Hyde Park, and saw one fine sturdy body of infantry after another march past, and then the splendid regiments of cavalry--the City of Westminster Light Horse, commanded by the Prince of Wales, the City Light Horse, and other equally fine corps, mounted upon as fine horses as England could produce, and that is saying something--he was indeed much pleased by their martial appearance and general bearing, and, turning to the general officers around him, he exclaimed, in the pride of his good-natured heart, ‘Shopkeepers! shopkeepers! shopkeepers!’”