Cæsar was forty years of age before he fought his first battle; or, indeed, before he could be fairly said to have been a soldier: yet he became one of the most able and successful generals the Roman empire ever produced. This age in a general is by no means out of keeping with the wisdom and energy required to constitute a good commander: it may be rather considered as not sufficiently advanced, by at least from five to ten years. But an _ensign_ of forty is a thing quite out of character--a monstrous absurdity, as the army is now constituted; and if Cæsar himself had had to enter the Roman army in that grade, judging by our British scale of promotion, he never would have arrived at a brevet-majority. An Ensign is the boy of the colours--the page to regimental victory, whose chin should never bear a beard while he holds the post--a youthful soldier,--a Mars of fifteen, with the staff of his country’s flag fixed firmly in the earth, supporting and supported by him, while the rough mustachioed band like rocks surround and shield him from the tempest of the fight. But a _Volunteer_ of forty!--Is not that an odd production? I do not mean a “_City Volunteer_,” nor a “_County Volunteer_;” but an individual who joins a regiment of the line on service in the field, by permission of its Colonel--clothes himself--and, although avowedly for the purpose of becoming soon an Ensign--and although received as a gentleman by the officers of the corps he joins, is drilled in the ranks, and fights as a private soldier. Such a man, I say, “begins at the beginning” of his profession, and has a tolerably long road to travel ere he obtain his first commission--that of Ensign. A Volunteer of forty, then, is a ridiculous anomaly, a _rara avis in exercitu_, and (thank Minerva!) was even more scarce during the Peninsular war, than is a French Eagle in “this piping time of peace.” However, we _had_ one of those odd birds, _nigroque simillima cygno_, who flew out from his native hills in Cambria to the more classic mountains of the Pyrenees, at the very _latter end_ of the very _last_ campaign which the Anglo-Lusitanian army accomplished. Considering, then, this hero’s age, and the time at which he joined the standard of war, every one must allow that he did not “begin at the beginning;” and it must appear equally evident that he never could have become a Cæsar, even though he had lived to the age of old Parr. This military aspirant arrived at Passages a little after the siege of San Sebastian, and I happened to be on the verge of the quay, as the vessel which contained him brought up:--it was a wretched-looking schooner, and not at all engaged in the service; but contained, in addition to the _Volunteer_, a cargo of butter, cheese, and ready-made slops.