=The Victoria Cross.=--This coveted decoration was first suggested by the Prince Consort, and Queen Victoria being desirous of taking into her royal consideration a means of adequately rewarding the individual gallant services, either of officers of the lower grades in the naval and military service, or of warrant and petty officers, seamen, and marines, ordained by Royal Warrant on June 29th, 1856, that "the cross shall only be awarded to those officers or men who have served us in the presence of the enemy, and shall have performed some signal act of valour or devotion to their country." With the cross an annuity of £10 is awarded to warrant officers, seamen and marines, non-commissioned officers, and privates, and for each additional bar £5 per annum is added to the annuity. In July 1898, owing to the unfortunate condition to which a recipient had been reduced, and so induced to sell his cross, it was decided that the Home Secretary might, in his discretion, increase the annuity to £50. On April 23rd, 1881, the warrant was revised to enable officers of any grade to receive the medal, and on August 8th, 1902, King Edward sanctioned the posthumous award of the cross, and of its issue to relatives of deceased men who had earned it; prior to this the brave fellows' names had been gazetted only. The new regulation was retrospective, so that the surviving representatives of men who had earned the cross as long ago as the Indian Mutiny received the bronze token of their relative's valour. The cross (facing page 136) carries with it the right to append V.C. after the recipient's name. The cross is made from captured cannon, and is not, as is generally and wrongly described, a Maltese cross, but a cross patée. It bears in the centre of the obverse the royal crest of a lion passant gardant upon the British crown, with a ribbon inscribed FOR VALOUR in a semicircle beneath it, the ends tucked under the raised edge. The cross has a pierced semicircular lug, through which a simple link is run to attach the cross to the laureated suspender by a V. The obverse has raised edges like the front, but the centre is circular. The name, rank, regiment or ship to which the recipient was attached is engraved upon the back of the suspender, and the record of the act which gained the decoration inside the circle on the back of the cross. The cross is suspended by a dark-red ribbon, 1½ in. wide, by military recipients, and by a dark-blue ribbon by naval recipients. The cross, owing to the fact that it is cast and chased, has often been copied, and I have had in my possession one which, but for its size, would have deceived experts, but it had the faults of all cast copies, having shrunk in the casting, and this is the one way of telling a fraud, although it generally needs the genuine article for comparison. The V.C. has realised in the sale-room from £43 for a lieutenant's won in the Mutiny to £175 for a private's won before Sebastopol.