ss Charlotte of Wales',) or Hertfordshire regiment, bears on its
colours and appointments the distinctions of Egmont op Zee, Copenhagen,
Queenstown, the Dragon, and China.

On the 27th August, 1844, new colours were presented to the 49th, at
Winchester, by Lady Pakenham, the wife of Major-General the Hon. Sir
Hercules Pakenham, commanding the district, the colours being first
consecrated by Doctor C. R. Sumner, the Lord Bishop of Winchester, who
thus addressed the troops:

Soldiers of the 49th, I have solicited and obtained permission
of your gallant commanding officer to address you a few
moments before I invoke the blessing of Almighty God upon the
colours which are never to be sullied by any act of yours, and
are not to be abandoned but with life itself. And let not any
man marvel that I, a man of peace, come among you, who are men
of war, for I hold that there is not a truer man of peace than
a Christian soldier. When he conquers, it is not for national
aggrandizement, nor the mere raising of your names, but for
the insuring of peace in future time. Many a brave man has
bled on the field, or expired on a bed of agony, that his
countrymen might be preserved from the horrors of war. With
respect to the services of the 49th, I might go back to a time
antecedent to the present century. We must remember what a
debt of gratitude we owe to your companions in arms for their
prowess in many a well-fought field. And what did we not owe
also to the naval power for the preservation of our soil from
the insults and the cruelties of our enemy? I must bid you
look back to the recollection of those days when you won glory
in Holland, Copenhagen, and Canada, and since in India and
China. I remember well the stirring phrases used by the great
captain of the age, the commander-in-chief of the British
army, the Duke of Wellington, when he asked for the thanks of
parliament to the army of China--those were stirring phrases
indeed--they were well worth living to hear, and well worth
dying to deserve; they are for you to treasure up, and your
children yet unborn to hear from your lips. When you unfold
those banners, you look upon them as the memorials of former
days, and in centuries yet to come they will be memorials of
your country's renown, of your country's prosperity, and of
your country's peace. On these gro