s
mistress, is forced to quit the regiment. When the lieutenant-colonel
came to quarters, and the rest of the officers heard the fact, they
would not keep company with Benson, and would not mess with him. I know
he wants to sell out; and that regiment is to be ordered immediately to
Spain. I will have the thing done for you, if you request it.'

'First, give me your advice, Count O'Halloran; you are well acquainted
with the military profession, with military life. Would you advise me--I
won't speak of myself, because we judge better by general views than by
particular cases--would you advise a young man at present to go into the
army?'

The count was silent for a few minutes, and then replied: 'Since
you seriously ask my opinion, my lord, I must lay aside my own
prepossessions, and endeavour to speak with impartiality. To go into the
army in these days, my lord, is, in my sober opinion, the most absurd
and base, or the wisest and noblest thing a young man can do. To enter
into the army, with the hope of escaping from the application necessary
to acquire knowledge, letters, and science--I run no risk, my lord, in
saying this to you--to go into the army, with the hope of escaping from
knowledge, letters, science, and morality; to wear a red coat and an
epaulette; to be called captain; to figure at a ball; to lounge away
time in country sports, at country quarters, was never, even in times
of peace, creditable; but it is now absurd and base. Submitting to a
certain portion of ennui and contempt, this mode of life for an officer
was formerly practicable--but now cannot be submitted to without utter,
irremediable disgrace. Officers are now, in general, men of education
and information; want of knowledge, sense, manners, must consequently be
immediately detected, ridiculed, and despised in a military man. Of this
we have not long since seen lamentable examples in the raw officers who
have lately disgraced themselves in my neighbourhood in Ireland--that
Major Benson and Captain Williamson. But I will not advert to such
insignificant individuals, such are rare exceptions--I leave them out of
the question--I reason on general principles. The life of an officer is
not now a life of parade, of coxcombical, or of profligate idleness--but
of active service, of continual hardship and danger. All the
descriptions which we see in ancient history of a soldier's
life--descriptions which, in times of peace, appeared like romance--are
no