n the
savings banks; whilst the agricultural population of the East Riding
invested about three times that amount.

Private soldiers are paid much less wages per week than the lowest-paid
workmen, and yet they put more money in the savings banks than workmen
who are paid from thirty to forty shillings a week. Soldiers are
generally supposed to be a particularly thoughtless class. Indeed, they
are sometimes held up to odium as reckless and dissolute; but the
Military Savings Bank Returns refute the vilification, and prove that
the British soldier is as sober, well-disciplined, and frugal, as we
already know him to be brave. Most people forget that the soldier must
be obedient, sober, and honest. If he is a drunkard, he is punished; if
he is dishonest, he is drummed out of the regiment.

Wonderful is the magic of Drill! Drill means discipline, training,
education. The first drill of every people is military. It has been the
first education of nations. The duty of obedience is thus taught on a
large scale,--submission to authority; united action under a common
head. These soldiers,--who are ready to march steadily against vollied
fire, against belching cannon, up fortress heights, or to beat their
heads against bristling bayonets, as they did at Badajos,--were once
tailors, shoemakers, mechanics, delvers, weavers, and ploughmen; with
mouths gaping, shoulders stooping, feet straggling, arms and hands like
great fins hanging by their sides; but now their gait is firm and
martial, their figures are erect, and they march along, to the sound of
music, with a tread that makes the earth shake. Such is the wonderful
power of drill.

Nations, as they become civilized, adopt other methods of discipline.
The drill becomes industrial. Conquest and destruction give place to
production in many forms. And what trophies Industry has won, what skill
has it exercised, what labours has it performed! Every industrial
process is performed by drilled bands of artizans. Go into Yorkshire and
Lancashire, and you will find armies of drilled labourers at work, where
the discipline is perfect, and the results, as regards the amount of
manufactured productions turned out of hand, are prodigious.

On efficient drilling and discipline, men's success as individuals, and
as societies entirely depends. The most self-dependent man is under
discipline,--and the more perfect the discipline, the more complete his
condition. A man must drill his desires, a