st
all old institutions, this oldest Fighting Institution is still so
young! Fresh-complexioned, firm-limbed, six feet by the standard, this
fighting-man has verily been got up, and can fight. While so much has
not yet got into being; while so much has gone gradually out of it,
and become an empty Semblance or Clothes-suit; and highest
king's-cloaks, mere chimeras parading under them so long, are getting
unsightly to the earnest eye, unsightly, almost offensive, like a
costlier kind of scarecrow's-blanket,--here still is a reality!

The man in horsehair wig advances, promising that he will get me
'justice:' he takes me into Chancery Law-Courts, into decades,
half-centuries of hubbub, of distracted jargon; and does _get_
me--disappointment, almost desperation; and one refuge: that of
dismissing him and his 'justice' altogether out of my head. For I have
work to do; I cannot spend my decades in mere arguing with other men
about the exact wages of my work: I will work cheerfully with no
wages, sooner than with a ten-years gangrene or Chancery Lawsuit in my
heart! He of the horsehair wig is a sort of failure; no substance, but
a fond imagination of the mind. He of the shovel-hat, again, who comes
forward professing that he will save my soul--O ye Eternities, of him
in this place be absolute silence!--But he of the red coat, I say, is
a success and no failure! He will veritably, if he get orders, draw
out a long sword and kill me. No mistake there. He is a fact and not a
shadow. Alive in this Year Forty-three, able and willing to do _his_
work. In dim old centuries, with William Rufus, William of Ipres, or
far earlier, he began; and has come down safe so far. Catapult has
given place to cannon, pike has given place to musket, iron mail-shirt
to coat of red cloth, saltpetre ropematch to percussion-cap;
equipments, circumstances have all changed, and again changed: but the
human battle-engine in the inside of any or of each of these, ready
still to do battle, stands there, six feet in standard size. There are
Pay-Offices, Woolwich Arsenals, there is a Horse-Guards, War-Office,
Captain-General; persuasive Sergeants, with tap of drum, recruit in
market-towns and villages;--and, on the whole, I say, here is your
actual drilled fighting-man; here are your actual Ninety-thousand of
such, ready to go into any quarter of the world and fight!

Strange, interesting, and yet most mournful to reflect on. Was this,
then, of all the thin