er risks his life (and
his honour, too, sometimes) against a bundle of bank-notes, or a yard of
blue ribbon, or a seat in Parliament; and some for the mere pleasure and
excitement of the sport; as a field of a hundred huntsmen will do, each
out-bawling and out-galloping the other at the tail of a dirty fox, that
is to be the prize of the foremost happy conqueror.

When he heard this news of Beatrix's engagement in marriage, Colonel
Esmond knocked under to his fate, and resolved to surrender his sword,
that could win him nothing now he cared for; and in this dismal frame of
mind he determined to retire from the regiment, to the great delight of
the captain next in rank to him, who happened to be a young gentleman of
good fortune, who eagerly paid Mr. Esmond a thousand guineas for his
majority in Webb's regiment, and was knocked on the head the next
campaign. Perhaps Esmond would not have been sorry to share his fate. He
was more the Knight of the Woful Countenance than ever he had been. His
moodiness must have made him perfectly odious to his friends under the
tents, who like a jolly fellow, and laugh at a melancholy warrior always
sighing after Dulcinea at home.

Both the ladies of Castlewood approved of Mr. Esmond quitting the army,
and his kind general coincided in his wish of retirement, and helped in
the transfer of his commission, which brought a pretty sum into his
pocket. But when the commander-in-chief came home, and was forced, in
spite of himself, to appoint Lieutenant-General Webb to the command of a
division of the army in Flanders, the lieutenant-general prayed Colonel
Esmond so urgently to be his aide de camp and military secretary, that
Esmond could not resist his kind patron's entreaties, and again took the
field, not attached to any regiment, but under Webb's orders. What must
have been the continued agonies of fears(15) and apprehensions which
racked the gentle breasts of wives and matrons in those dreadful days,
when every _Gazette_ brought accounts of deaths and battles, and when the
present anxiety over, and the beloved person escaped, the doubt still
remained that a battle might be fought, possibly, of which the next
Flanders letter would bring the account; so they, the poor tender
creatures, had to go on sickening and trembling through the whole
campaign. Whatever these terrors were on the part of Esmond's mistress
(and that tenderest of women must have felt them most keenly for both her
sons, as