r disregarded.

Three-fourths of the recruits of our Bengal native infantry are drawn
from the Rajput peasantry of the kingdom of Oudh, on the left bank of
the Ganges, where their affections have been linked to the soil for a
long series of generations.[14] The good feelings of the families
from which they are drawn continue through the whole period of their
service to exercise a salutary influence over their conduct as men
and as soldiers. Though they never take their families with them,
they visit them on furlough every two or three years, and always
return to them when the surgeon considers a change of air necessary
to their recovery from sickness. Their family circles are always
present to their imaginations; and the recollections of their last
visit, the hopes of the next, and the assurance that their conduct as
men and as soldiers in the interval will be reported to those circles
by their many comrades, who are annually returning on furlough to the
same parts of the country, tend to produce a general and uniform
propriety of conduct, that is hardly to be found among the soldiers
of any other army in the world, and which seems incomprehensible to
those unacquainted with its source--veneration for parents cherished
through life, and a never-impaired love of home, and of all the dear
objects by which it is constituted.

Our Indian native army is perhaps the only entirely voluntary
standing army that has been ever known, and it is, to all intents and
purposes, entirely voluntary, and as such must be treated.[15] We can
have no other native army in India, and without such an army we could
not maintain our dominion a day. Our best officers have always
understood this quite well; and they have never tried to flog and
harass men out of all that we find good in them for our purposes. Any
regiment in our service might lay down their arms and disperse to-
morrow, without our having a chance of apprehending one deserter
among them all.[16]

When Frederick the Great of Prussia reviewed his army of sixty
thousand men in Pomerania, previous to his invasion of Silesia, he
asked the Prince d'Anhalt, who accompanied him, what he most admired
in the scene before him.

'Sire,' replied the prince, 'I admire at once the fine appearance of
the men, and the regularity and perfection of their movements and
evolutions.'

'For my part,' said Frederick, 'this is not what excites my
astonishment, since with the advantage of money, time