e can render them, like the soldiers of Frederick, 'the
irreconcilable enemies of their officers and their government'.

In the year 1817 I was encamped in a grove on the right bank of the
Ganges below Monghyr,[4] when the Marquis of Hastings was proceeding
up the river in his fleet, to put himself at the head of the grand
division of the army then about to take the field against the
Pindharis and their patrons, the Maratha, chiefs. Here I found an old
native pensioner, above a hundred years of age. He had fought under
Lord Clive at the battle of Plassey, A.D. 1757, and was still a very
cheerful, talkative old gentleman, though he had long lost the use of
his eyes. One of his sons, a grey-headed old man, and a Subadar
(captain) in a regiment of native infantry, had been at the taking of
Java,[5] and was now come home on leave to visit his father. Other
sons had risen to the rank of commissioned officers, and their
families formed the aristocracy of the neighbourhood. In the evening,
as the fleet approached, the old gentleman, dressed in his full
uniform of former days as a commissioned officer, had himself taken
out close to the bank of the river, that he might be once more during
his life within sight of a British Commander-in-Chief, though he
could no longer see one. There the old patriarch sat listening with
intense delight to the remarks of the host of his descendants around
him, as the Governor-General's magnificent fleet passed along,[6]
every one fancying that he had caught a glimpse of the great man, and
trying to describe him to the old gentleman, who in return told them
(no doubt for the thousandth time) what sort of a person the great
Lord Clive was. His son, the old Subadar, now and then, with modest
deference, venturing to imagine a resemblance between one or the
other, and his _beau ideal_ of a great man, Lord Lake. Few things in
India have interested me more than scenes like these.

I have no means of ascertaining the number of military pensioners in
England or in any other European nation, and cannot, therefore, state
the proportion which they bear to the actual number of forces kept
up. The military pensioners in our Bengal establishment on the 1st of
May, 1841, were 22,381; and the family pensioners, or heirs of
soldiers killed in action, 1,730; total 24,111, out of an army of
82,027 men. I question whether the number of retired soldiers
maintained at the expense of government bears so large a proport