forfeited, that good opinion which my former merits had inspired.

We all know that when an officer, particularly a youth, has the misfortune not to stand well with his commander, he moves, acts, and talks under a certain painful restraint; his jokes are heard in silence; and his company, if not avoided, is not much courted. This was my case for a few days; at the end of which time a route for the regiment's march to Southampton arrived, when I received a very caustic note from the major himself, informing me that he should not put me to the trouble of marching with the regiment under his command; that I was consequently at liberty to join that regiment to which "it appeared by the Gazette" I had been appointed. I dare say he intended to mortify me; and, if such were his object, he succeeded.

Released from his command, I replied to his note by a letter, couched in terms more humiliating than I could have reconciled to my feelings had I remained his dutiful sub; in which I expressed a hope that the first and only act, in which I had laid myself open to his censure during my service under him, would be overlooked by one so much my superior in rank, in sense, and years. I received no answer! I saw my major of 1794, a lieutenant-general in 1819, a gentleman-agriculturist, in the north of England, the same cold and cautious character I had found him a quarter of a century before. He had long since turned his sword into a plough-share, and now prided himself as much on his abilities as drill farmer, as he had formerly done on his merits as drill major. His name being unknown in the annals of military fame, I leave him in that obscurity from which he never emerged.

The morning the regiment marched I appeared for the last time among the officers, and took a friendly leave of them all, and of my faithful servant Husho, on whom I bestowed a guinea, and much more good advice than he found it agreeable to his fancy or habits to follow.

The regiment in which I found myself so unaccountably gazetted was then on the continent; but so cut up in men and horses, that one half was on the unserviceable list, and several detachments from the heavy cavalry were already under orders for England. However, to have it in my power to say I had served on the continent," which was then the great boast of the day, I repaired to London, first taking a tender leave of my venerable friends at Beechwood and their beloved family; and after a few weeks of idleness was, by the liberality of Cox and Greenwood, enabled to carry my intentions into due effect; not that I had the folly to equip myself with the appointments of a cavalry officer, for those were to be obtained considerably under prime cost on the other side of the channel, but merely as regarded my personal outfit.

One day, while poring over a file of Irish papers, which were to be found at that noted military house, the Cannon, Cockspur Street, I read with feelings which may be imagined, but not described, the following piece of intelligence: "Married at Fort Dalton, on the 7th of September, by special license, Colonel Maurice Theobald D'Alton, nephew and heir to General Count Roderick D'Alton, of the Holy Roman Empire, to Miss Temple, only daughter of Thomas Temple, Esq. of Templemore, County of Meath!"

I obtained my passage to Helvoetsluys, joined my regiment in Flanders, when in full retreat, at the head of which rode the old lieutenant-colonel with a woollen nightcap underneath his unpowdered wig, and swathed in flannel from the toe to the hip, mounted on his Irish cock-tail galloway, (the sole survivor of his stud,) and cursing every wind that blew, which he blasphemously declared "shifted at every turn and twine of the road on purpose to blow continually in HIS face." Next to him came the tall knight, raw-head and bloody-bones, the major, mounted on a gigantic Flanders stallion, looking like Death on the Pale Horse. Not one half the men were mounted, and such as were cut a shabby figure, loaded as the horses were to the very croups with the cloaks and valises of the dismounted.

To me, who had not endured the toils of a campaign in which so much had been suffered, and such a scanty harvest of glory acquired, the various scenes I witnessed were sources of the highest fun; but I nevertheless had it in my power to render many little services and acts of kindness to my suffering brenren that would have endeared me to many of them, had fortune blessed me with the means of continuing in that branch of the service. Take the corps, one and all, they were a noble specimen of the high-spirited gentlemen of Ireland, joyous and cheerful under every privation!

The winter of 1794, which was one of peculiar severity, closed sadly on our brave troops. The cavalry, as might be expected, suffered almost to annihilation. All the force of that description which were yet in a fit state to keep the field fell back on Holland, where they remained carrying on a desultory warfare during the ensuing year, under the command of General Count Walmoden. Their ultimate fate was deplorable; of the poor horses, those which the campaign had spared, the bullet finished.

CHAPTER III.

But happy they, the happiest of their kind,

Whom gentle stars unite, and in one fate

Their hearts, their fortunes, and their beings blend."

I AM not about to inflict a homily on my readers by repeating all the croakings of 1795, in and out of parliament, on the failure of the Royal Frederick's first continental campaign; the dismal recollections of which were, if not entirely dissipated, at least considerably mitigated by the preparations for those festivities which attended the marriage of the all accomplished Prince of Wales in April, 1795; an event which might furnish a whole page of deep and solemn reflection, particularly as there is no species of prophecy safer than that which is pronounced after the fact; but I forbear, for this simple reason, that I then made no reflection whatever on the subject.

By means of my letters of introduction to Major M'Mahon, (since Colonel Sir John, who had obtained his step to that rank in the 87th,) and his lady, I enjoyed abundant opportunities of partaking of some of the fetes, public and private, given on that happy occasion, and of sporting a light and merry toe in the now exploded country-dance of forty, or fifty couple, to the then favourite air of the "PRINCE and his BRIDE."

It was not until the May of this year that I discovered the why, and wherefore, of my temporary elevation into the dragoon guards. The mystery was cleared up by my old friend from Dublin, that Apollo of army agents, who came over for the purpose of presenting to his Royal Highness his ode of congratulation on his nuptials. The facts were not complimentary to me, it is true, but it must be admitted nothing could have been more kind or considerate than the conduct of my friend. A cornetcy in theth Regiment of dragoon guards having become vacant, it was purchased for the son of General Sir John J-, a youth who yet wanted six months of that age at which the commander-in-chief, according to the latest regulations, admitted young gentlemen to hold commissions. It was a favourite object with the father to place his son in that particular regiment, as being one which he had for twenty years commanded. I was selected by my worthy friend to be the warming-pan, and only held my seat on honour until it should be claimed from me. That period was now arrived,

and my ever-kind and careful patron, on communicating the word of command, "dismount," hailed me by the delightful title of LIEUTENANT, which commission he had by his excellent management secured for me, as some compensation for my loss of dignity, in being placed on my former FOOTING.

The regiment to which I had been promoted was one of the new levies raised in Ireland the preceding year; one portion of which was missing, having either been lost or captured on its passage to England, and the other companies were scattered in different ports, some in remote parts of Scotland, others in British ports, so that I could obtain no certain information to guard me to the head-quarters of my regiment for several weeks, an ignorance which was shared by the war offices of both countries. I, therefore, made every arrangement for proceeding to Limerick, the former head-quarters, to take instructions from my colonel, when at last it was announced to me that four or five of the scattered companies of the regiment, if such it might be called, had been collected at Liverpool, and were cantoned in that neighbourhood. To this destination I immediately repaired; but on my arrival had the mortification of learning that the corps had already departed on its route for certain towns in Yorkshire, West-Riding, the head-quarters being Halifax.

It was nearly midsummer, and delightful weather: meeting many Irish friends at Liverpool, I remained enjoying their company, and such pleasures as that town afforded, so long as my strength of purse admitted this indulgence; and I was on the eve of my departure by coach, when strolling down to the quay, I joined a party of officers, who were on the recruiting service there in order to see the last importations from Ireland. We were all laughing and joking at the expense of a motley group of raw recruits, just landed from a Dublin packet, and who were forming line under the discipline of a long thong whip, commonly termed a "PIG-WHIP," wielded with dexterity by the hand of a non-commissioned officer, who was called "sergeant major," when, to my utter confusion, horror, and astonishment, we discovered by the number on the knapsacks that the whip-driven detachment was a portion of my own regiment! a discovery which exposed me to the ironical compliments of my roaring companions.

This was more than I could bear. I immediately scampered off for my quarters, the Crown in Red Cross Street, and was packing up in great haste, determined to fly the scene, when my movements were for the second time in my military life, arrested by superior command. A Captain Alexander of ours ferreted me out, on the information given him by those “d—d

good-natured friends" I had just skulked away from, and laid an embargo on me, by virtue of his rank.

Seeing that necessity left me no other alternative I received my captain's visit with all possible grace, secretly wishing him, his slaves, and slave-driver, at the mouth of the Mersey once more with all my heart. He was a smart-figured man, about thirty-two years old, by no means ill featured, but sour visaged, a consequential in manner, so as to render him unprepossessing to a degree. He was dressed in the very showy (though in this case somewhat faded) regimentals of the King's Own, to which regiment he belonged, for some months, as ensign. What corps had the honour of his name, perhaps for a day only as lieutenant, I did not think it worth while to inquire; it was sufficiently mortifying to me that his father's weight of purse had, raised him to the rank of captain half a year before, and made him my present commander.

There was a very good table d'hote at the Crown, to which I invited him for that day. Our company consisted of officers on the recruiting service, Irish visiters, English travellers (or bagmen,) with commercial adventures to the coast of Guinea, intent on the barter of Birmingham wares, for negro-blood, coffee, cotton, and sugar. I found my captain one of the-if not the greatest of bores I ever had the misfortune to be linked to, as companion or brother-officer. Though labouring under the most horrifying species of stammering that ever afflicted man or his hearers, he was always foremost in story-telling, keeping his company in an agony during his attempts to detail the shortest and simplest anecdote; besides this cacoethes loquendi, he fancied himself a singer, and the third round of bumpers had scarcely passed, when he volunteered a song.

Those letters in the alphabet on which the most lengthened and painful hesitation arose, were R and T. His pronunciation of the first was like the rumbling of the long roll, and his second equalled the tattoo? Under what horror then it may be considered the company writhed during the full hour that our fanatico per musica tortured us, in his attempted performance of "Rule Britannia!” and the “ Top-sails shiver in the wind!" The bottles having been emptied, my captain called for one more, inviting me at the same time to join him in the duett of" RISE, CYNTHIA, RISE!" The hint was sufficient; every one but my unlucky self rose at the instant, and escaped, while I was doomed to the double misery of drinking more than my quantum, of being harassed by a repetition of the preceding horrors. At the conclusion of our evening's carouse, my captain as the commanding officer, came over me at once, despatching me at that unseasonable hour, ten o'clock, in a smart