188 UNASKED ADVICE. 



learned their drill, should be ignorant of field movements 

 (for after all this is in a few words the sum and substance 

 of the text on which so much has lately been said and 

 written), nor is army reserve a subject for my pen, but as 

 it is surely allowable for a sportsman to look at the 

 mounted arm of the service with a sportsman's eye, and 

 from a sporting point of view, I propose so to do, and to 

 consider, now that cavalry is proved to be not useless, 

 how it can be made most useful. In time of peace, and 

 in these civilised times, horses are animals of very 

 secondary importance to the world at large. A man may 

 go from Edinburgh to London without troubling any 

 such animal, and, arrived in town, may travel all over it 

 in underground railways. If he wants to send a message, 

 there is the post, which conveys his letter by steam ; if 

 time presses, is there not the telegraph, which, worked by 

 an economical Government, carries a message correctly, 

 at least once out of fifty times ; and so on. But civilisa- 

 tion, from the very completeness of its machinery, can be 

 easily upset. The more completely comfortable a neigh- 

 bourhood is in peaceful times, when all goes well, the 

 more any irregularity is felt. A watch is ruined by a fall 

 which would not be noticed by a walking stick, so an 

 invading force in the backwoods of America would do no 

 very lasting damage when their stay was at an end ; but 

 look at the effect of the same thing on France. There is 

 only one thing easier than to tear up the rails of a rail- 

 road, and that is to cut telegraph wires ; and then what 

 becomes of art and civilisation ? Then, a man who 

 wishes to travel fast must have a horse, and the power of 

 riding him an accomplishment not possessed by every- 

 one ; then, mounted messengers are required, and then 

 people are likely to discover the "deterioration of their 



