236 SOME OLD BOOKS 



Since Lord Haldane, by a wave of his wand and a 

 scrape of his pen, disbanded our Volunteer force of 

 250,000 or 300,000 men after an existence of fifty years, 

 it is possible that the early satirical literature about 

 them may be a promising, as it is a virgin, field for the 

 collector. I have little acquaintance with it; only 

 here and there a few scraps have lodged in nooks of 

 memory. One squib I recollect, entitled, I think, The 

 Sludgebridge Volunteers describing the formation of 

 a corps in an English country town. To drill the 

 recruits a sergeant of the Grenadier Guards and a 

 corporal of the Coldstream were sent down brilliant, 

 awe-compelling creatures, each with side-whiskers 

 and 



1 The front of Jove himself, 

 An eye like Mars, to threaten and command.' 



The pupils were as willing as the instructors were 

 competent; but the accents of Olympus smote strangely 

 on the ears of Sludgebridge. There was perplexing 

 difference between the language of these demigods. 

 The Grenadier conveyed the command to 'shoulder 

 arms' in the syllables 'Shoolah HUMPS!' Not so the 

 Coldstream corporal, who, albeit inferior to the other in 

 rank, differed from him but as one star differeth from 

 another star in glory, yet was no whit his inferior in 

 tremendous mien. He bellowed ' Shalloo HICE ! ' 

 Straightway the devoted defenders of Sludgebridge 

 were divided, so to speak, into two camps ; the corps 

 was rent, as the primitive Church was rent, by a 

 dispute as incapable of solution, and therefore con- 

 ducted with as much bitterness, as the Filioque 



