316 DECEMBER. 



Yet, probably, some of these self-same youths 

 shall tread the highways of England in various 

 characters and stages of their career. One shall 

 come upon you as the deserter. There he 

 marches sullenly along between two files of his 

 fellow-soldiers with shouldered muskets; instant 

 death his fate if he attempt to escape ; disgrace, 

 corporal punishment, death itself, perhaps, equally 

 certain, if he do not. He has found a soldier's 

 life a weary one. He has cast away his oath 

 and his service, and sought, in manifold dis- 

 guises, and in many a strange lurking-place, con- 

 cealment from pursuit ; but he has been dogged 

 and detected ; and on he goes with a heart full 

 of sullen wrath and fearful apprehension. 



Behold another and a happier ! he is marching 

 homeward on his furlough. He has fought bat- 

 tles and seen foreign lands since he left home, 

 and he now goes thither with an honest vanity 

 to boast of his sights seen and exploits done; 

 and to set on fire a dozen young heads with a 

 luckless ambition. Poor fellow ! happy as he 

 thinks himself, he is horribly weary and way- 

 worn, and longs, with a most earnest longing, for 

 the far-off town. 



A third shall come home some thirty years 

 hence, the old veteran ; the hard, grey-headed, 

 mutilated remnant of a man, with one arm, one 

 leg, a body seamed with scars, a crown never 



