18 



this tn-in of genius, almost the equal of his father, was lately laid in the 

 spot which Nelson thoug'ht was equivalent to a dukedom. Perhaps you 

 will be of opinion that the remains of the father ought in justice to 

 repose alongside those of the son. 



Much has been written on the comparative merits of cavalry and 

 infantry. In the well organised army of a civilised people, it is enough 

 to say that both arms are indispensable. It is the infantry, however, 

 that constitutes the main force. It was the phalanx that carried the 

 Greeks to the banks of the Indus — the legion that enabled the Romans to 

 conquer the best part of the known world, and the British battalion that 

 conquered and reconquered India. But among rude nomadic nations 

 the cavalry is the main force. It was their cavalry alone that enabled 

 the Tartan hordes to effect their wide-spread, although but temporary 

 conquests from China to Europe. It was by it that Jeniz Khan and his 

 successors conquered all China, and a large portion of Russia. But the 

 Tartars will never be able again to make such conquests. Gunpowder 

 has arrested them. The last of their mischievous heroes was Timur, 

 who flourished at the end of the l4th and beginning of the 15th 

 century ; so that we have been rid of these pests of civilization for near 

 500 years. 



The civilized nations have, indeed, now turned the tables on the 

 Tartars, and the only people in proximity to them, the Russians, have made 

 extensive territorial conquests over them. A Tartar cavalry, however, 

 still exists, confined to Russia and China. These are the celebrated 

 Cossacks, and with the first of these powers they have proved useful, not? 

 indeed, in fair fighting, but in harassing'an enemy, by cutting off supplies 

 and stragglers, and completing a rout. They are a light cavalry, meanly 

 mounted and meanly equipped. In a disorderly retreat it becomes 

 formidable. In his retreat from Moscow, Napoleon, in his famous 

 bulletin describing it, said, "Even the Cossacks, that contemptible 

 cavalry, which under ordinary circumstances could not have penetrated 

 a company of voltigeurs, became formidable." It is an inferior 

 description of this cavalry that the allied French and English army will 

 have to meet on the plains of Pecheli, should they attempt a march of 100 

 miles on the Chinese capital, for that is the distance from the coast to 

 Pekin. 



The wild American tribes of the Pampas, Llanos, and Prairies are all 

 mounted. The chief force of the northern nations who conquered India, 

 and held it in obedience from the eleventh to the eighteenth century, 

 consisted of cavalry ; and it was by its cavalry that the Mahratlas, one 



