32 MANUAL FOE YOUNG SPORTSMEN. 



Lamentable as has been the misconduct of the war. 

 disgraceful as the incapacity of the leaders of the war, 

 infamous, I had almost said treasonable, as the apathy and 

 nepotism of the home government, no word of blame has 

 found utterance concerning the pluck, the stamina, the 

 endurance, the devotion of the highly-born, softly-nur- 

 tured, noble subalterns of the English army. 



They died in their stirrups in that appalling charge 

 at Balaclava, avenging themselves by tenfold slaughter 

 of their outnumbering foes — they rotted piecemeal in 

 those eharnel trenches — they weltered in mute agony, in 

 • that dreadful ditch of the Redan, compelling their com- 

 rades in anguish to like silence by the wonderful example 

 of their young constancy. 



Heaven knows I wish to draw no invidious distinctions, 

 or to institute odious comparisons, but I must be per- 

 mitted to doubt whether the Schottishing flower of young 

 York, who would shrink dismayed from the verge of 

 snipe-bog, and faint at the idea of a ten hours' July tramp 

 over the Drowned Lands after woodcock, would have shone 

 with much splendor in that hand-to-hand affair, in the 

 Valley of" Death, or have come with the vivacity of the 

 Polka out of the semi-liquid, semi-frozen mud of those dis- 

 astrous trenches. 



Seriously speaking, I believe that over earnestness in 

 the pursuit of gain on the one hand, and over frivolity in 

 the pursuit of pleasure on the other, are two of the beset- 

 ting vices of the age ; and I farther believe, that a little 

 more charity and less austerity on the part of the old 

 and a great deal more manhood and less Miss Nancy- 



