248 SWABEY DIARY. 
to dinner, but generally they have been so little to my taste that I 
have not noticed them much. 
Lith May.—Wrote to K., and to Harry Forster. I wish to inspire 
the latter with a wish to come out here, and thereby inoculate him with 
military ideas, which, though I do not possess many of them, would 
‘shine in his possession. 
2th May.—lLieut.-Colonel Waller! just arrived from England to 
command our little train in Sir RK. Hill’s army, dined with us to-day, 
_and what was worse came over at 11 o’clock, so that we had to entertain 
him or rather assist him to pass the weary hours until 4 o’clock. Imay 
‘be pardoned for predicting that his plans for the improvement of the 
corps here will not be attended with success, and I think him a little 
presumptuous in forming any, especially as they are directly opposed 
to what experience points out in this country. They are the more 
objectionable as being in direct opposition to Lord Wellington’s, to 
conciliate whom is the only road to popularity, and by no means 
incompatible with independence of thought and feeling. 
15th May.—1 wrote some days of this journal, and having read them 
over, I ain inclined to think my pen has not been guided by the most 
lively view of existing circumstances. 
_ 14th May.—My time did not long hang heavily on my hands to-day 
as I was resolute to read “ Carleton’s Memoirs,” recommended to me 
asa book very well adapted for perusal by all officers in Spain, being 
partly an account of Lord Peterborough’s campaign in Valencia, 
Murcia, etc., in which Captain Carleton served. I found it little 
calculated to instruct, and as to its historical merits, I could not agree 
_with the praises bestowed on them by the reviewer,” whose eulogy of 
the book was of course prefixed. Carleton’s account of the bigotry of 
the Spaniards forms a contrast with their present condition, which 
is now fast approaching emancipation from bigotry and prejudice. 
In reading it 1 was forcibly impressed with the benefit some countries 
derive from revolution, at least, if the effect on the minds of men is 
considered and the miseries of transient anarchy thought worth 
“enduring for the sake of the light they shed on the national mind. In 
the persons of Lord Peterborough and Carleton I had a striking 
instance of the ingratitude of the world, and a proof, not however 
wanted, to convince me of the unwise choice men make when they 
launch into the vortex of ambition in preference to sailing in the placid 
“streams of humble and domestic life. ‘his conviction is the more 
forcible, when we so often find those whose ambition has been laudable, 
and whose worth has been pre-eminent, doomed to see the untimely 
end of disappointed hopes, while fools and profligates are guided by 
fortune to power and affluence. 
15th May.—Reading still the page of the hour, viz., “ Pasley’s 
1 Lieut.-Colonel Charles Waller, R.A. (Kane’s List No. 696). 
2 This remark is creditable to the acumen of Lieutenant Swabey. ‘‘The memoirs of Captain 
George Carleten are now generally believed to be spurious, and perfect specimens of modern myth 
in which fact and fiction are so interweaved as to produce narratives which are imposed upon the 
whole world as authentic.”’? ‘* Quarterly Review,’ January, 1894. 
