saints wore only a "plain band," but their spouses were not quite so simple in their tastes, and scrupled not to wear "lace to their smocks." Ladies wore, in place of the ruff, a "whisk" or gorget of the richest lace. Gentlemen soon forsook the falling band-entirely too graceful and rational to last long in fashion. As the great perukes of Charles the Second's time fell over the shoulders, the collar was first hidden and then transmuted into a cravat, the long ends of which could be seen hanging down in front. As in France, so in England lace was profusely worn. Queen Mary favoured the introduction of the high Fontanges head-dress, with its piled tiers of lace and ribbon, and the long hanging "pinners celebrated by Prior in his Tale of the Widow and her Cat. He scratch'd the maid, he stole the cream, He tore her best laced pinner. The head-dress of the next reign is excellently described by Farquhar. Parley says: "Oh, sir, there is the prettiest fashion lately come over! so airy, so French and all that! The Pinners are double ruffled with twelve plaits of a side, and open all from the face; the hair is frizzled up all round the head, and stands as stiff as a bodkin. Then the Favourites hang loose upon the temple with a languishing lock in the middle. Then the Caule is extremely wide, and over all is a Cornet raised very high, and all the lappets behind." The Flanders lace-heads the "engaging" sleeves or ruffles, and a dress frilled and flounced all over, caused a lady, in the language of the Spectator, to "resemble a Friesland hen." Lace was then, as always, costly. Queen Mary's lace bill for the year 1694, signed by Lady Derby, Mistress of the Robes, amounted to nineteen hundred and eighteen pounds. In the following year her husband's account was even larger, exceeding two thousand four hundred pounds. REST. LOVE, give me one of thy dear hands to hold, When peace came to us, and content profound. And my whole soul is satisfied with rest. Better than all our bygone dreams of bliss, Are deep content and rest secure as this. What though we missed love's golden summer time, Good guerdon for our waiting to receive. The heyday of our youth, its roseate glow, Have passed; but we have truer joys to hold. Sing me the dear, old song about the nest, Our blessed home, our little ark of rest. SOLDIERING IN INDIA. SOLDIERING in India and soldiering in England are very different matters. It is true that the objects of keeping up an army are the same in Asia as they are in Europe. To repress foes, internal as well as external, and to preserve peace by being prepared for war, are the reasons why armies exist in every part of the world. But it is the inner life of the soldier himself which is so very different in the East to what we are accustomed to in the West. Of late years immense care has been bestowed upon the health of the soldier, and the authorities study the best way of keeping him out of mischief. There was a time not so very distant: we speak of some ten or fifteen years ago-when both the soldier's going to India, his first sojourn there, his subsequent march up-country, and his after residence with his regiment, were, one and all, left almost to chance. He was usually embarked at Gravesend or Queenstown; the ship in which he went to India was a sailing-vessel, and took from ninety to a hundred and twenty days to reach Bombay, Madras, or Calcutta. When the troops reached the port of destination and were disembarked, little or no control was put upon them. They were left to roam in the native bazaars as much as they liked; their heads were no more protected from the sun than they would be in England; and, what between the heat, the arrack they drank, and the unwholesome fruit they ate, a detachment was considered lucky if, after a fortnight's sojourn in one of the Presidency towns, it did not leave, at least, ten per cent. of its number in the hospital, and three or four per cent. in the graveyard. The march up-country was conducted on very the same principle. The men had to toil on foot some ten or fifteen miles a day; had to take their chance of healthy or unhealthy country; were always able to procure unhealthy fruit, and still more un much healthy spirits; and the consequence was that the great main routes in India, over which European troops marched, were marked at every halting-place by a very large collection of soldiers' tombs. All this is now changed, and changed immensely for the better. Troops going to India now, all embark at Portsmouth. The five or six troopships destined for the service are some of the finest vessels in the Royal Navy. They are manned, officered, and commanded in the same way as any ship of war. They are lofty between decks, very roomy as to accommodation, and nothing that can possibly conduce to the comfort and health of the troops on board is omitted in their construction and management. Instead of proceeding by sail round the Cape of Good Hope, they go direct by steam through the Suez Canal to Bombay. No matter for what part of India they are destined, the troopships never go to Madras or Calcutta. At the former place the landing is dangerous, and the latter is considered unhealthy for new arrivals from Europe. The troopships proceed up the harbour of Bombay, but the troops are not allowed to land in that town. They are landed close to the railway station, and taken at once up the Ghauts, by rail, to a place called Deodally, which is some six hours distant from the capital of the western presidency. At Deodally the climate is as healthy as in England, the site being some five or six thousand feet above the level of the sea. The new barracks built there are spacious and lofty, and here the men lately arrived from England are left to repose themselves for a time, after the fatigues of the voyage. They are then sent on to their several regiments; or, if a new regiment has landed in the country, it is sent up to the north-west, where the climate is less severe than in other parts of India. It is only after two or three years' residence in the East that they are quartered in the more unhealthy stations; and, even including these, the deaths among our English troops in India are fifty per cent. less than they were some twelve years ago. A very great deal of this has been caused by beneficial changes-common-sense alterations, suitable to the country-in the clothing of our troops in India. Flannel shirts; flannel girths ; warm clothing for the cool of the morning, and the damps of the evening; and white jackets for the heat of the day, have done much to effect this good. But most of all has the white pith helmet-now universally worn by every English soldier in India, no matter to what arm of the service he may belong, or no matter what his rank-worked for good in the sanitary condition of the troops. In fact, so great has been the change, so few the cases of sunstroke, since this head-dress has been adopted, that we almost wonder why it was that the change from the shako did not take place many years ago. Experiments have been tried by exposing one of the white helmets, now worn by the troops in India, as well as one of the shakos which were formerly the regulation, to the full glare of a midday sun, and placing a thermometer under each; and the difference between the two has been, that the thermometer under the helmet was nearly ten degrees lower than that under the shako. It follows, then, that for upwards of a hundred years, in India, we were actually exposing our men to ten more degrees of heat on the brain than we need do. After this, let us not laugh at the blunders committed in clothing by any other nation in the world. But dress has not been the only cause of the immensely improved state of health now prevalent among our troops in India. The better style of barrack which they now inhabit has also had a great deal to do with it. Formerly, barracks in India were hot-beds of sickness. They had no upper story, were badly drained, and so low in the roof that, after thirty or forty men had slept in one of the rooms all night, the air became simply pestilential. Add to this the effect of bad drains, or, rather, of no drainage at all; of an utter want of amusement or occupation during the long hot hours of the day, when the men were unable to go out; and a free access, for such as had money, to the deleterious native liquors sold in the bazaars; and it is not to be wondered at if our European garrisons in the East were as if instituted solely for the purpose of filling the burial-ground. At many of the stations, where European troops have been, it is pitiable to count the gravestones indicating the number of some regiment that lies buried there. Thus at Kaira, not far from Baroda, the Seventeenth Light Dragoons, now the Seventeenth Lancers, buried, in the course of about twenty years, upwards of a thousand men, the number of men in the regiment at no time being more than twelve hundred. At Meerut, in the north-west provinces, if the dead of the Third Buffs and the Eleventh Dragoons could rise from their graves, there would be an increase of some eight or nine hundred to the strength of the army. And yet neither of these regiments were quartered more than ten years in the place; nor should it be forgotten that this has ever been one of the most healthy stations in India. At Kurnaul, too, a station some hundred and twenty miles to the north-west of Meerut, the Third Dragoons and the Thirteenth Light Infantry lie in their graves by hundreds; and at Surat, during the first two decades of the present century, the Fifty-fifth Regiment must have buried itself nearly twice over. In short, go where we will among the old stations of India, we find the same testimony borne to the immense number of men we lost, until we were sensible enough to discover that prevention was better than cure, and to act upon the discovery. Amusement, education, and occupation have also had a vast deal to do with this improvement. In every station there are rooms where the soldiers can assemble to read the papers and books, play chess, draughts, or dominoes, and amuse themselves like rational beings. Gymnastics are greatly encouraged. Prizes are given for the best runners, the best jumpers, and those who can throw the heaviest weights. Education, so far as reading and writing are concerned, is compulsory; and every recruit who joins ignorant of this preliminary teaching has to go to school. The men are also very much more temperate than they used to be; and when they do partake of any stimulants, it is wholesome, sound liquor, furnished by the canteen contractors at a reasonable price, and not the abominable, unwholesome rubbish commonly called native liquor. The white helmets, of which we have spoken before, protect the soldiers' heads greatly from the sun, and therefore admit of the men taking exercise, and being out under the sun at hours when it would not have been possible to do so a few years ago. As an almost universal rule, the man who takes exercise in India has good health, while he who remains at home becomes, by degrees, sickly in mind and in body. Hitherto, or at least until this new head-dress was invented, the soldier serving in India was, from soon after sunrise to near the time of sunset, a prisoner in his barrack-room. If he went outside and faced the glare and heat of the day, he was pretty sure to be struck down by the sun, and pass a month or more in hospital, with a tolerable chance of either being sent home to England as an invalid, or of having the Dead March in Saul played before him as he was carried a corpse to the graveyard. Like the solving of the problem of how eggs are made to stand on end, the solution of this difficulty was excessively simple. For nearly a century Anglo-Indians wondered why it was that the European officer or civilian, who was out all day in the sun, and who passed the hottest months of the year in tiger-shooting or hog-hunting, always enjoyed the best of health; whereas, English soldiers, if detained half an hour longer than usual on morning parade, or called out an hour earlier in the afternoon, were certain to send a large percentage of their number into hospital. At last, some official who was cleverer than his fellows, bethought himself of the head-dress. An officer, it was urged, who would go into the jungle with a black or dark-coloured cap, or whose covering for the head was not made so as to protect the forehead, the temples, and the nape of the neck from the sun, would have been looked upon as a maniac, and probably restrained as such, if he had not previously fallen ill from brain-fever or sunstroke. Some still wiser man then came to the conclusion that what was good for gentlemen who hunted or shot, could not be bad for their more humble fellow-countrymen. Thus it was that the white helmet was adopted, and that, since then, European soldiers may be employed in India at all hours with almost as great impunity as in England. It is, however, a strange fact that in England, or in our English dependencies, we seldom improve in one respect without deteriorating in another. As we have already shown, from the time an English soldier leaves Portsmouth until he arrives at his station in the far-off north-west of India, nothing can be better or more judicious than his treatment in every way. But with all this the English army in India, and, for that matter, the native troops also, are less efficient than they used to be some years ago. The reason is simple enough. We have increased the number of regiments in the East, and we pay far more attention than we did to the health and well-being of the men; but we have so diminished the numerical strength of each corps, both as to officers and men, that it would almost seem as if our army in the East were intended for show, and each. At the battle of Balaklava there was not for use. Formerly, an English cavalry not a regiment present that mustered more regiment in India consisted of two lien- than a squadron of a French or Prussian tenant-colonels, two majors, eight captains corps would have done; and before the (besides one captain of the depôt in following winter was over, more than one England), sixteen lieutenants, eight cor- of these regiments could not have mustered nets, besides paymaster, quartermaster, and a properly mounted sergeant's guard. In medical officers, with seven hundred non-fact, in one hussar regiment, it is said commissioned officers and privates. At that there were more officers than soldiers the present day the officers of a cavalry fit to take the field. But this ever has, regiment serving in that country are one and we suspect it ever will be, our crying lieutenant-colonel, one major, six captains, military sin. We are very wise as to our ten lieutenants, and two or three sub-lieu- pennies, but more than foolish as to our tenants. In other words, a dragoon corps pounds. It would seem as if we—or at least in India, when mustered on parade a few those who rule over us-never can see the years ago, turned out eight strong troops, truth of that wise saying which tells us or four strong squadrons, fully officered; that to preserve peace we ought always but it can now only muster six weak to be prepared for war. Anyone who troops, or three very feeble squadrons, has been recently in India, and who and has rarely three officers per squadron. knows the numerical shortcomings of our Of the great blunder committed by troops in that country, must stare at the this change, there is but one opinion panegyrics of our Indian army, which from Calcutta to Peshawur. Formerly, no matter what casualties occurred, whether there was sickness or not in the corps, or whether it had gone through a couple of years' campaigning, there was always a large margin from which to supply officers, men, and horses. At present it is not so, or rather it would not be so if ever we took the field. Nor is it anything but the plain truth to assert that this weakening of the numbers in each corps has caused an immense deal of discontent throughout our English troops in India. Officers cannot get leave of absence as they did formerly, and the men have at least two days' guard, or other duties to perform every week more than they had under the old régime. In the infantry it is much the same; nay, in some instances, as regards garrison guards and so forth, they have nearly double the work of former days. Thus much for the men; for the credit of our arms it would be much different and far more injurious should we ever take the field. It is all very well in healthy quarters and, comparatively speaking, all quarters in India are now pretty healthy-but what of an unhealthy campaign, or of a period when there were many casualties? The Crimean war taught us a lesson which it would seem we are now beginning to forget-namely, that regiments, weak in numbers, become utterly useless before the enemy after they have been a short time in camp. With that army were sent out certain cavalry regiments, numbering barely two hundred and fifty or three hundred sabres appear from time to time in the English press. But it would appear that English journalists, as a rule, have a distaste for figures. Were it otherwise, the real facts concerning the parade before the Prince of Wales at Delhi, in January last, ought to have opened their eyes. To bring men to this display of our army, the greater part of the Punjaub and the whole of the north-west provinces were denuded of troops. Nominally, the numbers present were very large; but in reality, as the official returns of the day showed, we mustered not more than seventeen thousand five hundred men; and this in spite of the fact that there were present four regiments of hussars, eight or ten batteries of artillery, some fifteen or sixteen regiments of European infantry, and two score corps of native cavalry and infantry. In short, the parade at Delhi, which was looked upon as the parade of the whole English army, actually mustered fewer men in the ranks than an individual French or German corps d'armée would have done! Nor should it be forgotten that, in India, war and rumours of war are by no means unknown, more especially at the present day. Small campaigns with native chiefs and refractory rajahs appear, so far as it is possible to judge, to have come to an end. A battalion or two at Baroda, a couple of brigades at Hyderabad, and about the same number of troops at Lucknow, are all that appears to be required to keep refractory native states in order. But if we read between the lines during a later period of about equal length it has been a veritable prison, generally containing many clever rascals up to all the dodges of possible escaping. of almost every official document that appears in India, or if we interpret all those documents by the movements of troops, the construction of military railways, and every kind of preparation for One night, the rooms of three of the the future, we cannot but be of opinion officials were found to be stripped of a that there is a cloud of gloom on our quantity of wearing apparel. A patrol, north-west frontier, of which the autho- going his rounds, saw two men getting rities are not a little afraid. In other over the garden wall, by the help of a words, men don't talk of the fact that, white rope made of yarn used in some of year by year, Russia is creeping nearer and the working rooms. He shook the rope; nearer towards British India, but they the men fell, but quickly rose again, think of it, and think of it with serious knocked him down, and ran off in the anxiety. Very few years hence, even opposite direction. The alarm being given, if we are not actually at war, our governor, chaplain, surgeon, steward, and forces will be so divided in watch- helpers hastened to the spot. They found, ing an enemy from without and in not only the white rope, fastened to the guarding ourselves from an enemy that top of the wall by a large iron rake is within an enemy that would take ad- twisted into a hook, but also another rope vantage of our exterior embarrassments depending from one of the loopholes at as surely as the sparks fly upwards-that the top of the C tower. The prison conwe shall need every soldier, every rifle, sists of several five-sided buildings, surand every sabre we can muster in India. rounding an open court, and having a sort Surely, then, it is not merely worth of garden outside them, bounded by a while to increase our army to an efficient lofty wall; every angle of each building standard while we are at peace, but it is is strengthened with a tower or turret. our absolute duty to do so. It is the A hammer, a chisel, other tools, and a simple and plain truth to say that, so large poker were also found. Several far as regards numbers, our Indian army, bricks had been removed from one side of English as well as native, is utterly the loophole, leaving a space wide enough unfit for the defence of our Eastern for one person to creep through. Some empire. Nor ought we to omit a prison clothing lay hard by. A skeleton very significant fact-namely, that the key, made of pewter, was found to open natives of India, and particularly those many of the officers' bedroom doors; who inhabit the Punjaub and the while other false keys had been used to north-west, some few years ago, re-open the prisoners' cell doors. The rogues garded any chance of a Russian in- were recaptured in the garden. vasion as an utter myth. But of late years they have, to a man, changed their opinion, and look forward to the advance of that enemy on our frontier as merely a question of time. Surely it behoves us to take as much advantage as we can of the time we have still before us. PRISON-BREAKING. CAPTAIN ARTHUR GRIFFITHS, when appointed four years ago Deputy Governor of Millbank Prison, was placed in possession of the official records of that establishment. Among those records are accounts of certain remarkable escapes, which he has incorporated in his recent history of the building. Millbank Prison, as most of us know, stands on what used to be the dismal marshy Tothill-fields, near the Westminster end of Vauxhall-bridge. It was for thirty years a penitentiary; but A prisoner named Cummings one night broke through the ceiling of his cell, and traversed the roof along one side of his pentagon or block of buildings. He was not so crafty as most of his fellows, for he had provided no means of descent. More expert were seven prisoners, who, through some gross mismanagement, had been placed in a large room having no bars to the windows. They cut up their blankets into strips, made ladders of them, climbed out upon the roof, descended to the garden, and raised a heavy ladder against the outer wall. All escapedthough only to be recaptured afterwards. Three men, confined in one cell, made a large aperture in its floor, concealing the gap during the daytime by a covering of pasteboard. The cell was on the ground floor; and the men, night after night, descended through the aperture into a vault beneath, where they worked away against the wall of the building. They |