girls we left behind us," wherewith, after the ancient manner, the 110th, consoled their fair friends (and their noble selves) upon their departure, ere the same hearts palpitated to the notes of hope in the "British grenadiers," by which the 120th announced that they were come to reign in their stead.

Of course everybody turned out to see us; and Johnny confessed to me privately, afterwards, when he was a little better of Clementina Mullins, that his first impression of Ballymaccrocodile was, that it was the colony of a female equestrian tribe; the young rogue, notwithstanding his misogynical conversion to the sports of the field, having counted the fair ladies on horseback whom we encountered in the last five miles, and whom he found amounted to thirteen. He then ascertained the number of roads that led into the town, which being five, he therefrom deduced that sixty-five,

or thereabouts, of the damsels of that flourishing market-town kept horses, poor dear boy.

I let him find his own way out of the monstrous delusion; experience comes surely, and if one changes quarters rapidly, by no means slowly; it is much more instructive than preaching, which nobody ever attends to; and I think some considerable light had been let into his innocent mind, when about three weeks afterwards he told me that he had found out how many ladies possessed horses, or could borrow them, in the neighbourhood, and that they amounted to fourteen; adding, that probably one of them was ill the day we marched in. I doubted this last remark being his own composition, my opinion being that he had plagiarized it from Simpkins, or more likely Holster, who was an incurable, irretrievable, hopeless snob, with a gigantic opinion of himself, and a maniacal selfidolatry of his character of a cavalry officer.

Now I had no objection to bringing up Johnny myself in the way he should go, because I knew the way; but I had not the slightest idea of suffering these gents to show him the way he should not go-viz., into gentism; indeed, I had too great a regard for Edith, his sister, who was only a year older than him, and used to talk to me about his chest, which was weak, and the night air, and not letting him drink whiskey-punch-of which deleterious fluid I almost thought she believed the Bann, the Boyne, the Barron, the Blackwater, the Liffey, the Suir, and the Shannon were composed so I considered it my duty to Edith to put a stopper upon any attempt to corrupt Johnny.

"Johnny, my boy, perhaps the fourteenth was something of a lady?" said I, as, indeed, I knew it was; for Hawkins' horses being gone, and mine, of course, not come in, Ellen was dismounted.

"Well, that was what I thought, to tell you the truth," replied Johnny, innocently, thereby convincing me that I was correct in setting down the remark as a piracy, and from a somewhat discreditable source.

"Johnny," said I, "do you think that either Simpkins or Holster is much of a judge of a lady?"

"Well," replied Johnny, musing, with a thoughtful expression, that reminded me uncommonly of Edith when she got to the night air on his chest; "well, I do not see how either of them can ever have seen a lady; at least, I mean, ever spoken or been friends with any ladylike women. Simpkins and Co. is a very respectable firm in the saddlery line, and, I dare say, well suited to the mayor and sheriff line, but that does not make them judges of ladies, you know; and Holster's people are hemp and tallow merchants, and good judges of grease, I dare say. I do not suppose either of them knows what a lady ought to be;

I know neither knows what a gentleman

ought to be."

"Then, Johnny, my boy, don't you take their opinions about ladies. If Simpkins and Holster live to be a hundred, they will not see as much of ladylike women as you have seen already," said I, thinking of Edith, and wishing I was in Eaton-square at that very moment, with Lady Elizabeth Waldgrave on one side, scolding me for not having been at church last Sunday, as was her custom, and on the other,well, I was at Ballymaccrocodile, bearing my country's arms, and respected by my colonel and brother officers, alarmingly caressed in the fashionable circles of the neighbourhood, and what more could a good soldier require; so I began giving Johnny good advice, in a species of logic at which I was unequalled.

"Johnny," said I, "when you hear such fellows as Simpkins and Holster talking