pounds of rice and flour thrown away, after being
drawn from the commissariat, because the native
cook-boys of the troop had not reached the
camp in time to prepare these rations for food.
As to preparing coffee, baking bread, making
soup, or roasting meat, you might as well ask
an Anglo-Indian soldier to draw out the lines
of a ship of war.

And need I speak of the waste, the dirt, the
uneatableness, of the soldier's food when it is
prepared by the greasy native cooks who spoil
what is given them to cook, and who as often as
not disgust the soldier with his rations, owing
to their own personal filth alone? It would be
out of reason to expect that the rations and
means of the private soldier could, either in India
or in any other country, be made to furnish such
dinners as are to be had only in wealthy households;
but there is no reason why our troops
should not have wholesome, clean, and even
tasty cookery, such as is to be had in the French
army, and, of late years, in our own navy,
whenever a man-of-war is in port, or can obtain
fresh vegetables. To visit the cook-house of a
French regiment, or of an English man-of-war,
half an hour before dinner-time, would give a
satiated alderman an appetite. I have tasted as
good vegetable soup on board H.M.S. Marlborough,
in Malta harbour, as any gentleman
would wish to put upon his table. Why should
our troops not have their rations as well cooked
as their brethren of the navy? Our ships go
into every climate and to every country; but do
we ever hear it said that in any part of the
world it is too hot for Englishmen to cook sailors'
dinners, and that native cooks ought to be
provided for the men-of-war on the African or East
Indian stations? Some years ago, I visited the
French settlement of Pondicherry, on the Madras
coast, and visited the barracks of the battalion
of Marine Infantry doing duty in the garrison.
I found the cooking all carried on by the men
themselves, as in France, and I found the kitchens
as clean and neat as they would have been in
Europe. I found that the men had excellent
bread, baked by soldiers who were paid for their
work, good soup, well cooked vegetables and
rice, and were much better fed than our men in
the Madras Presidency, at less than two-thirds of
the cost.* With the French troops in the East
Indies there is not one single native follower of
any kind, except with the officers: who, if they
keep horses, or if they are married men, have
servants of the country. The consequences are,
the soldiers are much more healthy than our
men, their pay goes very much further, and the
government feeds them at two-thirds of the
expense we incur, which, with our Anglo-Indian
force of nearly eighty-four thousand men, would
be no small item in our Indian budget.**

* This, however, ought to surprise no one, for
according to the French and English budgets of
1862-63, we pay 15,139,379?., for an army of
145,450 men and 14,116 horses, whilst the French
pay 14,599,000?., for an army of 400,000 men, a
reserve of 150,000 men, and 105,000 horses. That
is to say, we pay over half a million more money
than the French pay for one-fourth the number
of men, and about one-seventh the number of
horses.

** The Conductor of this Journal has, in his rambles
during the last few years, watched the training of
French soldiers in several large garrison towns of
France. It is scarcely credible that such a system
can be in daily action at a dozen places within a
few hours' steam-journey of these shores, and be so
lost on authorities at home.

PAINT AND VARNISH.

How should the world get on without Paint
and Varnish? Though damaging to' the core
beneath, when laid on with too broad a sweep
and too juicy a brush, they are yet, in a certain
degree, necessities in a make-believe old life,
"where nothing is but all things seem," and
where matters are so oddly ordered, that
sometimes the highest truths have the effect of the
wildest falsehoods. Think what it would be if
we all lived in rough-hewn moral chambers,
unpainted and unvarnished— nothing but the bare
boards, with the grain of the wood showing up in
jagged lines, and the heads and points of the nails
starting out for the riving of our garments!
Horribly uncomfortable, surely, with no good sleeping
accommodation possible not so much as would
give one space or ease for a noonday siesta, with
the sun stalking through Leo overhead! This
was the kind of thing that was tried once— in
imagination at least— when Madame de Genlis
built up her Palace of Truth out of her
internal consciousness, and set her puppets to
inhabit it. And a fine mess they all made of it: all
but the little sly boots who had the wit to
secure the talisman which included paint and
varnish among its properties, and so was enabled
to send her husband blessed and deluded to the
grave. And sly boots, if not right according to
the nobler patterns, was at least wise in her
generation, and understood the nature of men
and husbands.

Think of the miserable gorilladom of the
world, if the outside sweetness of society were
laid aside— if the paint-pot was empty and the
varnish-brush dry; if, instead of "My dear
Mrs. Smith, this is indeed kind of you— I am
charmed to see you," said amiably, and with an
electric clasping of the fingers, your friend
growled out: " Here is this odious woman
again! why did they let her up?" Think of
the consternation that would seize on poor Mrs.
Smith's undoubting soul, if, in place of the
smooth serenity of former custom, this gnarled
and knotted reality was suddenly to meet her!
Would it be right, indeed, that it should? Where
the necessity of turning the seams outside, and
letting the north wind whistle through chinks
and cracks, which a little putty, painted over
and varnished, could stop out as well as heart
of oak? Look at that assemblage of bland
and well-dressed guests, each accustomed to
adulation, and preparing for it as in the natural
order of things; and think of the apoplectic