position is that although English soldiers of three years might be good, those of six years would be better, and the fact that there are so few of them supplies the strongest argument for requiring that those we have shall be of the best. There is an additional argument in favour of the six years' term in the consideration that it would be easily reconcilable with the exigencies of Indian reliefs.

We should have been glad if Mr. Cardwell had seen fit to divide the total period of enlistment into three portions-the first to be passed with the colours; the second in the Reserve, with a retaining fee of sixpence a day; the third in the Militia, with a fee of fourpence. The passing of the soldier through the army into the Militia would give a leaven to the latter force the value of which can hardly be exaggerated, and would impart to it by degrees very much the character of the Prussian Landwehr.

Having now examined Mr. Cardwell's proposals seriatim, we must call attention to the absence from his Bill of any provision for military instruction in schools. Such instruction could hardly commence at too early an age, and it would probably be as efficacious as any other measure that can be devised in making us a military people.

To sum up we find that of the thirty-six clauses of the Army Regulation Bill, eight are devoted to the extinction of purchase-a measure which has been put forward with an astonishing absence of statesmanlike consideration and forethought, in deference to the prejudices of those classes whose views and influence,' according to the Times newspaper, are gradually preponderating in shaping our legislation;' a measure of which the only certain result will be to saddle the country with an enormous expenditure, and of which its framer is utterly unable to predict the further consequences;

a measure which, even if it fail to realise all the evil effects prophesied by its opponents, will probably exercise no beneficial influence on our military organisation, but result, on the contrary, in disappointment to its promoters, and perhaps serious injury to the army. We have shown that anything like a general interchange between Line and Militia officers, which was professedly the principal object of the proposal to abolish 'purchase,' is utterly impracticable; and that Line officers could be transferred or lent to the Militia whether purchase be abolished or not. We fear, moreover, that in the sequel the unexpectedly large charges that measure will entail will be very impatiently borne by the influential classes above referred to. The Times has already darkly hinted that officers of the army may imperil their vested interests by prolonged opposition; and it seems by no means improbable that those officers may ultimately be called upon to bear a very disproportionate share of the cost. Of the remaining clauses of the Bill

Eight are devoted to the ballot, respecting which it needs here only to say that they can exercise no present influence on our military system; and it is present, not prospective, reforms which the nation requires.

Two clauses relate to the Volunteers, and will be wholly inoperative, as any Volunteer officer can inform Mr. Cardwell.

One clause slightly alters for the better the terms of attestation of recruits, as fixed by the Enlistment Bill of last session.

Four clauses relate to the Militia, of which three deal with matters of detail, while the fourth effects a real reform in transferring militia patronage from lord-lieutenants to the Crown.

One clause gives power to the

Government to take possession of railroads on an emergency.

Fire clauses are devoted to Militia barracks, and the acquisition of land by Militia and Volunteer corps. Seven clauses remain, dealing with legal technicalities.

Now, we would ask, is there any. thing in the above provisions which bids fair to fulfil the expectations held out in the speech of the Minister of War? Setting apart the disputed question of 'purchase,' there is one clause, and one only, of Mr. Cardwell's Bill which can exercise any influence on our military organisation, except in a very remote and contingent future-viz. that which vests Militia patronage in the Crown.

We seek in vain either in the Government measure or in the explanations by which which it was accompanied for any signs of a comprehensive plan; and so little does Mr. Cardwell seem to appreciate his own principle of an expansive army that he has limited for the present year the numbers of the First Reserve-that force on the completion of which the application of his principle depends to 9,000, when at least 80,000 men will be required before our military organisation can rest on a sound and durable basis.

If we recall the legislation of the last session, we find that the measures introduced by Mr. Cardwell, which it was then loudly proclaimed were to remodel our military system, were mainly four, viz.

1. The abolition of the grades of cornet and ensign,-a measure that perished in the birth.

2. The reduction of 20,000 rank and file,—no sooner accomplished than Mr. Cardwell was obliged to replace them.

3. The creation of an Army Reserve; all attempts at which have hitherto proved a total failure.

4. The reduction of depôt battalions, and the adoption of a substi

VOL. III.-NO. XVI. NEW SERIES.

tute measure of attaching depôts of regiments serving abroad to regiments serving at home; which last is likewise notoriously a failure and will have to be rescinded.

We would ask, then, has the appearance of Mr. Cardwell in the rôle of military reformer been so completely successful in the past as to encourage the English people to entrust themselves now blindly to his guidance, along a path beset with snares and pitfalls, where he himself admits that he cannot see his way?

The failure of the Government measure to satisfy the military requirements of the nation is, however, only the natural result of a system which appears to regard entire ignorance of the affairs of any department as the best qualification for its management-a system which sends Lord Hartington from the War Department, which he had administered both as chief and subordinate, to the Post Office; which sends Mr. Goschen to the Admiralty, and Mr. Stansfeld, disqualified for the Admiralty by his previous knowledge of it, to the Poor Law Board; which sends the Under-Secretary of the Home Department from a post where his two years' experience might have made him useful, to duties in the Colonial Office of which he knew nothing; and, finally, which sent Mr. Cardwell from the Colonies to the Army.

The concluding words of Mr. Cardwell's speech on the first reading of his Bill were lows:

as fol

'We have done our best to deal with the principles that lie at the bottom of the service, and to build on them the firm foundations of a defensive force which may be a perfect security to the country, not merely against danger, but against that which is scarcely less intolerable to the spirit and independence of Englishmen-the

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perpetually recurring apprehension of danger.'

These words when collated with his proposed measures would excite a smile if the matter were not too serious. We confess we have no hope that the present Minister of War will ever fulfil the expectations held out in the above quotation. He is called to deal with a subject which is foreign to his habits of thought and to his experience.

We will go further, and say we despair of ever seeing the establishment of a thoroughly sound and permanent military system under our popularity system of government.

However that may be, if the present opportunity for amendment is allowed to slip, it will never return until another tremendous European convulsion shall once more startle the nation from its apathetic security.

Since the foregoing pages went to press we have read Mr. Cardwell's speech, on the second reading of his Bill, wherein he employed the following arguments in support of his proposed system of selection in army promotions:

1. He stated that selection' exists in the army of Prussia, thereby designing to convey the impression that selection is the rule in that army; whereas either he knew, or it was discreditable to him not to have known, that promotion in the Prussian army, as we have already shown, is practically on a system of pure seniority.

2. He cited the evidence of Lord Clyde given before the Purchase Commission,' to the effect that in his opinion the feelings of an officer would be less wounded by the selection of another to supersede him on the score of superior merit, than if that other had passed over his head through the agency of purchase; but the fiery indignation felt and loudly expressed by Lord

Clyde when superseded by a younger officer in the Crimea is hardly consistent with the above opinion. We can only say for ourselves that neither the authority of Lord Clyde, nor of all the generals who have ever lived taken together, would be of any weight to establish a proposition against which the reason revolts; and that so long as human nature remains unchanged, and selfesteem constitutes one of its most powerful sentiments, it would be beyond comparison more galling to an officer to see another placed over him by selection that is, for a reason which implies his personal inferiority-than through the operation either of 'purchase' or pure chance, which would leave his selfesteem untouched.

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3. Referring to the argument that selection,' as he proposes to exercise it, would destroy esprit de corps, Mr. Cardwell asks, Is there no esprit de corps, no life-blood, in the regiments of Prussia? There are many non-purchase regiments in our army: is there no regimental system among them? Is there no esprit de corps among the marines?' &c. &c.; the whole of which argument only goes to show that Mr. Cardwell did not understand the subject on which he was speaking. No one contends that esprit de corps is a special result of the system of purchase, or that the extinc tion of the purchase system would affect that sentiment, provided seniority were made the rule of promotion, as it is in the Prussian army, and in our own artillery and marines. The argument which Mr. Cardwell has failed to meet is-that the system of selection in army promotions as he would exercise it must inevi tably destroy that esprit de corps which has been the life-blood of the British army, and along with it that regimental system which has hitherto been its pride and mainstay, and which has proved its one redeeming quality under a crushing load of mismanagement.

THE

HE princes of Benoo-Omeyyah, who during ninety-four years (A.D. 661-755) ruled from their throne at Damascus over the already immense extent of the Mohammedan world, enjoyed a title to sovereignty peculiarly their own; one denied to all Caliphs and Sultans of later date; whether the orthodox monarchs of Bagdad and Constantinople, or the schismatical Imams of Cairo or Teheran; that, namely, of being governors genuinely and unreservedly co-national with the main body of those they governed, not in descent only, but also in character, manners, and system.

Even the four elective Caliphs, Mohammed's immediate successors, though themselves essentially Arab, were yet too much cramped, 'Alee in particular, by excessive zeal and righteousness overmuch, to be a faithful expression of the real national type. Deeply imbued though Arabs are, more so indeed than the generality of men, with reverence for the eternal law that, as one of our own poets has unconsciously rendered an every-day Arab phrase, 'On every side our being rings,' few people are less inclined than they to multiply complicated observances, and to make of religion and its ceremonies the staple of practical life. Hence it came that Aboo-Bekr, 'Omar, 'Othman, and 'Alee, however congenial, the first three at any rate, to the special phase of mind through which their countrymen were then passing, which was in fact the inflammatory or fever stage of Islamitic inoculation, were yet even then, in common parlance, almost too much for them: 'Alee was so decidedly. Indeed, before the initial half-century was over, the Kharejee or free-thinking reaction of avowed

infidelity and license had already set in; and the dagger of EbnMuljem did but give effect to the general desire of freedom from a yoke which for some years past the Arabs had felt and declared that neither they nor their children were able to bear.

But in the splendid, jovial, adventure-loving, devil-may-care sons of Omeyyah, very heathens in the carnal part,' however sad good Mohammedans at heart they may have been, and indeed unquestionably were, the Arabs had not merely their own flesh and blood, but, what was much more, their own heart and soul, to reign over them; and it was accordingly during the period of their supremacy that the Arab 'geist,' to plagiarise the convenient German word, breathed freest and obtained its fullest expansion. Hence we may not inaptly, before approaching the Damascene Court itself, and the principal figures that gave it splendour and importance, take a general survey of the social conditions around in town or country, as illustrated by those individual sketches of which the records of the age furnish us with abundant choice.

The almost pre-historic winter, the early and the mid-spring of Arab civilisation had already passed away; it was now summer, the time of brightest bloom and of most abundant vigour. Simple in their innate restlessness, and restless in their innate simplicity, as Arabs still were, the young manhood of the nation imparted itself to every individual, and heightened the aims of life, while giving them at the same time a depth and a breadth unknown before. War, counsel, eloquence; these had always formed the triple excellence

that Arabia claimed for her sons as their noblest praise; and it was now, under the star of BenooOmeyyah, that she fully realised her own ideal, and gave simultaneous birth to her greatest warriors, her most skilful statesmen, and her choicest poets. The change which had come over the spirit of these last is in itself a remarkable illustration of profoundly modified social conditions throughout the entire peninsula.

Poverty of means, isolation of circumstance, and insecurity of life, had, during the long ante-Islamitic period, cramped the energy, narrowed the ideas, and marred the taste of almost all, indeed in some degree of all Arab poets. The circle they moved in was rough, barren, and contracted; their genius dwarfed itself into proportion with the limits which it could not overpass. The high rank and noble birth of the pre-Islamitic 'Amrooben-Kelthoom and 'Amroo-l-Keys had not exempted them from everrecurring personal dangers and privations on the road and in the field; while the vigorous spirit of Shanfara', Ta'abbet-Shurran, and their like, was distorted by the physical misery and the savage loneliness to which their writings bear such frequent witness. All this had now passed away. Union had given security, conquest riches; while intercourse and Islam had developed the intellect of the nation. Two entirely new classes of society henceforth came into existence-the men of pleasure, and the men of literature: the former heirs of a wealth they cared rather to enjoy than to increase; the latter seekers after wealth, fame, and name, but by intellectual, not by physical distinction. Love and song tissued the career of the former; poetry and eloquence, but chiefly poetry, were the business of the latter. Meanwhile a select few, the spoilt children of destiny, the Mirandolas or Byrons

of their land and day, combined the advantages of birth and fortune with those of genius. Foremost among these stands the nobleman, the warrior, the libertine, but above all the poet-the Don Juan of Mecca, the Ovid of Arabia and the East'Omar the Mogheeree, the grandson of Aboo-Rabee'ah.

He, by universal award, placed on the head of his kinship, the great Koreysh clan, the only garland that had heretofore been wanting there. In every respect but one, Koreysh had long occupied the first place, not in the Hejaz only, but throughout the whole extent of the Arabian Empire. The elevation of their tribesmen, the sons of Omeyyah, to the Caliphate, had added the temporal supremacy to the spiritual leadership already bequeathed to them in another branch of their family by the great Prophet: Khalid, the sword of Islam, 'Amroo, the conqueror and legislator of Egypt, and Moosa, the terror of Spain, had each in his turn contributed to the common heirloom of glory; and from the frontiers of India to the sea of Cadiz their will was obeyed by subject millions to whose fathers the very names of Hejaz and Koreysh had been unknown. But in literature, and especially in the choicest form of literature, poetry, the foremost rank was still monopolised by names of other lineage, by the children of Nejd and Yemen. The Koran, indeed, written as it was by a Koreyshee of the Koreyshees, was truly theirs; but its supernatural pretensions exempted this work, though first-rate of its kind, from literary praise, no less than from literary criticism. Besides, though hardly prose, at least in the ordinary acceptance of the word, the Koran, unfettered by metre, and abounding in rhythm rather than rhyme, could not pass muster as poetry. It was reserved to the grandson of Aboo-Rabee'ah to achieve by his