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In all the armies of Europe we can find no parallel to their annals, for there is nothing like it in the military history of any other country.

Among all our noble British Infantry—that infantry which, as Bonaparte said, "never knew when it was beaten," and which, as Green tells us in his "History of the English People" was first created when William Wallace of Elderslie, drew up his Scottish spearmen, in those solid squares before which the united chivalry of England and Aquitaine went down: Amid all our "unconquerable British Infantry," we say, none have such a brilliant inheritance of glory as the old Royal Regiment.

Hence it was that Roland Ruthven, whose family had served with it for three or four generations, looked forward with extreme reluctance and regret to the coming time when, by exchange or otherwise, he would be compelled to serve in the ranks of another; and that the time was not a distant one was rendered fully evident by letters which he had received from his legal agents, Messrs. Hook and Crook, W.S., Edinburgh.