which they have, the military authorities possess the confidential Reports, which now come in very regularly, of every officer; not the old Reports, which were in very general terms, but regular and distinct Reports upon the character and conduct of every officer in every regiment of the service.

Confidential Reports of Commanding Officers.

The great difficulty of selection is that each commanding officer looks upon cases from a different point of view. One man is extremely lenient, and another man is extremely the reverse; one man is very susceptible, perhaps, of any little slight, and of course all that comes out in the confidential views which he gives. The difficulty is to steer clear of injustice, and therefore, even when there are Reports against an officer, they would never be taken without making inquiries as to whether they are borne out by instances and circum stances which could be detailed. There is not the same danger with regard to Reports of merit as in the case of demerit. With demerit, the witness would always be extremely cautious. If he were well satisfied with the general officer's Report, which was in the same sense as the commanding officer's, he should not hesitate to act upon the joint Report; but if it were merely the commanding officer's Report, and the general officer said he could not give a decided opinion, his Highness would certainly, before acting to the detriment of an officer, take some measures to ascertain the facts of the case. annual Reports have been kept ever since the abolition of purchase. They are all posted up and kept in volumes in a continuous history. A good many modifications have been made since the system was commenced, and there is one thing now introduced to which, his Highness thinks, the general commanding or the inspecting officer rather objects, but it is essential. It is now ordered that the officer who inspects is to have the answers filled in, or, at all events, explained, in the commanding officer's presence, at the inspection, so that the inspecting officer has an opportunity to judge as far as he can of the ground upon which such statements are made. Some General officers object to that, but it is extremely important, because you have the chance of seeing whether there is any favor or affection in anything that is stated. The system of reports is satisfactory.

The

While his Royal Highness thought that the power of rejection based upon the reports is an efficient method of securing promotion to the best man, he considered that the attempts to establish a system which, quite independent of demerit, should give promotion to marked merit would be open to very grave objection. You might, while intending to do the right thing, do injustice to officers who really are just as well worthy of consideration as those you select. There are about 6,000 officers in the Army, and it would be quite impossible for the Commander-in-Chief to investigate the comparative merits of those 6,000. Our service is so varied. Supposing it were like the German Army, where the whole service is at home, you might have much more facilities. With our Army one man may be engaged in beneficial and acceptable service in the field in India or elsewhere. Another may be serving in a bad climate in the West Indies. Yet the merits of the latter may be as great as those of the man who is serving very agreeably to himself in the field. Now, if you give all the profit and all the advantage to the field service and to favorably circumstanced corps, those unfortunate men who are in other parts of the world and have not the same advantage will be entirely left in the background. His Royal Highness admitted, in answer to a question, that active service is a means of disclosing merit; but he went on to say that during the Crimean War and the Indian Mutiny, there were certain regiments that had not the advantage of being in either of them, and the career of the officers of those regiments would have been completely destroyed if you only looked at those who were serving in the field. Those who were doing garrison duty, by not having the opportunity of disclosing the merit which they possess in common with others, would suffer, and you could not maintain the Army on a just footing. Our service is so very varied and so very peculiar, we have so many incidents of service to deal with that even if you could work out such a system in any other Army, he was sure you could not in ours. There will always be cases in our Army where an individual bas shown great merit and is worthy of selection, and by that the Service derives great benefit. But you would cause great injustice if you made that the rule. One set of men would by accident get the whole benefit, and others, who perhaps were quite as good men, would not have a chance. He therefore adhered to seniority in the rcgiment, though in selecting officers to become captains the senior lieutenants in other regiments had generally been taken.

Seniority is, no doubt, the most popular system in the Army. Of course you

will always have individuals who think that there is something about them that may bring them more prominently forward, and that they would get on quicker by selection, but the great bulk of the officers would prefer seniority.

Rapid Promotion by Special Capacity.

Lord Penzance now took his Royal Highness's opinion upon certain suggestions for pushing forward young men desirous of making the Army their profession, who had shown capacity. If they passed the Staff College, or in Indian languages, or if they served as adjutant, &c., might an artificial addition be made to their years of service which would give them a practical seniority in their regiment? The Duke of Cambridge thought that would be very objectionable. He was not at all sure that the officers who pass the Staff College were the best to be promoted. He should prefer taking the best regimental officers he could pick out, and would certainly give the class suggested no special advantages. They get already Staff appointments by going to the Staff College. The junior Staff appointments are always given to officers who have passed the College. As to the rest, it does not follow that because an officer passes in Hindustani, for instance, he is a good officer. Many great bookworms are very moderate officers. The Commander-in-Chief prefers a man who has led his company or his squadron well, and who is known by the testimony of the commanding officer to be a man to be relied upon at the outposts. No doubt, said Lord Penzance, mere literary acquirements form but one qualification for a good officer; and his Royal Highness replied that he did not object to them at all, but still he did not think you ought to rely on them solely. You ought not to give undue preponderance to them over really military requirements. Assenting to a different suggestion from the chairman in reference to the younger officers of a regiment, his Royal Highness said you would always be able to pick out the best man in a regiment from the feeling of a regiment. He would himself infinitely prefer to pick out the best man by regimental intuition than by any test examination. If he were to ask the commanding officers to recommend the best man for the Staff, he would get the best.

Appointment from the Staff College.

The principle of appointing from the Staff College has not been carried out hitherto to the full extent in the upper grades, the officer, not having been of the rank to justify it; besides which, His Royal Highness prefers to have the power of putting his own hand on a man who he is satisfied would make a good Staff officer, rather than merely to look to those who have passed the College (xamination. Returning to promotion by "regimental intuition," his Royal Highness said that if by selection you promote men in the same regiment, you will destroy the regiment entirely. You can only promote out of the regiment. For instance, there were a great many lieutenants who went to Ashantee, and whenever you can you would give them a pull if they have been well thought of. You would select them for promotion on occasions when you do not want to give promotion in the regiment. The promotion was for service in the field and not merely for success in examination. His Royal Highness did not think the system could be carried out through the medium of unattached promotion. The difficulty would be to get an officer who was once promoted to unattached rank back into the service, because, of course, when promotion goes in a regiment, all the officers expect to have the benefit, unless there is some default. To take the case of the Crimean War. It was at one time the rule, and it was in the Warrant, that a man who got brevet rank in the field had a right to claim its conversion into substantive rank. That gave him positive rank in the Army; but some majors who then took substantive rank have never been brought back to this day, and, it is feared, never can be. They thought they were doing themselves a good turn in taking substantive rank, but there really has never been an opportunity of bringing them back. Good men have been lost and made discontented and unhappy. It would be just the same now, because if you are to have, as a rule, regimental promotion with rejection, very few, indeed, would be brought back from the Unattached List.

With regard to Staff appointments his Royal Highness thought the five years' rule ought to be maintained, but the military authorities ought to have very large powers to reappoint men who have shown themselves very capable of Staff appointments. They have, in fact, at present unlimited power. In the higher grades, the appointments are all made now by the selection of his Royal Highness in conjunction with his Staff, but he holds himself responsible. As a rule, he would not reappoint, but on emergencies he would look for men

who had been on the Staff, and he would select them at once, without any hesitation, whether they had had a Staff appointment lately or not. On the contrary, he should prefer them, and the feeling of the Army would be in favor of such a course. In ordinary times of peace a Staff appointment of five years is a good rule, and one which is to the advantage of the juniors; but he should never allow it to prevent him from reappointing a man who really showed very great merit in preference even to a man who had not been on the Staff. In the event of pressure he would take the man who would be most likely to prove himself an efficient Staff officer.

Brevet Promotion.

Officers now often imagine, when going on foreign service, that they are sure to get brevet. It is a great mistake. Unless they get some brevet promotion, they think they are discredited. Brevet should be the exception and not the rule; whereas the feeling appears to be now that brevet should be the rule, and non-brevet the exception. Brevet should, in general, be confined to distinguished personal service.

He wished he could say brevet promotion was not essential, but he did not see how we are to get out of it. Some have thought, and he himself thought, that in many cases, if you had a larger power of giving good service rewards, that would take the place of brevet in some respects, say £100 a year additional pay, or £50 additional pay to a captain, and so on, that would, to a certain extent take the place of brevet; but that would not give the man the pull that he has in Army rank, because, of course, the advantage in Army rank is very great. Take the case of an officer who had recently distinguished himself very much. He had very good luck, and he knew how to avail himself of it, but he was only a substantive major when he was promoted to general officer, and if he had not had his Army rank by brevet he would not have been where he was now. If you do away with brevet a good many men could never come to the front at all. It is much less objectionable than the selection of men for a higher sub tantive rank, which would be hurtful to many officers This injures no one, and yet puts a man forward. A good service pension would not give the advantage gained in that way. The reason why unattached promotion would not be so good lies in the difficulty of getting the man back to full pay. A man who receives brevet rank remains on full pay.

Entrance by Competitive Examination.

The system of entrance into the Army through a competitive examination has not as yet produced much change. If there is any at all, perhaps it is that it has excluded some men whom otherwise we should be glad to see in the Army; but it is very early to give any decided opinion. Competitive examination is, however, most objectionable. The only good system is a qualifying examination. You may put the qualifying examination as high as you like; you may make it higher than the competitive even if you like; but by competitive examination you lose some of the very best officers you could possibly have in the Army. It is quite a mistake to suppose that because you are to have a qualifying examination it is not to be a high one. It rests with the authorities to decide how high it should be. But the moment you make it competitive, you exclude a large number of men who have not had the same instruction as some of their neighbors. You give a commission to the highest intellectual acquirements, and no other considerations are taken into account. These acquirements are by no means the only quality wanted in an officer. “I am all for examination," his Royal Highness continued, "but I am for a quali fying examination, which, according to the circumstances of the day, you can put as high or as low as you like." The moment you make it competitive you are obliged rigidly to adhere to the results of that system. A certain amount of acquired knowledge should be a sine quâ non, but a competitive examination gives you a great many men whose actual scientific acquirements are higher than you would get if it was only a qualifying examination, while it is very doubtful if you would get as good officers. Some of the men with the highest qualifications in respect of acquirements, the most skilful in languages, have indeed had other qualities combined, and they are just the men you would like to have; but you would not lose those men if you had a high qualifying examination, whereas, when you come down to menof rather lower acquir ments, you may find a very fine fellow who has not the same ability for study, and although the man who studied with him may be a very inferior man in physique, yet he gets the preference. The two conditions, mental and physical, might be combined.

PROFESSIONAL STUDIES-LITERATURE.

AMERICAN AUTHORITIES.

JAMES A. HILLHOUSE.

PROFESSION OF LETTERS PAST AND PRESENT.

WHILE Comparing the opinions prevalent at different periods, the question sometimes rises in the mind, whether the profession of Letters be not fallen from the rank it once held in the estimation of mankind. If the spectacle presented by the Ancient world of Philosophers, Orators, and Poets, worshiped in their own day, as well as canonized by after times;-of Lyceums, Academies, and Philosophic gardens, so illustrious as to decide the nomenclature of their age;-of literary contests before ten thousand auditors;of histories and tragedies, pronounced before assembled Greece;of the greatest conqueror of antiquity, avowedly manifesting his conception of the Iliad by his life and actions;-if these be deemed allusions to times too remote, turn to the Middle Ages. Behold all Europe, arrayed under the banners of Plato and Aristotle, combating for subtilties, which neither party understood, with the animosity of Guelfs and Ghibellines: consider the universities of Paris and Oxford, with their twenty-five and thirty thousand students: enumerate in the halls of Cambridge, Salamanca, Bologna, Orleans, Bourges, Montpellier, and Salerno, the eager and enthusiastic multitudes. Follow those, who first caught the irradiation of reviving letters, in their painful and dangerous pilgrimages through Italy, France, and Spain;-ransacking the dusty receptacles of monastic lore for classic treasures. Mark their exultation; and hear the answering acclaim on the discovery of a manuscript. See sovereign Princes defending the Faith with peaceful weapons, and disputing the prize with their own poets, and prowest Knights defying Trouvères and Troubadours to literary strife.

• From an Address by James A. Hillhouse (son of James Hillhouse, New Haven, Conn., eminent for his practical ability in public affairs as member of the State and National Legislature, and as Commissioner of the School Fund), author of Hadad, Discourse on Lafayette, and other publications (from 1812 to 1839) which were issued in a collected form in two volumes in 1839. He was born in 1789 and died in 1841-exhibiting, in his quiet literary studies and activity, a beautiful example of the professional man of letters.

These, and similar indices of the times, are too familiar to need enumerating but the world at large lay in the shadow of ignorance. Knowledge was the purchase of prodigious toil, and they who achieved its honors were regarded with envy and admiration. The famished intellect once roused, however, to a sense of its necessities, grew clamorous for supplies. A book became a treasure,feasted on,-ruminated,-kept in contact with the feelings, and thus into the fused and heated mind could transmit its coloring and vitality. No multiplicity of entertainment paralyzed curiosity,no skimming of magazines, themselves the skimmings of things as worthless, no trumpery annuals, no frothy monthlies, troubled mankind: no light reading then filled with fumes and vapor the receptacle of knowledge.

But though fewer books, more lovingly mastered, may have formed more vigorous and thinking intellects; and though the wreath of genius darted intenser splendor through the surrounding gloom; it is far from following, that the profession of letters enjoyed a greater amount of honor. More idolatry may have been lavished on its chief ornaments; but its aggregate respect and consideration must be in some degree proportioned to the numbers who can appreciate its claims. Measuring in this way, a comparison can not stand. Instead of a few long-lost volumes, rescued from the ruins of ancient learning, and transferred to the cabinets of Kings, or the collections of the wealthy, we see books multiplied into household articles. Knowledge no longer glimmers like the streaks of the far-off dawn; but, like the risen luminary, penetrates the casement of the cottage as well as cloistered windows. Instead of tens and hundreds, thousands and millions now gather the fruit of learning, and feel the electric stroke of genius.

RELATIVE RANK OF LITERATURE AND SCIENCE.

Were we to weigh systems of intellectual philosophy, histories, and poems, against the scientific applications of steam, and the necromancy of chemistry,-a chapter of Locke against a party pamphlet, the richest portion of the Faerie Queene, against the maps, sections, submarine, and subterranean, wonders of the Geologists, and accept the decision of the multitude, such anticipations might not seem fantastic. Were there no transient tastes,-no exhausting of all things that relate to mere matter, could science proceed in affecting changes for centuries to come with the same success as during the last fifty years;-could we hope indeed to pry into the planets, and regale ourselves like Bergerac or Astolpho amidst the wonders of the Moon,-it would be excusable to fear