leave him; and a sick sailor was below of whom the Cornish men had no knowledge. 'We can't get here again, captain; come now,' shouted once again the captain of the lifeboat, at a loss to understand the position of affairs. At that instant the ship gave a lurch, and only by a hurried movement and an instant pull was the Mary Trevenna prevented from being capsized herself, and perhaps seriously injured in that boiling sea. As it was, an oar was wrenched out of the hand of one of the oarsmen, and no time must be lost in getting to the shore. So, though unwillingly, they turned her from the Hamilton. The boat was very heavy now with her cargo of fifteen precious human souls, and many a watcher on the cliffs and beach feared as she sunk into the trough of some mighty wave, and exulted as she rode again safely on the crested billows. The captain of the Mary Trevenna could not wait till they landed before he asked the sailors the reason of the strange, mad conduct of their handsome young captain. 'Our cargo is rum, unfortunately,' replied one of the men, 'and since Captain Campbell has been in trouble about his ship, he has been drinking incessant.' And the mate?' demanded Captain Trewin. 'He doesn't drink, he's a teetotaler, sir; but he's mighty fond of our captain, and he said to us, says he, "You go, boys, it's right you should, but I'll stick to Captain Campbell." 'Are you all out?' 'All but one, besides those two. There's a sick man down below.' 'We can't go back; their last hope is gone with us,' said Captain Trewin, sadly. I'm sorry, indeed; but we've done all we could, and stayed as long as we dared.' "There's no blame to any man, save Captain Campbell,' said another sailor; and he's got the drink in him, so that he doesn't know what he's about.' 'No, he was a first-rate fellow, and as jolly a tar as ever took to salt water; brought up to it all his born days, and with a kindly word for all his crew, till he opened the rum casks from Jamaiky. I'd sooner have gone without my grog than this should happen, and cast the barrels overboard.' "The best thing you could have done, Jack,' said Captain Trewin, who was himself, as so many Cornish men are, hearty in the teetotal cause. The boat grounded on the sand, and the sailors having lightly skipped ashore, were heartily and kindly welcomed by the whole population of the little fishing village on the coast. Next day the lookers-out on that wild shore, turning to place where the Hamilton had drifted, could see nothing; the ship had sunk! All that day there came floating in to the land the cargo of that ill-fated vessel-kegs of rum and barrels of sugar-and the Cornish folk, strong in their teetotalism, forbore to taste the poisonous beverage, which had already destroyed, directly and indirectly, three lives on board the Hamilton, of which it had been the freight. And in the afternoon, tossing on the still stormy waves, drifting nearer and nearer, came a human form, one of the three; and, as they pulled it in, the rescued crew recognised their captain, a handsome man, lately strong and in the full glory of his manhood, with a locket on his breast enclosing a curl of woman's hair and the likeness of a fair sweet face, bespeaking a true and tender heart-a face that you have already seen in its agony in the little parlour far away; and in the pocket of his waistcoat was a long love-letter, in clear, firm writing, signed 'Ever your true love, Agnes May.' 'I knew it would come, mother-I felt it that night; and oh, I could bear it if it wasn't that they might have been saved.' This was the wail which again and again resounded from a broken heart. The shame of his intoxication, the thought that he had, through drink, sacrificed his own precious life and that of Andrew Johnson, his mate, the good-hearted Scotch friend of his boyhood, were additions to the bitterness of a grief that, for one who, like Agnes May, could know no other love in life, was the shrouding of all joy, the ending of all mirth. A telegram had summoned Captain Campbell's father to Cornwall, and Agnes had accompanied him. The wife of the mate, Maggie Johnson, had been unable to leave her sick child; so the two bodies had been brought home to be buried together in a churchyard by the sea, though not on the wild Cornish coast. Agnes had felt a mournful satisfaction in thus being able to take a last sad look on her beloved dead; but the face wore an expression of anxiety and trouble which dismayed her. It seemed as if, too late, he had awakened to the folly and sin he had committed, and for which he could never atone. 'My poor Joe,' she exclaimed, throwing her arms round his lifeless form, which lay upon a bed in the upstairs room of a fisherman's cottage; my poor Joe, and if it had not been for the drink you might still have been with me-saved, saved.' 6 And when they returned, and with much manifestation of sympathy and a most affecting burial service, the bodies of the two young sailors had been laid in their graves, Agnes could not obtain peace. A black shadow of disgrace was at her side, marring all the recollections in which she indulged concerning her lover, darkening his memory with the gloom of sin. She struggled bravely against despair, as it was in her nature to do. For her mother's sake she would keep well and try to be composed, but it would not do. Her health broke down, her reason gave way, and a moping melancholy rules the life of the young Captain's destined bride, poor Agnes May. Still she lives on, calling forth in her mother a devotion and tenderness which it is beautiful to behold. But, oh, as we consider these wasted, and sacrificed, and shadowed lives, are not our hearts stirred within us to speed the good time when the rum fiend, and gin fiend, and all their hellish brood, shall be exorcised from our fair world, never again to make hearts desolate and homes empty-never again to cause such a tragedy as was enacted on that wild night at sea? SOCIAL SCIENCE SELECTIONS. OUR RECRUITING SYSTEM, HAVING conducted the military correspondence of the Treasury, and superintended the Commissariat for many years, I was supposed to have peculiar advantages for dealing with the subject. The arguments and proposals which I laid before the Commission were afterwards maintained by me in discussion with a War Office Committee, and they have lately been carefully revised, with the aid of nearly ten years' further experience. The points to which public attention is at present chiefly directed are, the failure of the recruiting system, and the formation of an army of reserve. I have resumed the subject at an earlier stage. If, by an alteration of the principle upon which the army is constituted, the service can be made popular, and attractive to all classes of the community, the recruiting difficulty will disappear, and it will only remain to determine the conditions under which trained men shall be transferred from the regular army to the army of reserve. The The real position of the question cannot be understood unless we open our eyes to the true character of the recruiting system. The recruiting of the army is conducted entirely in publichouses, to which the recruits are inveigled by 'bringers,' who are crimps of the worst description, touting about in all the lowest haunts of the town. recruits are habitually plied with drink, and they are generally under the influence of liquor when they are enlisted. They are also deceived by false expectations as to the amount of their remuneration, and are induced to make false representations as to their age, unmarried state, &c. The recruiters are paid by head-money, and they have therefore a personal interest in these objectionable practices. As soon as the recruits receive the bounty-money, their comrades get round them, and it is drunk away; so that the man not only gets drunk himself, but makes the men of his company drunk too, unless he keeps the money to enable him to desert, with a view of getting another bounty elsewhere. The recruiting sergeants, being lodged in the lowest houses in a town, where they meet only with the worst characters, become depraved; and even good non-commissioned officers, after having been employed on the recruiting service, frequently return to their regiments dissipated in habits and appearance, and greatly in debt. Commanding officers refrain from sending their best men on recruiting parties, in order that they may not be corrupted. What, therefore, must be the effect upon raw recruits who have just entered upon a new line of life, and come under the influence of more experienced associates? The most disheartening thing of all is, that we appear to be revolving in a vicious circle, for the proposals submitted to Parliament in the recent supplementary estimate would only make bad worse. The Commission report that 'bounty-money is usually spent in riot and dissipation, and any increase in that direction would only tend to demoralise the army, and to encourage desertion;' yet it is proposed largely to increase the bounty-money. The headmoney paid to recruiters is the immediate stimulus to the tippling and swindling of the recruiting system; yet the head-money is to be raised from 15s. to 20s. for each recruit enlisted for a specified regiment, and to 25s. for each recruit enlisted for general service. The chronic cause of misunderstanding and complaint is the discrepancy between the nominal and real amount of the soldier's pay; and yet it is proposed to add the 2d. a day to the nominal pay, instead of deducting it from the stoppages. The soldier is not even to be encouraged to profitable industry, by giving him his fatigue-jacket and foragecap free, as recommended by the Commission. Until the stoppages are reduced and equalised, so that the soldier may, under all circumstances of his service, receive the same net rate of pay, to be diminished only by his own miscon duct or mismanagement, we shall not be able to prepare, in a presentable form, he long-desired official statement of the advantages of his position, so as to save the youth of the country from the misrepresentations of recruiters, and to put the soldier's engagement on the footing of an honest, well-understood contract. We are not just to ourselves in omitting to do this, for the advantages enjoyed by our soldiers, in comparison with labourers and artisans, are, in some respects, very great; and the further improvements in the terms of service which I have ventured to recommend would make the army a really desirable profession for rational men. Of course, it is extremely difficult to keep together an army which has been got together by such an utterly immoral system of recruiting. In 1858, 29 per cent. of the army at home had their names inserted in the Hue and Cry' as deserters, or 20,360 men out of 70,000. Of these, 18,211, or 33 per cent. to strength, were from the line. In order to prevent the army from disbanding, flogging was re-enacted in the Mutiny Act of 1859, with a special application to desertion; and the punishment still known as 'branding' was directed to be inflicted with increased particularity. The returns of the Inspector-General of Military Prisons, and the Appendix to the Report of the Recruiting Commission, tell their own story. These severities have diminished desertion, but they have also checked recruiting. The Commission recommended that the scale of payment for the purchase of discharges should 'be considerably raised,'-or, in other words, that it should be made more difficult to leave the army. This would both check recruiting and increase desertion. Besides losing the services of the deserters, and of the soldiers employed in apprehending and guarding them, every trained soldier who deserts and is not recovered costs the country at least £100; and the cost of recovering and punishing deserters amounts to a large additional sum. The vote for the administration of martial law for 18678 is £87,370, being an increase of £3,000 over the preceding year. Why, in this case only, do we steel our hearts against the commonest humanity, and shut our eyes to the most obvious dictates of morality? We pick out of the streets persons for whom we are not specially responsible, to reclaim them in reformatories and penitentiaries; and ourselves, through our paid agents, corrupt our young soldiers, who have the most affecting claims upon us for protection and help. Even our army reformers, who have done so much for the soldier after he is enlisted, avert their eyes from the flagrant scandals of the recruiting system. Whence this gross inconsistency, this strange anachronism? If the truth be not told, there can be no amendment; and the truth is that, according to the existing constitution of the army, the existing recruiting system is necessary for our national safety. There are but two sets of motives by which mankind are influenced. One appeals to their animal nature and their fears; the other, to their human nature and their hopes. By giving to soldiers who enter through the ranks a share of the military, and nearly the whole of the administrative promotion, we could make the army an object of desire to the whole of our population, including that largest and best portion of it which has been practically excluded for more than two hundred years. The only bitter thing which the mildest of men-the late Sir Robert Inglis-ever said in Parliament was during the short reign of the railway king:-'I can admire an aristocracy of talent; I can respect an aristocracy of rank; but an aristocracy of wealth is not to be endured.' The army is the last place where this principle should be in the ascendant. How much longer will it be permitted to obstruct every kind of improvement in that branch of the public service upon which the preservation of all our interests depends? Our recruiting system, and the penal system by which it is supported, effectually exclude from our army all but the lowest stratum of the lowest class. Even respectable working men refrain from enlisting. The recruits are the waifs and strays of society. The Commission has remarked upon their 'extreme youth.' They are to a great extent boys who have got into trouble, and been kidnapped by the recruiters. Another large class are men of broken character, who make a trade of deserting and get Even ting fresh bounties. My proposal is that existing arrangements should be so modified as to make the army a desirable profession for that portion of our population which occupies the large space between this class and that which fills the commissioned ranks. It is a great mistake to limit our conception of the middle class to farmers and shopkeepers. Owing to the spread of education and the increase of industrial undertakings of many different kinds, the middle class has become immensely important merely in point of number; while in point of character, if it were fully represented in the army, it would leaven our military service to a degree which would amount to a complete transformation. our safety as a nation may be involved in the satisfactory settlement of this question. There is mischief in the air, and clouds are gathering in several quarters. On one point there can be no doubt. The worst feature of the insurrection in Ireland is, that while the leaders in 1848 were a few conceited gentlemen, who were connected with the mass of the population by a very imperfect sympathy, on this occasion the insurgents are led by a considerable number of middle-class men. The Irish have a decided genius for the military profession; and if, when better times come, they are freely admitted to advantageous terms of service in a reformed army, we shall find a new security in the element which is now most adverse to us. The constabulary, who have behaved with such exemplary fidelity and gallantry, are as thoroughly Irish as the insurgent leaders; but they are engaged in our service, and are therefore on our side.-The Purchase System of the British Army. By Sir Charles E. Trevelyan, K.C.B. THE MONTHLY NURSE. WE will take a fair specimen of her class. She is a woman about fifty, comely in figure, neat in her dress, which generally consists of a print or merino gown (according to the season), white apron, muslin neckerchief, lace cap, which with its white ribbons has done duty, no doubt, at a christening in the last, or last but one family. There is always something very characteristic about the figure of a monthly nurse. A peculiar breadth of back, from her shoulders down, as though she disdained the control of stays. There is a protective look about her arms and lap, which suggests the idea of comfort for the infant in such quarters. And when I speak of her bright twinkling eye, a peculiar blandness of her general expression, and a calmness in all her movements, I think you have a very fair picture of a monthly nurse before you. This personage gene |