(and others) repeatedly pointed out to Lord Raglan that we should inevitably be attacked in that, our weak point, but Lord Raglan did not care-at least we presume so, for he never so much as rode down to look at the ground. The camp is in the most astounding state of filth, and he has never seen into it, or issued orders to cleanse it. The stores of provisions that would have saved our lives and our horses', and clothed our shivering limbs, are lying in profusion at Balaklava, spoiling and rotting, but neither he nor anybody else orders them to be given out. A road to the camp might have been made, fifty times over, with a little exertion, but no one troubles over it, or orders it done, though we are perishing for want of the things it would bring up. Wooden houses are İying in the water at Balaklava, and we are dying in our canvas tents. After the great storm, stores of various descriptions were floating in profusion about Balaklava harbour, for the want of picking up, but the authorities took no notice of it, nor ordered it done, and they were all washed away or buried in the mud. I saw as much hay as would fill London churches: it would have saved our horses-but who cares for them, or for us either?

New regiments are compelled to land in storm and tempest, without food, shelter, clothing, or protection: other regiments, fresh from warm climates, are turned adrift with no winter clothes, under or outer. Cholera and fever have long been doing their ample work, and, now, dysentery and scurvy have come. Biscuit and salt pork, sometimes fried, sometimes raw, and no vegetables, have brought it on, and the doctors say, if not arrested, it will mow us all down. The French look on with amazement, marvelling at the wicked indifference of our heads, the patient submission of the army, and the universal incapacity betrayed by all. When I got to my writing, just now, it had rained for six-and-thirty hours; now it snows and hails, the mire is getting white -not hard-and the sharp wind cuts at me through the heaving canvas. I was in the trenches all last night, and, on coming out, there was an order for some of the men, who had been with me, to wade all the way to Balaklava, and get up some rations. They were drenched and starving, hardly able to put one foot before another, but they had to go, and started without a meal, for there was no fuel to make a fire to warm it, and brushwood won't light in such wet. I shall have to go into the trenches again to-night, so many, who ought to take their turns, are down with sickness. The Russians make night sorties on us frequently, and we have to drive them back, amongst other agreeable jobs. Rumours are now flying about the camp that our shameful state is the result of treachery. That Lord Raglan has quietly and gradually reduced us to it, purposely, and is letting us die off, in obedience to orders from some at home, who are the secret friends of Russia. I was in our colonel's camp the evening before last, waiting for him to come in, when an officer of the Regiment entered, and said it. Gum was lying down, wrapped in a blanket, for he has got some sort of fever on him, and he suddenly raised his head up and stared at the fellow. "By!" cried he, "I have long thought it looked like it." "But where's the treason?" called out Cuff; "it can't be in the Horse Guards. And where are her Majesty's eyes and her keen judgment, that she cannot detect what's going on-if anything is going on.' "It's not her Majesty's fault that things are kept from her," cried the officer who had brought the report:

"she can only see what her ministers choose to let her." said Cuff, "the Duke of Cambridge might enlighten—”

"But surely,"

Just then Gum caught sight of me he did not know I was there, or had forgotten it-and he croaked out-for he is as hoarse as a raven just now-that I was to make myself scarce, and if I breathed a word outside of what I had been an eavesdropping witness to, Lord Raglan should court-martial me. So off I tore, through the slosh and the offal, and found Gill and Tubbs, and told them all.

Gus! can this be true? They treat us as if we were geese, without brains and ears, but we are not quite such geese in intellect as they would like us to be. One thing gives a colouring to it-why is it that all our officers are asking to resign? Gum said, the other day, that it made his cheek blush (but it's red enough at all times) to find, each morning, a fresh number of officers swelling the lists of the malcontents, and praying to be released from the army. It is quite true that all are trying to leave this: I would give up my commission to-morrow if I could and what must be thought of us when this comes to be known in England? Will our country say we are cowards? Gus! never you believe it. There's not a cowardly heart out here. We would fight our life's blood out, drop by drop, for our Queen and country, and our own good name and honour, and never flinch, but when England hears that all her brave servants are clamouring to quit the Crimea, in disgust at what they see, outraged by what they cannot help, let her be sure that something disgracefully wrong is up. Look to the list of those who have gone home, beginning with his Royal Highness, with Lord Cardigan, with Sir de Lacy Evans, with Sir George Brown-I need not call over the list, you can go down it for yourself. As brave soldiers, as truehearted men, as ever went into a battle-field. Does England really believe that it is their "wounds" and their "sickness" that have taken them all back? Oh! if some one of them would but get up in his place in the House, and, remembering those he has left behind to die, speak out the truth! If he would but burst through the trammels of official etiquette and the custom of aristocratic concealment, and fearlessly tell how we are being sacrificed, the people of England, ay, and I believe the Queen with them, would rise, with one voice, and insist that some steps should be taken to save our poor remnant of an army, even at the eleventh hour. If we all lay down in rows on the wet earth to die, and a word from head-quarters here would save us, that word would never be spoken. Nobody, from the moment of our landing, has cared for us, looked to us, or asked after us: a dog-fighter takes more thought for his dogs than has been taken for us: all the officers, still here, know this; those who have gone home know it; and, if they who are in the next world can look down to this, they likewise know that it is but the bitter truth. If treachery has not been at work, what has? It cannot be that all are incompetent, the ministers, the Horse Guards, the commander. in-chief, here, and his staff, the acting management in camp, at Balaklava town and harbour, at Scutari, and at home! If they are all incompetent, it is a condition of things that never was heard of in our kingdom, or in the conduct of any war yet. There's not a grave here, to which its sleeping inmate has been sent in rude neglect, but cries aloud for retribution on this sinful incompetency. "We can but do our duty and die," Gill heard an officer say, since he got up from Scutari, "but

God be thanked for one thing-that it is not we who have the sin and suffering to answer for!"

Be sure don't let anybody see this letter-though I declare to you, Gus, that every word in it is sacred truth. Especially your governor he is such a fiery man, he would be for taking it, red-hot, in his hand to Lord Harding, and I should be court-martialed, as Gum threatens, or perhaps get arraigned for high treason by Aberdeen and his tail, and be beheaded on Tower Hill.

If I live, I'll write again. If I don't, good-by.-Yours, old chum, TOM PEPPER.

Augustus Sparkinson, Esquire, Junior.

P.S.-Smuggle the enclosed to Fanny.

Shot and Shell Trenches, before Sebastopol, Dec., 1854. MY DEAREST FANNY,-I have thought of you day and night since I left, and have sent you no end of messages and letters, through Sparkinson, and now he swears they have never reached him. Some of us mean to fire the post-office, if it goes on like this; so, my duck, you'll be revenged.

Spark says you want Lord Raglan's name for your album. If you were not the most innocent little dove-as I said to Spark-you would have known better than to ask. Commanders-in-chief are not like other people they never hold communication with anybody but themselves, and never put themselves in the way of being looked at. A cat may look at a king; but a British army may not look at its commander-inchief. The general officers don't presume to crave speech with ours, except through the medium of the speaking trumpets. He is a deal too august for the ordinary ways of conversation. We don't know what the Duke of Cambridge may have ventured to do: report says that he did accost the commander, and the consequences were so tremendous, his Royal Highness at once left the Crimea. The staff are equally exclusive, and never condescend to notice the army. Lord Raglan (or an effigy that represents him, and signs the general orders) keeps himself in a crystal case, and that is kept in a snug room, and that in a generallyunapproachable house. Long brass tubes connect the case with the aides-de-camp's congregating room, and all communications Lord Raglan (or the effigy) thinks it necessary to make, are spoken through the brass. That's all we get out of our commander, so you may judge whether there's a possibility of getting his signature out of him for a lady's album. Would you believe, that in this age of enlightenment, the French are a hundred years behind us, in these respects? We actually see their chief (General Canrobert) riding about amongst the men, any hour in the day, examining into things with his own eyes. I could ask for his signature for you, or a lock of his hair either, if that would do you any good.

The war's going on with us at a swimming pace. The chief officers have been divided into three divisions: one division's dead, one's sick, and lying in the mud, under damp blankets (the water-cure system is gone upon, here), and the third has hooked it and gone home. A few poor juniors, like Gill, and me, and Tubbs, who have no interest, are left here to go off quietly into the ground and say nothing about it. Our commanders are especially careful of our health; and, to make us hardy,

they divide a whole suit of clothes amongst five. One has the coat; another the trousers, which are docked at the knee, like Jessie's, and finished off with fringe; a third the shirt; a fourth the slippers (boots are out of fashion); and the fifth the garters-if your blushes will pardon my mentioning such a word. The same with the food: they indulge us with one entire meal per diem. To-day we have dinner (raw pork and wet biscuit); yesterday it was supper (raw pork and wet biscuit); the day before, breakfast (raw pork and wet biscuit). Our tents have been ingeniously contrived to let in and retain the rain, so that we have the luxury of a perpetual shower and cold vapour bath: but we cannot, try as we will, get the water to remain more than three inches above ground, so that when we lie down in it at night, we are not quite covered. We are fining down to elegance, under the treatment, and feel cool and very grateful to our commander and the government at home.

We are indulged sometimes with a ride in the air. One morning, on awaking, the wind took our tents up, and took us up after them. Poles, canvas, various items of clothing, gentlemen in drawers and night-shirts, and ensigns without, were soaring away, to each other's admiration. One minute, we were dropped into the pools; the next, were caught up, whirled about, and plumped into a bed of mud. It was novel and pleasant, and lasted all day; but at night we felt a little tired and sore.

We are encamped in a plain of mud several miles square. When we venture out, we go souse in, up to our arm-pits: and the floundering about causes so much diversion, that our authorities kindly permit it to remain, and won't, on any account, have it cleansed. To look at us, when several are out on a foraging expedition, you would think it was a great lake of black water full of swimmers, for little can be seen of us but our heads and necks. We are given to understand that this is the chief reason for our being restricted to a single garment each: to wade about in a sea of mud, fully clothed, would be inconvenient, besides making so much washing, and nothing to do it with, no tubs, or soap, or water. Some of our fellows, finding the tents rather airy, have been burrowing holes in the earth, like the rabbits, stretching over a canvas covering for the roof. But they don't answer. The sides have a propensity for falling in, and several unlucky inmates have, in consequence, been suffocated.

Now, my dear girl, I have an urgent request to make you. I want you to turn nurse (in name, you know), and come out, as such, to Scutari hospital. If your mamma objects, talk her over, about the pious office you will be performing. Lots of young ladies have come out, some of them in white veils, which look very fascinating. If you come, I'll manage a slight wound or sickness, and get sent down to hospital. Think how enchanting it would be, for me to be lying on the floor all day (which is the custom with our sick at Scutari) and you sitting by, to soothe me and reading poetry! There are some dreadful scenes going on, Gill says, but you can call up your nerve, and need not look round at them. You will be at no trouble and no expense: only go to Mr. Sidney Herbert, say you are a young lady-nurse, and he'll send you.

I am just called away to take a twelve hours' cooling in the trenches. So, until we meet at Scutari, believe me, dearest Fanny, to be devoted

Miss Fanny Green, Kensington.

your ever TOM.

THE YOUNG AUTHORESS.

A CANDID AUTOBIOGRAPHY.

EDITED BY HENRY SPICER, ESQ., AUTHOR OF "ALCESTIS,"
"SIGHTS AND SOUNDS," &c.

errors

NEED I premise that nothing short of an undertaking of the most solemn kind could have induced me to intrude myself-my sorrows and -(not to mention my little successes)—upon a thoughtless world? My grandmother, upon her death-bed-(or, to speak more correctly, upon the couch on which she ultimately died)-summoned me to her side(I was then just turned four, and was sucking barley-sugar)—and exacted a pledge from me that, at some fitting period of my after-life, I should publish my autobiography. Sobbing and sucking, I yielded to the fatal polysyllable, and now, public-(for why speak to you caressingly?)—what can I do? Self is always a distasteful theme, with the disadvantage that nobody thoroughly believes; the consequence of which infidelity is, that one has to write considerably beyond the margin, in order to reduce what is believed to the dimensions of truth.

I give notice that it is my intention to depart from this vicious systemto be cheerfully candid, and savagely sincere. If, therefore, public, you accept the confession of my little foibles, you will have the kindness to receive with equal promptitude such little self-commendings as I may be compelled to bestow.

It is certainly somewhat extraordinary that so many individuals of reputed sense, and generally-like my grandmother-of ripened years— should deem it worth their while to exact these perilous pledges, from the observance of which they themselves can derive no advantage, while they expose the givers to the most unmerited imputations of vanity, egotism, and suppression of truth!

It is, however, too late to cavil. Here is my story. If any struggling sister-But this is flourish. I am not actuated by the slightest motive of philanthropy, or wherefore cite my grandmother? I really could not have done this thing-except for a promise. Thank my grandmother.

I, the interesting little subject of the following memoir, was born on the of, in the year ; and it is a source of the most poignant regret to the autobiographer, that, in spite of her indefatigable endeavours to collect materials for filling up the above blanks, she is, after all, unable to do more than record the unquestionable fact of her nativity. A similar uncertainty prevails in regard to my aspect and general appearance at the earliest period of my life, my principal information being derived from the united testimony of a succession of nurses -moist and otherwise who certainly pronounce me to have been the sweetest and most uncryingest baby as ever was. Still, as this is a form of expression to which nurses are much addicted-and is, in fact, a sort of formal certificate, generally obtainable for half-a-crown-I abandon this point also to the discretion of my readers; and will content myself with asserting that my lineaments, even at this immature period, gave abun