The Sun.
London, England, 1860-06-25 00:00:00

Till? VOLUNTEER 1?.EVIIR1V:

(From the Times.)
Saturday was one of those surprises for which no
one can be prepared without a careful consideration
of the character and the history of this country.
Hyde-park saw an army such as it had not seen for
half a century ; an army such as any General would
be only too glad to find in his hands at the hour of
need, ready for action—we might say even anxious
for it—which has sprung into existence from the
mercantile, professional, and other civil classes
within the brief space of a twelvemonth. In num-
ber, upwards of 20,000 ; in stature and strength, in
bearing, in step, in order, and all that is supposed
to be difficult of acquisition evee in the case of the
youngest recruits, there was little a General might
desire, had he to etvounter an army of veterans.
Could Queen Victoria have stamped on the earth
with the significance of the old boast, she could not
have raised legions more prepared for the work, or
more terrible to a foe. Our readers are aware that,
except in the case of the Volunteers in 1803, there
never was such an army assembled in this country
for several centuries. That former movement is not
to be disparaged, for it saved the country ; but the
Volunteers of 1860 are a very different set of men
from the Volunteers of 1803. The soldiers, for soldiers
they are, we now possess are picked men in every
sense of the word. They are men who spend theirour n
money, and still more precious time. They come for-
ward with a free heart, with no inducement but love
of their country and their own sense that the lot has
fallen upon them, and that they are called upon to
be its defenders. As a rule, they are a finer
body of men than our Infantry of the Line. Their
drilling has been done so quietly in out-of-the-way
places, and often under cover, that no one could
anticipate such perfection in so short a time, unless
he happened to be himself in the Victoria Rifles or
some other crack corps. Of course, there were dif-
ferences, which in this place it would be invidious
to name, but the best corps on the ground only
showed what the others might be in a few weeks if
they gave sufficient time to it. Fortunately, most
fortunately, this noble body of men and this high
personal discipline were not marred in the manage-
! ment of Saturday, which had been left, we believe
entirely, to General Al'Alurdo, Inspector of Volun-
' teers. The troops kept the best time. The com-
panies followed at equal distances with the even
flow of a continuous stream. Had the operation
been rehearsed several times over, instead of the
fifty corps having never seen one another till that
hour, it could not have been better executed. It
must have been a matter of amazement to the spec-
tators, as they recognised their friends in the suc-
cessive corps, to reflect that out of such peaceable
materials so terrible a force had been composed.
No doubt, these twenty thousand men look very like
other people at home; but on Saturday they made
an army that any Emperor might regard with con-
fidence or alarm.

If people will be so good as to remember the lan-
guage that has been used in Parliament and else-
where about volunteering and the rifle fever, about
fancy uniforms and sharp-shooting, and other un-
English tastes, they must admit that this has been
a discovery and the demonstration of a new truth.
We who are thirty millions;----not so contempti-
ble a population compared even with the largest
empires of the civilised world,—have been
called an unmilitary race; and on terra firma,
it has been said, we must acknowledge even our
next neighbour to have much the better of us.
Saturday gives the lie to this old vulgar error.
Give us time,—and it is impossible to wage war
without giving time,—and we shall prove that
we only want training to be as good soldiers as
any other people. We do not know ourselves
what there is in us, or the boundless versatility of
our race. Everything great in the country has
come out unexpectedly. We were the last nation
of Europe to have colonies or foreign dependencies.
Three hundred years ago Spain and Portugal had
immense foreign possessions and trade ; we had
none. Since then we have founded and thrown off
the United States, and we still possess India, British
America, Australia, and other populous colonies or
immense territories. Till about two hundred years
ago we had hardly a navy. A hundred and fifty
years ago, while France had splendid canals, and
the Low Countries a complete system of inland navi-
gation, there was hardly a canal in this country.
About the same date our roads were probably as
bad as the worst
in Europe. Our school of land-
scape painting, now the first in the world, reckons
scarce a century. In mathematics and physical
science we were behind all nations till Sir Isaac
Newton and his contemporaries. We most of its
remember when there was not a mile of railway,
and many when there was not a steamship, in these
islands. We might add various manufactures that
have been imported or invented at no great distance
of time, and have attained a gigantic scale. On
these examples, and with the encouragement of
Saturday, we venture to assert that it is in our
power to become a great military nation, and that
we shall become one. France competes with our
navy, and we shall compete with her army. Our
Volunteers will be much better soldiers than any
she can rely on from the spontaneous zeal of her
people, and the day will come when every man
capable of carrying a musket will be enrolled as a
Volunteer.

The thoaghts of many a spectator on Saturday
were carried back to the days of his youth, when he
saw a similar scene on the same ground, under
somewhat different circumstances. An invasion was
then actually threatened and prepared. We were
not successful abroad, and we hastily enlisted the
whole defensive strength of the country, and made
a great show both in London and the provinces.
Every country town had its Volunteers, who were
Paraded in the market-place, and burnt plenty of
P.owder on the 4th of June and other grand occa-
sions. That had the desired effect of demonstrating
our strength to ourselves and to our neighbours.
What strange recollections must have presented