The Sun.
London, England, 1866-04-03 00:00:00

The Volunteer Review at Br.ghton.

BRIGHTON, Monday Night.
The first anxiety of the people of Brighton yes-
terday morning was for the weather. From every
-window in the 10,000 houses of which that famed
marine city is composed had anxious eyes been
peeping out ever since the earliest dawn. The sky
looked positively tantalising, and whether it was
to be sunshine or shower was even betting for seve-
ral hours. Sometimes a tremendous group of black
clouds with those vicious white edges which prog-
nosticate early dissolution and descent upon
drenched holiday-makers, would hover, ready to

swoop on our housetops, and then, just as we bad
resigned ourselves to the coming deluge, there would
be a break ; a single sunbeam would come dancing
down upon the mist, and people would draw a long
breath and sing, "We may be happy yet." But it
was awful tension this horrid alternation of hopes
and fears, and constant wishes for siphonias, and
terrors as to whether the Hyman—who was drunk
when you engaged him the evening before—would
make his appearance at your street door at the
proper hour. Seven, eight, nine—still suspense,
still phantoms of expanded umbrellas flitting along
the half-deserted streets, and of despairing faces
from every opposite window. In the bitterness of
your heart you muttered, "If the Queen herself
bad been coming we should have been sure of a
fine day ;" but the Queen was away, and the
fine weather with her Majesty. The Mayor of
Brighton is a great personage ; during his short
reign he is one of the most potent of earthly poten-
tates. He can sit in his pavilion on state days with
a royal Prince on his left hand and a royal Princess
on his right ; he can ask tne Commander-in-Chief
of the bravest army in the world to take wine
with him, and in this matter arms must respectfully
yield to the aldermanic gown. He can fix a mini-
mum—which he doesn't—on the extortions of his
loyal subjects, and for all we know he can execute
justice furca et fossa on all strangers who presume
to ask him for a favour which he does not think it
consistent with his dignity to grant. What a pity
that he cannot regulate the weather. 80,000 natives
of Brighton and 100,000 visitors asked him this
morning for a fine day, but alas ! it seemed as if
his worship were to be as helpless as his great pre-
decessor King Canute on the sea-shore. But never
mind the rain, everyone has been and is afoot, and
we push along bravely through old Steyne, and up
Eton-grove, to see the Princess and the Prince, and
the riflemen. To say that the whole town looked
as if it had suddenly been taken possession of by a
hostile army would, perhaps, to many, be an ob-
vious reflection, but it would be the very reverse of
the truth, for the soldiers and the civilians smiled
too kindly at each other to justify such an impres-
sion. Rather should we seek a comparison in the
chief town of some free country from which a
patriot army was preparing to set forth to meet the
invader, and it receiving ere it started the hand
grips of the men, the farewell embraces of the
women, and the innocent blessings of the little
children. As we travelled slowly along—the fly-

man- had, by a strong mental effort, remembered
his appointment—all the open spaces seemed a suc-
cession of encampments. St. Peter's-green and

the Old Steyne enclosures bristled with bayonets,
and busbys, and shakoes, and at short intervals

long white tents, over which pennons fluttered,
gave still further reality to the illusion of coming
battle. The great guns, strongly horsed and
bravely manned, rumbled along the highways, and
rival military bands played " Paddle your own
canoe," in doubtful harmony with " Rule Bri-
tannia." Whilst passing along the more ancient
portion of the Marine Parade, the eye was arrested
by the veterans of the Coast Guard, who, drawn up
in that fluctuating line which sailors love so well,
presented their bronze countenances and profusely
decorated chests as samples of the sort of volunteers
we had for the salt water to aid those who were then
mustering so strongly on the land.

Although, from the numbers who took up positions
at several points on the royal route, the crowd on
the racecourse itself was not at first quite so dense
as the Epsom crowd on the Derby-day, still there
must have been from the appearance a vast assem-
blage, complimented by all the vehicular resources
of the South Coast. The barren Downs beyond

looked damp and dismal enough, the valleys being
filled with mist and the hills capped with clouds,
making the whole effect of the weather rather chill
and dispiriting. Lemonadiers called out " Ginger-
beer" in a weak voice, evidently hopeless that on
such a day the mild stimulant would find a market.
The strains of coloured melody came floating over
the air, and loud clamours were heard from the local
police, who, not knowing very dearly what they
might permit the public to do, solved the difficulty
by not permitting them to do anything, or to go any-
where. We should not have got to our appointed
station but that we luckily caught a glance of civilisa-
tion and human intelligence in the person of a Lon-
don inspector, who conducted us to our place whilst
his local subordinates were holding a caucus to ex-
amine into the genuineness of our tickets. Towards
12 o'clock the weather began to clear, pickets of the
gay cavalry of the line, or the brilliantly uniformed
officers of the staff, galloped up and down, and the
general public waited patiently the arrival of the
Prince and Princess. Whilst the crowd were thus
standing at attention, the volunteer army was gra-
dually being massed in the rising ground to theright
of the grand stand. As each successive corps as-
cended the hill with elastic step, the people gave
a cheer, and every one watched with admiration
the gradual enlargement of the dense columns which
were so soon to pour down upon us in the march
past. There were the scarlet of the engineers, the
green of the older corps, and grey of the juniors,
with all the " pride, pomp, and circumstance" of
mimic war, as became a national army getting ready
for a grand field day.
While the great centre of expectation was to so
many the Royal arrival at the railway station, there
was some plodding work going on in other parts of
the town. The day woke up amidst innumerable
bugle calls in those quarters where the volunteers
were being summoned to enter upon their self-im-
posed duties. The series of enclosures which lie
under the shadow of the Pavilion, and which at
ordinary times resound only with the measured beat
of the watch, or the slow clatter of the milkman's
clog, echoed this morning with martial sounds.
Each enclosure contained a tent, and each tent con-
tained provender for an allotted number of volun-
teers. From 6 o'clock the corps began to assemble,
and by 9 o'clock the green turf, which used to be so
charmingly spangled with daisies, was trampled by
a hundred feet into a deplorable state of mire and
dirt. Anxious and doleful looks were cast to the
low clouds, and the one great theme of discourse
was that never-exhausted topic, the weather. The
heavy rain during the night had made this portion
of the town look damper than it really was, and the
clouds over the sea looked full of mischief. How-
ever, it did not rain now, and it did shine at long
intervals, notwithstanding it was a shine of an irre-
gular and unmistakably
widen and fickle appearance.
But it was sufficient to keep, not only the
volun-
teers, but the public, in a frame
of hopeful resigna-
tion. The music, whether high
P
tendencies, enlivened the fashio
Dyer
ar er al or of " e
quarter,ni gg
and
"
afforded those inmates of the overloo
bki
could not go to the review the
chancge houses who
succession of small reviews from their ovzof seeing a
eakfast
tables. By 10 o'clock the majority of thelcborrtrat
trim and ready to answer the signal for
a w. ere
and very handsome and smart the regiments looked
as they stepped proudly off when the order was
shouted. The arrangements for moving about the
troops at'home, on the downward journey, or in
Brighton up to the time of the march past, could
only have been brought to so a high degree of per-
fection by admirable discipline, and most creditable
attention to duties more than usually routine.
The continual stream of people which set in sta-
tionwards from 9 o'clock in the morning suggested
that the majority of -the visitors were more anxious
to catch a glimpse of the Prince and Princess of
Wales than to watch the mustering of the volun-
teers. For once the uniforms, generally so potent
an attraction to the fair sex and country people,
failed to " draw." Volunteers Might be seen at any
time, but only one day in a life perhaps would bring