The Sun.
London, England, 1829-01-29 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

TWELVE YEAR; MILITARY ADVENTURE.
Two voi.s. DON . 1529.
" Out of a filmily of six boys it was proper
that one should he devoted to the infernal Gods,
and as my shoulders promised to be of the re-
quisite breadth, and my head of the suitable
thickness, I was chosen as a fit offering ; or in
other words, I was selected for the military pro-
fession, as beim-, the greatest dunce in the
family." Such is the remark with which the
author of the present amusing volumes commences I
his narrative ; a remark which we are so far
from having the slightest inclination to question,
that we are even desirous of carrying it further,
and deducing from it this unavoidable inference,
namely, that if it requires a great dunce to make
a common subaltern, it must require a super-
human blockhead to furbish up a Commander-
in-Chief. Notwithstanding, however, that our
author thus " writes himself down an ass," his
book is any thing but asinine. He proses, it is
true, now and then : but be never brays, he
never once shows his ears—but may be
read with advantage from the first . to the
last chapter of his two portly octavos. He sets
out with a rambling but highly diverting account
of his different campaigns in India during the
Mahratta war, which was conducted and brought
to a satisfactory conclusion by Gen. Wellesley,
(now Duke of Wellington), and famous for his
epistolary faculties ; in the course of which we
are presented with several characteristic, but
scarcely novel, sketches of Indian modes of life,
more especially of the native troops, during a
campaign in the monsoon season. On landing at
Madras, previous to joining his regiment near
Poonah, our author is put into a bed at an hotel,
of which we have the subjoined details:—
" Here I passed the night in a bed which might be called
a chop-house for musquitoes, where fresh tender European
flesh was regularly served up to them on the arrival of a
fleet, just as Aldermen are regaled at the City of London
Tavern on the landing of a fresh batch of turtle from the
West Indies. To be sure, there was some pretence of ex-
cluding these voracious animals by what are termed mus-
quito-curtains ; but they only served, like the walls of the
tavern aforesaid, to exclude the vulgar herd, while a set
party of old hands, aware of the repast which awaited
them, had taken care to secure a birth within. This tor-
menting insect, happily known by report only in England,
is justly an object of dread to all new corners. A young
lady from the Highlands of Scotland, having had her ima-
gination worked upon during the voyage by the terrible
description given of it by the officers of the ship, who feel
a pleasure in hoaxing the griffins; and having heard, by
some means, that it had a proboscis or trunk,, on seeing an
elephant near the beach where they landed, exclaimed, as
she caught the arm of one of the passengers for protection,
' Is that the animal ye caw a muskeetee ?'"
Before he quits the Presidency for his mili-
tary duties, our author is an eye-witness of the
mode of manufacturing matrimonial specula-
tions; his remarks on which we should do him
great injustice were we to withhold from the
reader :
" The system pursued in disposing of the fair objects is
exactly the same as that used at the sales of king's stores in
a dock-yard, where the auctioneer begins by putting the
highest price on the article, and keeps lowering and lower-
ing, till some bidder assents to the price and bears off the
goods. First, the young lady is instructed to set her cap
at a civilian high in office, or at an officer high on the
staff. If, in the course of a few months, there is no bid-
ding at that price, then she condescends to cast a smile
upon the second rank, and so on to the bottom. Should
she possess any pretensions to beauty, she is soon snapped
up ; for the scarcity of the article prevents people from
being very fastidious in their tastes. If of the true Euro-
pean white, she is almost sure to go off tolerably well ; but
no mixture of the Asiatic will suit persons of any rank.
Should the young lady continue on hand till the arrival of
a fleet conveying a fresh supply of fair ones, she is, of
course, thrown somewhat into the back-ground, and her
chance of a good match considerably diminished ; so it
often happens, that females are thus compelled to accept
offers which, at first starting, they would have rejected
with disdain, and in some instances, to take the very men
whom they once treated with scorn. But she must be a
hapless virgin, indeed, and possessed of no ordinary detrac-
tions, who is compelled, as a dernier ressort, to put up
with an ensign of native infantry, by whom she may be
borne off to spend the honey-moon in a hill-fort. How
happy marriages in general prove among Europeans in
India may hence be inferred."
It is not our intention to follow the author by
forced marches through his very desultory de-
tails, but rather to imitate him in the rambling
and unconnected style of his narrative ; for this
reason, therefore, we subjoin the following amus-
ing anecdote :
" Here I cannot omit mentioning a curious circumstance
which I witnessed about this time, a consequence of the
privation undergone by these unfortunate beasts. Lolling
one day in my tent, ruminating on the hardships of a sol-
dier's life, and on the shifts to which he is often reduced,
my eyes and my thoughts were naturally attracted to my
poor cattle, who stood picketed at a short distance, with
nothing to chew but the cud of disappointment, having
waited since morning in eager expectation of the return of
a foraging party. I observed one of these, whose well-
defined ribs bore testimony to the scantiness of his fare,
gradually stretching out his head to a turban, belonging to
one of my servants,
which happened to lie within the
length of his tether. After giving it a turn or two with
his nose, I suppose to ascertain the possibility of its being
masticated, he seized the loose end in his mouth, and ac-
tually began to swallow it. He swallowed, and swallowed ;
and, as the voluminous folds of the turban unrolled, so fast
did they disappear down the throat of the bullock, until,
of at least ten yards of stuff, there remained only a small
bit pendent from his jaws. I was so amused with the
whole process, that I could not find it in my heart to stop
him ; but lay on my couch observing his operations for at
least an hour. Another minute, and the turban, which
had nearly reached its latter end, would have been safely
deposited in the stomach of the bullock to be brought up
for rumination at a favourable opportunity. Just at this
critical moment the owner returned, When, looking about
for his turban, he beheld the end dangling from the mouth
of the animal. With an oath he flew at the bullock, and
seizing the only visible portion of his garment, pulled and
pulled, hand over hand, and oath upon oath, while the tat-
tered, but still connected, cloth came forth, like a measur-
ing tape out of its case. The man's rage and gestures at
the destruction of his turban, the beast's astonishment at
the novel kind of emetic he was undergoing, and the atti-
tudes of both, formed a scene absolutely irresistible."
On quitting India, after a long and arduous
service, in the course of which he is rewarded by
a colony of Guinea worms, nearly two feet in
length, taking up their (apparently) permanent
abode in his left leg, our author quits India for
Spain, where he joins the army, under his old
commander Lord Wellington, and where he en-
; counters the usual adventures of a soldier. This
part of his narrative, however, founded on• fact,
is any thing but novel. ; we 'therefore dismiss it
with the remark that it is lightly, and in parts
even humorously written. The chief interest
attached to the book ends with the first volume,
to which, therefore, for the sake of our readers,
we wish that it bad been restricted. Altogether,
however, it may be pronounced a frank, manly,
and good-humoured production, penned with
all the candour of the soldier and all the ease of
the gentleman.

A few days since Mr. Jenkins, grocer, of this
place, found nine of his pigs, out of a farrow of fourteen,
actually frozen to death in the stye.—Maidstone Journal.