ADVICE TO A YOUNG OFFICER OF THE DEAR TOM, IAM informed by Colonel Maraud, that you have obtained a commiffion in his battalion. I know not, as yet, whether to congratulate or condole with you on your promotion; for I have not yet weighed the disadvantages and advantages of it, fo as to give a decided opinion upon the fubject. However, as it is no doubt very agreeable to yourself, I would not be thought to diffuade you from the career of glory which probably your ftars have marked out for you; but, on the contrary, prefuming on my fuperiority in point of age, and my long experience in the fervice you have embraced, I trouble you with this letter, to let you partly into the nature of that service, and to offer you some advice respecting those parts of it, which to a young man are most important, and may seem moft arduous. The grand divifions of your duty are: First, To handle the bottle with a good and ready grace. Secondly, To intrigue with the girls without any grace at all. Thirdly, When you leave a place, always to leave fomething behind you. Laftly, When you approach a place, to drive every thing before you. The firft of thefe duties is confiderably dangerous, and has been found to add greatly to the horrors of war. But inheriting, as you do, the fpirit of a long line of ancestors, whofe love of liquor may be traced up to the flood itself, it is impoffible that you can fhrink from your duty, though you should fall a victim to to the fatigues of the day. It will be neceffary for you, therefore, to ftudy the whole art of military libation, and be perfect mafter of the whole manual and Vocal exercife, fuch as twirling a cork, infpecting the cruft, calling for a toast, giving a toaft, faying more, challenging with pint bumpers, or filling the conflable. On the right performance of this part of your duty. depends much of that courage which your country will expect you to exhibit in the day of battle. Why is it that men are given to fighting in their cups, if not from their drinking in fresh draughts of courage,, which enables them to defy, as Colonel Toper of our regiment used to fay, even the devil himself? It is. very necessary to acquire a dashing, helterskelter kind of heroifm, which impels a man to fight with. no matter whom, when, or where. In all the annals of the art military, I never knew any good done by an army who went to work foberly; in fact, as far as my own experience goes, I confider fighting to be one. of thofe things which few men attempt in their fober, fenfes. Again, to fhow how generally the principle of drinking in military affairs is adopted, confider that our language has borrowed a fet of phrafes from this. only, How often, for instance, do we hear gentlemen fay, "Our courage is out;" when you know this means no more than that the bottle is out? Happy is it, my dear Tom, that we have acquired fuch skill in the philofophy of the human mind, as to be able to recruit and repair its beft paflions by mechanical means, and that now-a-days a gentleman may lay in a pipe of fortitude that shall invigorate him and his friends for a twelvemonth. The fecond branch of your duty, or your employment (which is juft the fame thing), is intrigue. As by the laws of war the women are not allowed to follow the regiment, it is very proper that the regiment K 6 fhould fhould follow the women. But intrigue is neceffary to you on another and more important account, namely, that it includes in it all the various ftratagems, dangers, and manœuvres of war, and particularly is a happy emblem of that very momentous art, the art of befieging. Some towns are to be approached gradually, fome to be taken by ftorm, and fome, no doubt, affailed by treachery; for "tricking in love is all fair." With respect to the mode of intriguing, I do not know that it is neceffary to give you any rules: fuch as are neceffary will readily occur to you. To have as many intrigues upon your hands at a time as poffible, and where you have been fuccefsful, to make it as public as you can-is one precept. Another is, to enjoin the common men to meddle with no intrigues at their quarters, without giving you notice. I fhould pay a poor compliment to your courage, were I to hint that the dangers on this fervice are confiderable. I trust you are a stranger to fear. As to fathers, uncles, brothers, and fuch troublefome fellows, they may be intimidated in various ways; you may easily turn their pitchforks against themfelves, and make their horfe-ponds a covering for their impertinence. The third branch of your duty is, "When you leave a place, always leave fomething behind you." To the performance of this duty you will be induced from gratitude. For, where you have been well treated, it is but natural to think you would wish to make fome return. The two prefents most commonly made on fuch occafions are children and debts. How the former may be procured I have already hinted; and as, from their tender years, fome not perhaps a month old, and fome not born at all, it is impoffible you can take them with you, and turn majors into milknurfes, or a battalion into a baby-house, you must of courfe courfe leave them to those who may be inclined to take care of them from natural affection. Humanity alfo requires this, for what can be fo fhocking as to render a mother childless? No, my dear Tom, leave it to foreign monsters to tear from mothers their innocent offspring. Be it yours to repair the ravages of foreign wars, by cultivating the arts of population, and providing for the neceffities of pofterity. I beg leave here to allude to the prefent ftate of oak in this country: it was lately difcovered that that valuable tree was becoming fcarce, owing to the narrow notions of some noblemen, who would not plant young trees, because forfooth (they faid), they could not live to fee them full grownnarrow and selfish is such an idea! It reminds me of a man who would do nothing for pofterity, because pofterity had done nothing for him. No-I trust that, if military propagation continues as it has begun, a regiment may perpetuate its existence, and, all but commiffioned officers, exhibit a feries of generations as regular as Abraham, Ifaac, and Jacob. I have dwelt fo long on this part of the fubject, to convince you that, if you think you are doing good to yourself, you are at the fame time doing good to your country. I have heard it faid, that "He is a patriot who makes a blade of grafs grow where grafs never grew before." I need not make a parody on this position, to show that children are preferable to clover. As to the leaving debts, the fubject is fo well known and understood, that I will not affront your experience by fuppofing you ignorant of it. In point of fame, however, it is neceffary you fhould leave fomething of this kind behind you wherever you go; for, if it fhould bappen that history is filent as to your deeds, your memory will not perifh, but be recorded in black and white in every town through which you pafs. It is not not material how one obtains fame. Fame is a variegated animal, full of spots, and stripes, and streaksand the credit which has been refused to a man in the day of battle, has often been granted in the bill of parcels. On this fubject, permit me, my dear Tom, to digrefs a little. It fometimes happens that a tradesman will grumble, and fometimes, perhaps, really may fuffer; for a vintner, for example, is not paid as an apothecary would fully be, merely by returning the empty bottles. In fuch cafes, why cannot tradermen take a hint from men of honour, make a bonfire of their books, and proclaim that all their debts are "debts of honour?" In this cafe, they would have, the laws of honour to fecure payment, whereas at prefent they actually affront men of honour by their paltry demands; and, as you read in that admirable fyftem of morality, The School for Scandal, "paying tradesmen is but encouraging them." It certainly is a molt fhameful thing that an officer (as yourself, I hope, will one day prove) who has undauntedly braved a battery of cannon, thould turn pale at the fight of a bit of paper that would not stop a whistle. What would you think! How would your gorge rife, if, when you had conducted fome dangerous expedition, captured, for inftance, a whole detachment of poultry, made a breach in the demi-baftion of a tavern, marched without fear and without danger through a meadow of terror-infpiring bulls and oxen, or perhaps had conducted a party of ladies through the perils of the Bridgewater canal, with one chance of being buried, and two of being drowned; I fay, if, when you returned victorious from these and other like expeditions incident to your profeffion, you were to have your fear excited, and your laurels blafted by the vile hand of an attorney, egged on to infult you by that |