THE GUARDS.

A GUARDSMAN is a being sui generis, not in the vulgar interpretation of the swinish multitude, but in the most refined and sublimated acceptation of the word; an individual select, distinct, and separate from the soldier or civilian of any other kind. Birth, rank, and fashion, hover round the standard of the Guards; but above all, royal presence, the air of the court, (which must add a courtly air to a martial appearance,) all lend lustre to the warrior and the beau. His habits, as well as his habiliments, differ from the cavalry and infantry of the line; his ton or fashion is peculiar to the corps, which gives, instead of

borrowing, a goût or polish to others in the army and in high life. The Line has des manières empruntées, often le ton du garnison; but the Guards have a deportment, dress, and address of their own. By this it is not meant to assert, that a Guardsman never borrows anything; he may par hasard borrow a trifle, from a rouleau at a gaming-table, to an heiress at a watering-place; and (mirabile dictu!) possibly his neighbour's cara sposa at country quarters, pour passer le tems; but he never condescends to assume an iota of style, elegance or refinement, from any source beyond the brigade; whilst, on the contrary, envying and admiring youths copy and imitate His Majesty's Guards with the extremest exertion and attention imaginable; and they (the Guards) are decidedly (as we say) the prototypes of the day. But to return to the genus (not genius, gentle reader,) of the Guards. It is not that of the exquisite, the merveilleux, the dandy, or muscadin, native or

foreign; and much less of the ruffian or sporting character of town or country, civil or military; for the latter may be all civil or military, or neither; or too civil by half, like a country cousin, kind, loving, and troublesome: whereas the Guardsman is both military and civil, polite, but familiarly conceited, yet with such an off-hand elegance and amiable levity, that his behaviour passes current like a well-bred compliment, which may enchant and ruin, dazzle and deceive at the same transitory moment; and above all, (or ante todas cosas, as we say in Spain,) the military part of his essence (a most essential point) so happily predominates over the blue or black coated fashionable, that although he may lisp, drawl, whisper, simper, ogle, and look by turns languishing and supercilious, blink through his eye-glass, or trifle away his life; yet the soldier comes so happily in to the assistance of the simple fop, that he avoids effeminacy, and still keeps up a degree of masculine dig

nity. Other military men remain so long at out-quarters, nay, even in foreign, distant, and hostile countries and climes, that they lose the town varnish, and look strange in coloured clothes ;-au contraire, the Guards are so constantly passing from the parade to the palace, and from the drill-ground to the drawingroom, that, like odours of the flower of love, ay, verily, and of the perfumer's shop, and (sweetest of all) the blush of lady's cheek, which has sometimes come and gone the same way, their suavity of manner is continually going and coming, marching and countermarching, advancing and retreating, but never forming line.

So unique is the style of the Guards. The more forcibly to illustrate what has been advanced, we need only repeat of the Guards in general, what was said in particular, by the Commander-in-Chief of the troops in North America, in days of yore, to the honourable Colonel, afterwards General Gardener, a maca

roni of the old school; namely, " that no man was more careless of his person in the field, nor took more care and pains about it when out of it:"-that no man fought more manfully, nor dressed more affectedly, than that gallant officer.

Here, however, a distinction in favour of the new school is due: powder and pomatum, frills and red-heeled pumps, have vanished before the Stanhope or other crop, and the game-cock spurs of our exquisite field and other mounted officers, etc., etc.

It must be quite superfluous to add, that the rank obtained in the Gardes, as they are town-ishly called, attracts fortune and quality to their royal colours, and that royal favour and royal smiles gild the prospects of the military aspirant. There is, however, another advantage derived from entering the corps, which surpasses all the rest; to wit, the entrée into life which such first commission procures; the passport to high circles; the opportunity of