'You have your brother's notions of cavalry, have you!'

'I leave it to Philip to boast what cavalry can do on the field. He
knows: but he knows that troopers must be mounted: and we're fineing more
and more from bone: with the sales to foreigners! and the only chance
of their not beating us is that they'll be so good as follow our bad
example. Prussia's well horsed, and for the work it's intended to do,
the Austrian light cavalry's a model. So I'm told. I'll see for myself.
Then we sit our horses too heavy. The Saxon trooper runs headlong to
flesh. 'Tis the beer that fattens and swells him. Properly to speak,
we've no light cavalry. The French are studying it, and when they take
to studying, they come to the fore. I'll pay a visit to their breeding
establishments. We've no studying here, and not a scrap of system that
I see. All the country seems armed for bullying the facts, till the
periodical panic arrives, and then it 's for lying flat and roaring--
and we'll drop the curtain, if you please.'

'You say we,' returned Mr. Adister. 'I hear you launched at us English
by the captain, your cousin, who has apparently yet to learn that we are
one people.'

'We 're held together and a trifle intermixed; I fancy it's we with him
and with me when we're talking of army or navy,' said Patrick. 'But
Captain Con's a bit of a politician: a poor business, when there's
nothing to be done.'

'A very poor business!' Mr. Adister rejoined,

'If you'd have the goodness to kindle his enthusiasm, he'd be for the
first person plural, with his cap in the air,' said Patrick.