which one sees in Continental countries, and especially in Germany. It
was plain that England, though a military power, is not militarized. The
English shows of force are civil. Nowhere but in England does the
European hand of iron wear the glove of velvet. There is always an
English war going on somewhere, but one does not relate to it the
kindly-looking young fellows whom one sees suffering under their
bear-skin caps in the ranks, or loitering at liberty in the parks, and
courting the flattered girls who flutter like moths about the flame of
their red jackets, up and down the paths and on the public benches. The
soldiers are under the law of military obedience, and are so far in
slavery, as all soldiers are, but nothing of their slavery is visible,
and they are the idols of an unstinted devotion, which adds to the
picturesqueness and, no doubt, the pathos of the great London spectacle.
It is said that they sometimes abuse their apparent supremacy, and that
their uniform generally bars them from places of amusement; but one sees
nothing of their insubordination or exclusion in the public ways, where
one sometimes sees them pushing baby-carriages to free the nurse-maids
to more unrestricted flirtation, or straying over the grass and under
the trees with maids who are not burdened by any sort of present duty.

After all, as compared with the civilians, they are few even in that
game of love which is always playing itself wherever youth meets youth,
and which in London is only evident in proportion to the vastness of the
city. Their individual life is, like that of the royalty which they
decorate, public more than private, and one can scarcely dissociate
them, with all their personal humility, from the exalted figures whose
eminence they directly or indirectly contribute to throw into relief. I
do not mean that they are seen much or little in the king's company. The
English king, though he wears many land and sea uniforms, is essentially
civilian, and though vast numbers of soldiers exist for his state in