English brethren were equipping our Confederate brethren to sweep our
commerce from the seas, I think I must have gone to see those images at
the Horse-Guards even before I visited the monuments in Westminster
Abbey, and they then perfectly filled my vast expectation; they might
have been Gog and Magog, for their gigantic stature. In after visits,
though I had a sneaking desire to see them again, I somehow could not
find their place, being ashamed to ask for it, in my hope of happening
on it, and I had formed the notion, which I confidently urged, that they
had been taken down, like the Wellington statue from the arch. But the
other day (or month, rather), when I was looking for Whitehall, suddenly
there they were again, sitting their horses in the gateways as of yore,
and as woodenly as if they had never stirred since 1861. They were
unchanged in attitude, but how changed they were in person: so dwarfed,
so shrunken, as if the intervening years had sapped the juices of their
joints and let their bones fall together, like those of withered old
men!

This was, of course, the unjust effect of my original exaggeration of
their length and breadth. The troops that I saw marching through the
streets where we first lodged were fine, large men. I myself saw no
choice in the different bodies, but the little housemaid much preferred
the grenadier guards to the Scotch guards; perhaps there was one
grenadier guard who lent beauty and grandeur to the rest. I think Scotch
caps are much gayer than those busbies which the grenadiers wear, but
that, again, is a matter of taste; I certainly did not think the plaid
pantaloons with which the Scotch guards hid the knees that ought to have
been naked were as good as the plain trousers of their rivals. But they
were all well enough, and the officers who sauntered along out of step
on the sidewalk, or stoop-shoulderedly, as the English military fashion
now is, followed the troops on horseback, were splendid fellows, who