to martial training in the National Guard are entitled to some privilege over less patriotic citizens. Exemption from jury duty may be a small advantage, but it is, at all events, something over and above the rights of other people, and it is to be earnestly desired that like or greater recognition should be accorded to the British Volunteer.

(6.) The same example is set to England by America in the matter of drill sheds. It may be that the price of land and scarcity of sites in the old country forbids the purchase by local bodies for the head-quarters of the Volunteer soldiers of such palatial edifices as that occupied by the famous Seventh Regiment of the National Guard of New York State, with its drill-room 300 feet by 200, and its superbly fitted officers' and companies' rooms. But there is a great difference between this or the head-quarters of nearly every American regiment and the meagre apartment which serves as the orderly room of many a metropolitan corps, and the drill-place I have publicly described as a back room in an obscure street."

It would seem incredible, if it were not true, that the Government has now refused to admit to Westminster Hall or Palace Yard regiments which have drilled there for a quarter of a century, and has driven them to seek the hospitality of such school-rooms as they can find. Westminster is responding with fair liberality to the effort the regiment I have the honour to command is making to establish itself in a more commodious building; but we should not be driven to the collection of private subscriptions if the Government properly recognized the utility of the Volunteer Force, or their own duty of making it ready for the defence of the country.

(7.) Spaces to drill are also impossible to find in the vicinity of large cities. There are only two enclosed Government paradegrounds in the metropolitan area-viz., Chelsea and Albany Street Barracks for in Wellington Barracks there is no room to move the strong battalions of Volunteers. The authorities are generous in granting the use of them, and they may often be seen occupied by two or even three regiments at once, to the manifest hindrance of each other. But even that is better than the struggle with the mob, the derision of words of command, in Hyde Park or Regent's Park.

A few police are sent to keep the ground at brigade parade and regimental inspections, but drills have to be got through as best they can. The remedy lies with Parliament in the reservation of sufficient ground in the public parks once a week, and its being encircled by a chain, which would be removed on other days. Of course there would be a little opposition at first-what proposition was ever made without it?-but all who have had dealings with the British public recognize its good sense, and it would soon be seen that such a reserved space was to the manifest advantage of all con

cerned, requiring but a figment of authority to cause it to be respected.

(9.) The want of accessible rifle ranges is of course felt more in metropolitan than in country corps. With us it is indeed a most serious difficulty. We succeed perhaps in renting the partial use of a range, but it is rarely within easy reach, and when the men are at length able to make a spare afternoon to get there to go through their class firing, they are often too fatigued or hurried to give the necessary attention to shooting, and seek rather to get the number of rounds fired so as to avoid the necessity of coming back another day. So much for details. The general training of the Volunteer Force leaves perhaps little room for improvement under the existing condition of few drill sheds, parade grounds or rifle ranges, and no great-coats or field equipment. To this deficiency Sir Robert Loyd-Lindsay and other high authorities would add the want of transport. But I hardly think that this is so great a need as others I have ventured to enumerate, for waggons and carts are pretty sure to be obtainable at any time for a fair price; and a regimental waggon, purchased for the Queen's Westminsters, is somewhat of a white elephant, as we have no coach-house for it, its horsing is troublesome, and its conveyance to any distance by rail very costly. When it is remembered how little time the Volunteers have for steady battalion drill, really scarcely more than ten or twelve hours in the whole of the year, and that from many of these parades making up the aggregate a large number are absent, it cannot fail to be a matter for surprise how wonderfully well the men go through field movements. But the short time available, often too curtailed by bad weather and long distances, shows how necessary it is that the manoeuvres should be of the simplest possible character, and aim at steadiness rather than at severe tests or elaborate combination. This is especially the case at brigade parades and inspections, when the ranks are filled with many men who have not been able to attend drill during the preceding busy months, and when the companies are often larger than the officers can well command.

Reviews certainly popularize the Force if they are not too numerous. But such monster gatherings in a confined area as those which have been held the last two years at Portsmouth and Brighton, at a far too early period in the year, do harm rather than otherwise. They cost a regiment directly and indirectly from £100 to £300, for which they have usually the somewhat scanty satisfaction that their General, like"The King of France went up the hill With twenty thousand men ; The King of France came down the hill, And ne'er went up again,"

But it is not the fault of the General-that goes without sayingfor neither Alexander, nor Napoleon, nor Moltke, could go through

any very instructive operations in the couple of hours remaining after the march past, before the return to London necessarily commences. Be it further noted that the Volunteer attending these reviews, unless he goes down a day or two before, an expensive proceeding, has to leave his home about 3 A.M., and not reach it again until after midnight, with no other provision than he can take in his havresac.

If such reviews are desirable, their expense should be borne by the public. But there can be little doubt that five days in a fort or barracks, or less pretentious field days, on, if possible, the theatre of operations where, as Sir Edward Hamley suggests, the regiment would find its place in the event of invasion, would be far more beneficial.

The Schools of Instruction are of the greatest value to officers of Volunteers, and there are few who do not go through the required

course.

But if, as I have before suggested, a model battalion, similar to the "Lehr-battalion" of the German and Russian armies, was established in London, its benefits would extend throughout the Force, and be productive of untold advantage. I have no doubt whatever that if neither officers nor men were put to any expense, it would be kept almost always, and certainly from April to October, up to a strength of 300 men, and in time a large percentage of the service would have passed through its course, which might well be limited to one month. The establishment of a model battalion as an experiment would entail but very slight cost, and room might easily be found at one of the metropolitan barracks. But in no case should it supersede the establishment of regimental camps, and the despatch of detachments to Aldershot, which are productive of great good, and do much to improve the discipline of the Force. This, however, has made great strides in recent years, and if we are to be judged by the standard—often laid down by our military critics, although by no means an absolute one-of the saluting of officers, the Volunteers are frequently less negligent in this respect than many men of the regular army, who, if comparisons must be made, have a fixed idea that they are not called upon to notice officers, even in uniform, belonging to the Volunteer Force.

I have endeavoured thus crudely to supplement the vigorous article of Sir Edward Hamley, and to show from the point of view of a Volunteer, who has long studied a question so important for the country, what is really necessary to put the Force on a proper footing. It may involve an immediate outlay of one million sterling, and about £100,000 a year in excess of the sum now annually voted. But it will be the best investment the country can make.

So much for home defence, the great object for which the Volunteer Force was established, and for which it exists. Only let it be

properly organized for this duty, then a patriotic Government will seize the opportunity of creating a large Reserve for foreign service. The use of the term "foreign service" is inevitable, however wanting it may be in its application to the varied calls of the British Empire -of the England beyond the seas-" our Empire, our Home," in all quarters of the globe. British troops have been recently fighting in Egypt, in South Africa, and in Canada at one and the same time that the services of every available man were required in India. It is highly probable, indeed almost certain, that such a state of affairs may recur, and it is incontestable that the regular army and its scanty reserves are wholly wanting in the numerical strength necessary for such an emergency. In order, therefore, that in a period of national difficulty recourse may not be had to compulsory service, it would appear exceedingly important to establish beforehand a force liable for active service wherever required. The Militia would probably have no objection to such an alteration in their duties, and if the Volunteers were only on a proper footing, Great Britain might safely be trusted to their keeping. In addition also to the Militia, a Volunteer Reserve for service abroad might be formed.

Space forbids me to dwell upon how, with a united Empire and a Government determined to preserve peace in the only sure way, by preparation for war, the Regular, Militia, and Volunteer Forces of the Colonies might be utilized and included in the general scheme for the defence and the maintenance of the honour of the British Empire. But that it could be done, Canada and New South Wales have already shown. It is therefore only for the Imperial Government to prove by acts that it has the first qualification for the leadership of men—of being able to see, as the Duke of Wellington expressed it, "what is the other side of the hill."

In conclusion, let me recall an observation by General Skobeleff in the Turkish campaign: "There is nothing to fear from a country, which, receiving the gratuitous service of 200,000 men, will neither incur the expense of giving them drill or shooting grounds, or take adequate means to preserve them from inconvenience and ridicule when endeavouring to learn their military duties."

To this estimate of England by the great Russian General we owe it probably in no small measure that Muscovite hosts are advancing upon our Indian Empire. Let England then be warned in time to hesitate no longer, but to place her Volunteer Force, which is without its parallel in the history of nations, upon a basis which will enable it to fulfil its mission in the hour of danger for the protection of our hearths and homes.

C. E. HOWARD VINCENT.

SHAKESPEARE AND THE STRATFORD

ON-AVON COMMON FIELDS, 1613-1616.

THE

Inclosures at that time began to be more frequent, whereby arable land (which could not be manured without people and families) was turned into pasture, which was easily rid by a few herdsmen; and tenancies for years, lives, and at will, (whereupon much of the yeomanry lived,) were turned into demesnes. This bred a decay of people and by consequence a decay of towns, churches, tithes and the like. The king likewise knew full well, and in nowise forgot, that there ensued withal upon this a decay and diminution of subsidies and taxes.-BACON, History of King Henry VII, Works, vol. vi. pp. 93-4.

HE pilgrim to that Heart of England where Shakespeare was born and where Shakespeare lies entombed, is apt, perhaps, to allow his delight at finding so much there that is old to carry him, at first, so far away as to imagine that he sees before him something not remotely unlike Shakespeare's town. But the modern has really hardly any resemblance to the Elizabethan Stratford. Far less, however, in its streets, than in the fields by which it is surrounded, lies the difference of aspect between the Stratford-onAvon of Shakespeare's time and the Stratford-on-Avon of our own day. The fenced or hedged lanes and the trimly squared and enclosed fields of the nineteenth century are the landscape signs of an Economic Revolution that had not yet been accomplished at the Stratford-on-Avon of Shakespeare. The fields about Shakespeare's Stratford were still open and unenclosed, like those of the Highland Crofter Township where, as I have found it in North Uist,* it still exists in its primitive socialistic form as a club-farm. Undivided by hedges and ditches, the fields of Stratford-on-Avon in Shakespeare's time consisted of arable strips-in Scotland and Ireland called "rigs "-of about an acre in extent, this being the amount of a day's ploughing, and, in length, a furlong, or the furrow made before turning the plough-and these furlong-long, and acrecontaining strips were separated from each other by balks of un

* A Crofter Township of which not only the hill-pasture was, as usual, held in common, but of which the arable fields also belonged, not to any individual, but to the community, marched with the glebe of the minister of North Uist, at whose hospitable manse I was a guest for some days last September. Two similarly communistic Crofter Townships were in the immediate neighbourhood. But it is only, I believe, on these remote Hebridean shores of the Atlantic that survivals so complete of the primitive Aryan Village Community still exist in the British Islands.