After an introduction so cordial, it may well be supposed that I often looked in on the College of an evening.  If I were in that part of the town when evening came on, I made the Library my club-room, to write a note or to waste an hour.  I am sure, that, had it been in my power, I should have dropped in often,—­so pleasant was it to watch the modest work of the place, and the energy of the crowded rooms,—­and so new to me the aspects of English life it gave.  I felt quite sure that the College was gaining ground, on the whole.  I can easily understand that some classes drag,—­perhaps some studies, which the managers would be most glad to see successful.  But, on the whole, there seems spirit and energy,—­and of course success.

My travelling companion, Chiron, is fond of twitting me as to the success of one of the “social meetings” to which I dragged him, promising to show him something of working-men’s life.  We arrived too early.  But the Secretary told us that the garden was lighted up for drill, and that the working-men’s battalion was drilling there.  It was under the charge of Sergeant Reed, a medal soldier from the Crimea.  At that time England was in one of her periodical fits of expecting an invasion.  For some reason they will not call on every able-bodied man to serve in a militia;—­I thought because they were afraid to arm all their people,—­though no Englishman so explained it to me.  They did, however, call for volunteers from those classes of society which could afford to buy uniforms and obtain “practice-grounds three hundred yards in length.”  This included, I should say, about eleven of the thirty-seven castes of English society.  It intentionally left out those beneath,—­as it did all Ireland.  Mr. Hughes, however, seized on it as an admirable chance for his College,—­its common feeling, its gymnastics,—­and many other “good things,” looking down the future.  In general, the drills which were going on all over England were sad things to me.  This idea of staking guineas against sous, when the contest with Napoleon did come,—­staking an English judge, for instance, with his rifle, against some wretched conscript whom Napoleon had been drilling thoroughly, with his, seemed and seems to me wretched policy.  But—­if it were to be done this way—­of course the best thing possible was to work as widely as you could in getting your recruits; and,—­if England were too conservative to say, “We are twenty-eight millions, one-fifth fighting men,”—­too conservative to put rifles or muskets into the hands of those five or six million fighters,—­the next best thing was to rank as many as you could in your handful of upper-class riflemen.  However, I offered my advice liberally to all comers, and explained that at home I was a soldier when the Government wanted me,—­was registered somewhere,—­and could be marched to San Juan, about which General Harney was vaporing just then, whenever the authorities chose.  So it was that I and Chiron stood superior to see Sergeant Reed drill thirty-nine working-men.  Mr. Hughes was on the terrace, teaching an awkward squad their facings.