well all the duties which his Government entrusts to him, and is resolved to have them performed in all situations and under all circumstances.  There are always some bad characters in a regiment, to take advantage of any laxity of discipline, and lead astray the younger soldiers, whose spirits have been rendered exuberant by good health and good feeding; and there is hardly any crime to which they will not try to excite these young men, under an officer careless about the discipline of his regiment, or disinclined, from a mistaken esprit de corps_, or any other cause, to have those crimes traced home to them and punished.[37]

There can be no question that a good tone of feeling between the European officers and their men is essential to the well-being of our native army; and I think I have found this tone somewhat impaired whenever our native regiments are concentrated at large stations.  In such places the European society is commonly large and gay; and the officers of our native regiments become too much occupied in its pleasures and ceremonies to attend to their native officers or sepoys.  In Europe there are separate classes of people who subsist by catering for the amusements of the higher classes of society, in theatres, operas, concerts, balls, &c., &c.; but in India this duty devolves entirely upon the young civil and military officers of the Government, and at large stations it really is a very laborious one, which often takes up the whole of a young man’s time.  The ladies must have amusement; and the officers must find it for them, because there are no other persons to undertake the arduous duty.  The consequence is that they often become entirely alienated from their men, and betray signs of the greatest impatience while they listen to the necessary reports of their native officers, as they come on or go off duty.[38]

It is different when regiments are concentrated for active service.  Nothing tends so much to improve the tone of feeling between the European officers and their men, and between European soldiers and sepoys, as the concentration of forces on actual service, where the same hopes animate, and the same dangers unite them in common bonds of sympathy and confidence. ’Utrique alteris freti, finitimos armis aut metu sub imperium cogere, nomen gloriamque sibi addidere.’  After the campaigns under Lord Lake, a native regiment passing Dinapore, where the gallant King’s 76th, with whom they had fought side by side, was cantoned, invited the soldiers to a grand entertainment provided for them by the sepoys.  They consented to go on one condition—­that the sepoys should see them all back safe before morning.  Confiding in their sable friends, they all got gloriously drunk, but found themselves lying every man upon his proper cot in his own barracks in the morning.  The sepoys had carried them all home upon their shoulders.  Another native regiment, passing within a few miles of a hill on which they had buried one of their European