such talking leads!  A lad when I was there had been tempted to get out of barracks in plain clothes, in order that he might call on a young lady at the hotel; and was in consequence obliged to abandon his commission and retire from the Academy.  Will that young lady ever again sleep quietly in her bed?  I should hope not.  An opinion was expressed to me that there should be no hotel in such a place—­that there should be no ferry, no roads, no means by which the attention of the students should be distracted—­that these military Rasselases should live in a happy military valley from which might be excluded both strong drinks and female charms—­those two poisons from which youthful military ardor is supposed to suffer so much.

It always seems to me that such training begins at the wrong end.  I will not say that nothing should be done to keep lads of eighteen from strong drinks.  I will not even say that there should not be some line of moderation with reference to feminine allurements.  But, as a rule, the restraint should come from the sense, good feeling, and education of him who is restrained.  There is no embargo on the beer-shops either at Harrow or at Oxford—­and certainly none upon the young ladies.  Occasional damage may accrue from habits early depraved, or a heart too early and too easily susceptible; but the injury so done is not, I think, equal to that inflicted by a Draconian code of morals, which will probably be evaded, and will certainly create a desire for its evasion.

Nevertheless, I feel assured that West Point, taken as a whole, is an excellent military academy, and that young men have gone forth from it, and will go forth from it, fit for officers as far as training can make men fit.  The fault, if fault there be, is that which is to be found in so many of the institutions of the United States, and is one so allied to a virtue, that no foreigner has a right to wonder that it is regarded in the light of a virtue by all Americans.  There has been an attempt to make the place too perfect.  In the desire to have the establishment self-sufficient at all points, more has been attempted than human nature can achieve.  The lad is taken to West Point, and it is presumed that from the moment of his reception he shall expend every energy of his mind and body in making himself a soldier.  At fifteen he is not to be a boy, at twenty he is not to be a young man.  He is to be a gentleman, a soldier, and an officer.  I believe that those who leave the college for the army are gentlemen, soldiers, and officers, and, therefore, the result is good.  But they are also young men; and it seems that they have become so, not in accordance with their training, but in spite of it.