Boy Soldiers and Sailors.
By Frances H. Low.
The Royal Military Asylum.
HERE are various causes which combine to make the King's-road, Chelsea, one of the least agreeable thoroughfares of the Metropolis. From the aesthetic point of view also it can hardly be considered satisfactory. An endless succession of omnibuses, uninviting barrows, and squalid shops are the principal characteristics of the road, which is yet interesting to the stranger by reason of certain unique features inseparably associated with it. Tommy Atkins in his military splendours is a common enough and not invariably pleasing spectacle, but those fine fellows the Chelsea pensioners, with their gallant bearing, scarred faces, and maimed limbs, somehow arrest the attention of the most careless observer, and send his mind back to the roar of cannon and the smoke and slaughter of the battlefield, where so many of these heroes sounded the death-knell of their vigorous manhood. Not less interesting than the veterans who have gained their laurels and laid down their arms, are the little bright-faced, red-coated lads standing on the threshold of the fight, who belong to the Royal Military Asylum; and whose decorum and excellent behaviour in the street are not the least result of their training and discipline within the walls of the big brick building, founded by the Duke of York during the long Napoleonic wars for the numerous orphaned children of soldiers. The Institution is now supported by Government, and feeds, clothes, and educates every year 550 boys between the ages of nine and fourteen, the sons or orphans of non-commissioned officers of good character. At fourteen the majority of the boys go into the regular army, chiefly into the Artillery and Engineers, either as collar-makers, smiths, clerks, or drummers. Owing to the splendid efficiency of the school band a large proportion enter the army band at once, and amongst the names of distinguished bandmasters who have been boys in the school are those of Lazarus and Thomas.
A record is kept of every lad who has passed through the school, and at the beginning of this year there were serving in the army 10 commissioned officers, 31 schoolmasters, 12 bandmasters, and 47 band sergeants, besides many others holding the grade of sergeant-major, master gunners, and so forth. In addition, out of 1,368 of the boys who have entered the service, only one has turned out badly,
