The following pages were hastily thrown together in the form of lectures, and delivered, during, the past winter, before the Lowell Institute of Boston. They were written without the slightest intention of ever publishing them; but several officers of militia, who heard them delivered, or afterwards read them in manuscript, desire their publication, on the ground of their being useful to a class of officers now likely to be called into military service. It is with this view alone that they are placed in the