| Note: | Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive. See https://archive.org/details/memoirofservices00buck |
The circumstances under which the greater portionof this Memoir was written, are set forth sotruthfully in the following passages, taken from anIndian periodical, that I cannot do better thantranscribe them:—
“It was well known for some years before CaptainBuckle, driven homewards by the pressure of ill-health,resigned the important regimental officewhich he had held so creditably to himself and soadvantageously to his corps, that he had long beencollecting materials for a Memoir of the BengalArtillery, and had been engaged, in brief intervalsof leisure, in their arrangement and reproduction inthe form of an elaborate work of military history.In the immediate circle of his own private friendsit was known, moreover, how deep was the interestthat he took in the progress of this work; howlaboriously he pursued his investigations into thepast history of his regiment; and what gratificationviiiit afforded him, in the midst of much that wasnecessarily dull and thankless, to exhume, out ofa mass of long-buried records, or a heap of printedvolumes with the damp of years upon them, someneglected historical fact, some forgotten statistics,or some illustrative