3-028-359 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Incidents of the Easter Volunteer Review, 1870. British soldiers take part in an annual event near Brighton: a '...sham fight on Easter Monday, in which the Volunteer Rifle Corps of London and the neighbouring counties, with a few coming from Lancashire or Yorkshire, mustered to the number of 26,000...a large part of metropolitan volunteer forces went down to Brighton on the Saturday, or on Good Friday, sure of passing the holiday time agreeably in that pleasant seaside town...the inhabitants seemed glad to welcome the citizen defenders of their native land...Several minor incidents of this march through the streets of Brighton, crowded with an admiring multitude of all sorts of people, are seized by our Artist as fit subjects for his pencil. One is the droll expression of national feeling with which the London Scottish corps was greeted by an enthusiastic fellow-countryman, who seemed to be as willing to give away his breeks as Tam O'Shanter "for ae glimpse o' the bonnie burdies".' From "Illustrated London News", 1870.