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| H4 To this speech Colonel Jenkins made a fitting response. After the banquet, the two regiments formed again and marched back to the North River. A chorus of cheers greeted the visitors at every point, and there was a display of fireworks, it then being evening. The march ended at the Twenty-third Street Ferry, and five minutes later the Fifth was off for Cape May, where the next day was spent, and then the homeward journey was begun. The appearance of the Fifth in New York elicited from the Army and Navy Journal, the chief journal in the United States devoted to military affairs, an emphatic eulogium, which spread the fame of the regiment through every city and town of the country, and gained it the reputation of being at that time probably the best disciplined regiment of the National Guard. The people of Baltimore could hardly fail to be proud of their principal regiment when it returned, stamped with the seal of the unqualified approval of the most critical of military authorities. The Army and Navy Journal's account of the visit and criticism thereon, August 3, 1874, follows: "We have delayed till the present week more than a cursory notice of this command, because we wished to do it full justice and comment on its movements', as a whole, during its encampment and its different excursions. A week or two ago we received a copy of the orders and regulations issued for the government of the regiment at Long Branch, and were very favorably impressed with their superiority in completeness and detail to anything we had yet seen in the militia service of any State. The selection of the campground, however, had, we confess, inclined us to the opinion that the Fifth . Maryland might turn out to be one of those 'fancy commands,' against which real soldiers are apt to entertain strong and just prejudices as travesties on military life, only fit for garrison duty at best. It was, therefore, with considerable curiosity and a disposition to criticise sharply, if necessary, that -we. awaited the actual entrance of the Fifth Maryland to New York on Wednesday, the 28th ult. We had heard excellent accounts of the Fifth, in its camp and excursions, in its review before the President, and its fraternizations with the New Jersey troops, but these accounts came from non-professional journals, which we have found, too often, to be generally unreliable in military matters, purely technical as they are. On Wednesday evening, then, when the Fifth visited New York to be the guests of the Seventh New York, we turned out of pur office, just as the sound of the bands announced the passage of the regiments by the head of Murray street, to see what the strangers looked like. From the moment we first set eyes upon their steady, solid ranks, we perceived that the men were soldiers, and, what is still rarer in militia commands, that their officers looked like real officers, superior to the men, fine as these latter really were. With a regiment like the Seventh New York in front, marching in ten commands of eighteen files front, and marching in that style which is the especial pride of the Seventh, any visiting regiment has a hard task to perform to come off with honor. The art of marching up Broadwray in company front has been especially cultivated in the Seventh to the exclusion of some other |