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the lamented Major Norman Ramsay, opened its fire upon the columns. They retreated repeatedly, but it was only to advance with new fury, and to renew attempts which it seemed impossible for human strength and courage ultimately to withstand. As fre quently as the cavalry retreated, our artillery-men rushing out of the squares in which they had found shelter, began again to work their pieces, and made a destructive fire on the retiring squadrons. Two officers of artillery were particularly noticed, who, being in a square which was repeatedly charged, rushed out of it the instant the cavalry retreated, loaded one of the deserted guns which stood near, and fired it upon the horsemen. A French officer observed that this manœuvre was repeated more than once, and cost his troop many lives. At the next retreat of his squadron, he stationed himself by the gun, waving his sword, as if defying the British officers again to approach it. He was instantly shot by a gre nadier, but prevented by his self-devotion a considerable loss to his countrymen. Other French officers and men evinced the same desperate and devoted zeal in the cause which they had so rashly and unhappily espoused. One officer of rank, after leading his men as far as they would follow him towards one of the squares of infantry, found himself deserted by them, when the British fire opened, and instantly rode upon the bayonets, throwing open his arms as if to welcome the bullet which should bring him down. He was immediately shot, for the moment admitted of no alternative. On our part, the coolness of the soldiers was so striking us almost to appear miraculous. Amid the infernal noise, hurry, and clamour of the bloodiest action ever fought, the officers were obeyed as if on the parade; and such was the precision with which the men gave their fire, that the aid-de-camp could ride round each square with perfect safety, being sure that the discharge would be reserved till the precise moment when it ought regularly to be made. The fire was rolling or alternate, keeping up that constant and uninterrupted blaze, upon which, I presume, it is impossible to force a concentrated and effective charge of cavalry. Thus, each little phalanx stood by itself, like an impregnable fortress, while their crossing fires supported each other, and dealt destruction among the enemy, who frequently attempted to penetrate through the intervals, and to gain the flank, and even the rear of these detached masses. The Dutch, Hanoverian, and Brunswick troops, maintained the same solid order, and the same ready, sus tained, and destructive fire, as the British regiments with whom they were intermingled." P. 158.

In the most anxious hour of the whole day, when our lines were weakened by constant losses, and no succour from the Prussians had yet appeared, while his friends were all perishing round him, the Duke of Wellington undauntedly maintained his resolution of never quitting the field alive.

"In the meanwhile it seemed still doubtful whether those sacri

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fices had not been made in vain; for the French, though repulsed in every point, continued their incessant attacks with a perseverance of which they were formerly deemed incapable; and the line of chequered squares, hitherto successfully opposed to them, was gradually, from the great reduction of numbers, presenting a diminished and less formidable appearance. One general officer was under the necessity of stating, that his brigade was reduced to one-third of its numbers, that those who remained were exhausted with fatigue, and that a temporary relief, of however short dura tion, seemed a measure of peremptory necessity. "Tell him," said the Duke, "what he proposes is impossible. He, I, and every Englishman in the field, must die on the spot which we now Occupy." "It is enough," returned the general; "I and every man under my command are determined to share his fate." friend of ours had the courage to ask the Duke of Wellington, whether in that conjuncture he looked often to the woods from which the Prussians were expected to issue. "No," was the answer;" I looked oftener at my watch than at any thing else. I knew if my troops could keep their position till night, that I must be joined by Blucher before morning, and we would not have left Buonaparte an army next day. But," continued he, "I own I was glad as one hour of day-light slipped away after another, and our position was still maintained." "And if," continued the que rist," by misfortune the position had been carried?" "We had the wood behind to retreat into." "And if the wood also was forced?" "No, no; they could never have so beaten us but we could have made good the wood against them." From this brief conversation it is evident that in his opinion, whose judgment is least competent to challenge, even the retreat of the English on this awful day would have afforded but temporary success to Buonaparte.". P. 170.

We cannot pass over this part of the volume without recommending the narrative of the battle to our readers as the best which we have yet seen. It would be, perhaps difficult to frame an account, in which so much is condensed into so short a compass, with so much spirit, and with so much clearness. The various anecdotes here detailed are from the authority of officers high in command on that memorable day, and are thereentitled to the highest credit.

But let us accompany our author to the scene itself, to those very fields, on which has been poured forth so much of our country's dearest and best blood, for the redemption of Europe. from the chains of returning captivity. The honest Flemings appear to have been much surprised at the eagerness and enthusiasm of the English in visiting this consecrated spot. We cannot wonder at this-In a country which has ever been the scene of so much contention, whose fate it has always been, and al

ways

ways will be, to be fought for and to be fought upon, military operations are events of course, and a battle passes over as any other ordinary occurrence. Far different were the feelings of our author, who was conducted to the spot by Lacoste, the peasant, who was pressed into the service of Buonaparte as a guide.

"It was, however, with no little emotion that I walked with Lacoste from one place to another, making him, as nearly as possible, show me the precise stations which had been successively occupied by the fallen monarch on that eventful day. There was a deep and inexpressible feeling of awe in the reflection, that the last of these was the identical place from which he, who had so long held the highest place in Europe, beheld his hopes crushed and his power destroyed. To recollect, that within a short month, the man whose name had been the terror of Europe, stood on the very ground which I now occupied, that right opposite was placed that commander whom the event of the day hailed, Vainqueur de Vainqueur de la terre-that the landscape, now solitary and peaceful around me, presented so lately a scene of such horrid magnificence-that the very individual who was now at my side, had then stood by that of Napoleon, and witnessed every change in his countenance, from hope to anxiety, from anxiety to fear and to despair, to recollect all this, oppressed me with sensations which I find it impossible to describe. The scene seems to have shifted so rapidly, that even while I stood on the very stage where it was exhibited, I felt an inclination to doubt the reality of what had passed." P. 196.

The description of the field itself, as it appeared to our author so soon after the battle, cannot fail to interest our readers.

"The field of battle plainly told the history of the fight, as soon as the positions of the hostile armies were pointed out. The extent was so limited, and the interval between them so easily seen and commanded, that the various manœuvres could be traced with the eye upon the field itself, as upon a military plan of a foot square. All ghastly remains of the carnage had been either burned or buried, and the reliques of the fray which yet remained were not in themselves of a very imposing kind. Bones of horses, quantities of old hats, rags of clothes, scraps of leather, and fragments of books and papers strewed the ground in great profusion, especially where the action had been most bloody. Among the last, those of most frequent occurrence were the military livrets, or memorandum-books of the French soldiers. I picked up one of these, which shows, by its order and arrangement, the strict discipline which at one time was maintained in the French army when the soldier was obliged to enter in such an accompt-book, not only the state of his pay and equipments, but the occasions on which he served and distinguished himself, and the punishments,

if any, which he had incurred. At the conclusion is a list of the duties of the private soldier, amongst which is that of knowing how to dress his victuals, and particularly to make good soup. The livret in my possession appears te have belonged to the Sieur Mallet, of the second battalion of the 8th regiment of the line: he had been in the service since the year 1791, until the 18th of June, 1815, which day probably closed his account, and with it all his earthly hopes and prospects. The fragments of German prayerbooks were so numerous, that I have little doubt a large edition had been pressed into the military service of one or other party, to be used as cartridge-paper. Letters, and other papers, memorandums of business, or pledges of friendship and affection, lay scattered about on the field-few of them were now legible. Quack advertisements were also to be found where English soldiers had fallen. Among the universal remedies announced by these empirics, there was none against the dangers of such a field.

"Besides these fragments, the surface of the field shewed evident marks of the battle. The tall crops of maize and rye were trampled into a thick black paste, under the feet of men and horses, the ground was torn in many places by the explosion of shells, and in others strangely broken up and rutted by the wheels of the artillery. Such signs of violent and rapid motion recorded, that

Rank rush'd on rank, with squadron squadron closed,
The thunder ceased not, nor the fire reposed.

Yet, abstracting from our actual knowledge of the dreadful cause of such appearances, they reminded me not a little of those which are seen upon a common a few days after a great fair has been held there. These transitory memorials were in a rapid course of disappearing, for the plough was already at work in several parts of the field. There is, perhaps, more feeling than wisdom in the wish, yet I own I should have been better pleased, if, for one season at least, the field where, in imagination, the ploughshare was coming in frequent contact with the corpses of the gallant dead, had been suffered to remain fallow. But the corn which must soon wave there will be itself a temporary protection to their humble graves, while it will speedily remove from the face of nature the melancholy traces of the strife of man." P. 198.

In his road to Paris, our author passes through Antwerp, and the newly-created kingdom of the Netherlands, which gives rise to some exceedingly good observations upon the practice of interchange of territories, the substitution of natural for moral boundaries, the arrondissements, indemnities, and all the jargon of modern political legerdemain. The supposition that districts and kingdoms can be transposed from one sovereignty to another, as fields and plains under a commission of inclosure, is to suppose the moral feeling of the inhabitants little above

the

the live stock upon the land which they cultivate. For if it be not, experience has shewn, that this unnatural transfer, has only increased the affection of the inhabitants to their original Lord, and exasperated their hatred against their newly created Sovereign. The effect of this measure, where there is power enough to repress the rising spirit of former attachment, can only be, by destroying these very prejudices, to destroy those finer feelings of the mind which spring out of them, and to damp the ardour of all honest patriotism and public spirit.

In his review of the cathedral at Antwerp our author is struck with the paltriness and incongruity of those little dirty wax figures in tawdry dresses, which are a disgrace to the noble fabrics in which they are so absurdly displayed.

"While the English traveller is called upon for once to acknowledge the moderation of the French, who have left at least one monument of art in the place to which it was most appropriate, he will probably wish they had carried off with them the trash of wax figures, which, to the disgrace of good taste and common sense, are still the objects of popular adoration. Abstracted from all polemics, one can easily conceive that the sight of an interesting painting, representing to our material organs the portrait of a saint, or an affecting scene of Scripture, may not only be an appropriate ornament in the temple of worship, but, like churchmusic, may have its effect in fixing the attention, and aiding the devotion of the congregation. It may be also easily understood, and readily forgiven, that when kneeling before the very altar to which our ancestors in trouble resorted for comfort, we may be gradually led to annex a superstitious reverence to the place itself: But when, in the midst of such a cathedral as that of Antwerp, one of the grandest pieces of Gothic architecture which Europe can show, when among the long-drawn aisles and lofty arches, which seem almost the work of demi-gods, so much does the art and toil bestowed surpass what modern times can present,-when, in the midst of such a scene, we find a wax figure of the Virgin, painted, patched, frizzed, and powdered; with a tarnished satin gown (the skirt held up by two cherubs,) paste ear-rings and necklace, differing in no respect, but in size, from the most paltry doll that ever was sold in a toy-shop; and observe this incongruous and ridiculous swamy the object of fervid and zealous adoration from the votaries who are kneeling before it, we see the idolatry of the Romish church in a point of view disgusting and humiliating as that of ancient Egypt, and cease to wonder at the obstinacy of the prelate of Liege and his brethren, who fear the light which universal toleration would doubtless throw upon the benighted worship of their great Diana." P.231.

We shall not follow our author over all the ground over which he travels, but shall conclude our extracts from the volume, with

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