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of the day.-Fatigue, grief, and anguish of mind now threatened Madame De L. with the most serious consequences. It was thought necessary to bleed her, and, after some difficulty, a surgeon was procured. She can never forget, she says, the formidable apparition of this warlike phlebotomist. A figure, six feet high, with ferocious whiskers, a great sabre at his side, and four huge pistols in his belt, stalked up, with a fierce and careless air, to her bedside; and, when she said she was timid about the operation, answered harshly, "So am not I,—I have killed three hundred men and upwards, in the field, in my time,-one of them only this morning,-I think, then, I may venture to bleed a woman,-come, come, let us see your arm." She was bled accordingly,-and, contrary to all expectation, was pretty well again in the morning. She insisted, for a long time, on carrying the body of her husband in the carriage along with her, but her father, after indulging her for a few days, contrived to fall behind with this precious deposit, and informed her, when he came up again, that it had been found necessary to bury it privately, in a spot which he would not specify. Anonymous.

ADVENTURES OF A "FAIR BELGIAN."

I HAD the good fortune to travel from Brussels to Paris, with a young Irish officer and his wife, an Antwerp lady of only sixteen; of great beauty, and much innocence and naiveté of manners. The officer had been in the battle of Quatre Bras as well as of Waterloo. An anecdote of his fair Belgian, which he justly took some pride in relating, will serve to give an idea of the kind of scenes then occurring, the horrors and the dangers of which it is so difficult to describe. He was living in cantonments at Nivelles, having his wife with him. The unexpected advance of the French called him off in a moment's notice to Quatre Bras; but he left his wife, with his servant, one horse, and the family baggage, which was packed upon a large

ass.

Retreat at the time was not anticipated; but,

being suddenly ordered on the Saturday morning, he contrived to get a message to his wife, to make the best of her way, attended by the servant, to Brussels. The servant, a foreigner, had availed himself of the opportunity to take leave of both master and mistress, and made off with the horse, which had been left for the use of the latter. With a firmness becoming the wife of a British officer, she boldly commenced on foot her own retreat of 25 miles, leading the ass, and carefully preserving the baggage. No violence was dared by any one to so innocent a pilgrim, but no one could afford to assist her. She was soon in the midst of the columns of the retreating British army, and much retarded and endangered by the artillery. Her fatigue was great; it rained in waterspouts, and the thunder and lightning were dreadful in the extreme. She continued to advance, and got upon the great road from Charleroi to Brussels at Waterloo, when the army on the Saturday evening were taking up their line for the awful conflict. In so extensive a field, and among 80,000 men, it was in vain to seek her husband; she knew that the sight of her there would only have embarrassed and distressed him: she kept slowly advancing to Brussels all the Saturday night, the way choked with all sorts of conveyances, waggons, and horses; multitudes of native fugitives on the road, and flying into the great wood; and numbers of the wounded working their painful way, dropping at every step, and breathing their last. Many persons were actually killed by others, in the desperate efforts of the latter to remove impediments to their escape; and, to add to the horrors, the rain continued unabated, and lightning still raged as if the heavens were torn to pieces. Full twelve miles further, in the night, this young woman marched, up to her knees in mud, her boots wore entirely off, so that she was barefooted: but, still unhurt, she continued to advance; and although thousands lost their baggage, and many their lives, she calmly entered Brussels in the morning in safety, and without the loss of an article. In a few hours after her arrival, commenced the cannons' roar of the tremendous Sunday, exposed to which, for ten hours, she knew her

husband to be; and, after a day and night of agony, she was amply rewarded by finding herself in his arms, he unhurt, and she nothing the worse, on the Monday. Simpson's Visit to Flanders.

WATERLOO.

FROM eleven in the morning till seven at night, the battle consisted of a succession of reiterated assaults, on the part of the French, with unabated fury, and increasing numbers, and often with a boldness and deadly effect, which perplexed our soldiers, and put their matchless firmness to the utmost trial. It may be believed that every fresh onset swept away multitudes of our infantry; still the survivors gave not an inch of the ground, but made good the lines, and firm the squares. No men in Europe could have endured as they did. Again and again the enemy's cannon and cavalry rebounded from their "adamantine front," dismayed and scattered. These were the breathing times of our heroes! Line was, with admirable alacrity, formed for a greater breadth of fire than the squares afforded, immediately on seeing the back plates of the cuirasses; when masses of French infantry approached with a heavy fire of musketry. "They did go through their work," as Napoleon often muttered, "unlike any troops he had ever seen." Such were the visits of the cannon and cavalry, that, as I have repeatedly been assured by officers with whom I have conversed, these interludes of infantry battle were a kind of refreshment_after their toil with the other arms! They never took the trouble to look at the numbers; they felt as if boys had attacked them, merely to keep them in wind: and invariably routed the columns by a very few steps in advance with pointed bayonets.-The duke, in visiting different points, was often received with shouts of impatience to be led on. The gallant 95th were very tired of the iron cases, and the iron grape-shot. An immense body of French infantry happened to approach that noble regiment at one time when the commander was paying them a visit; "Let us at 'em, my Lord;

let us down upon 'em," quite regardless of their numbers. "Not yet," replied the chief, "not yet, my brave men, but you shall have at them soon: firm a little longer; we must not be beat; what would they say in England?"-We directed our course westward along the British right wing. There was no difficulty in tracing the well defended line,-it was now a line of graves. The survivors never quitted it but to advance. The very ground was hallowed, and it was trode by us with respect and gratitude: the multitude below, so lately interred, occasioned a very impressive subject of reflection. If the unknown dead called forth these feelings, much more did the consciousness of standing on the spot, where some one known to us had "nobly fought and nobly died." We stood where the interesting Sir William De Lancy had met his death, when rallying, with great spirit and effect, a battalion of Hanoverians, which had got into confusion. He nobly refused to occupy the time of the surgeons with his wound, which he had heard them pronounce mortal, when they thought him insensible. He was removed to the village of Waterloo, where he died. This gallant young man's early name, and just favour with his commander, excited general and deep interest for his fate; and nowhere more than in Edinburgh, where he had been married only a few weeks before. Indeed the instances of heroic death were as numerous as they are affecting. Colonel Miller of the First Guards requested a sight of the colours, under which he had fought. He kissed them fervently, and begged they might be waved over him till he expired. The lamented Captain Curzon, Lord Scarsdale's son, met his fate with almost "military glee." In falling from his horse, he called out gaily to Lord March, who was riding with him at a gallop,-" Good b'ye, dear March:" and, by one effort more, when his friend had left him for the urgent duty of animating a foreign corps in very critical circumstances, he looked up, and cried, "Well done, dear March."-The afflicting idea strongly occurred of the next day's horrors of such a field as Waterloo. Numbers of the desperately wounded and dying, in the midst of the dead, raised their

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heads, when visiters to the scene passed them, to implore water, or to beg death at their hands, to end their agonies. Many of the wounded were not removed till the Wednesday, the third day after the battle.— All was now hushed in the stillness of the grave, the sad consummation which the wounded implored. No one, who has not seen it, can imagine how touching it is to see, strewed over the ground, fragments of what the brave men wore or carried when they fell. Among the straw of the trodden down corn, which still covered the field, lay caps, shoes, pieces of uniforms, and skirts, tufts, cockades, feathers, ornamental horse-hair, red and black, and, what most struck us, great quantities of letters and leaves of books. The latter were much too far defaced by rain and mud, to make it worth our while to lift any of them. In one letter we could just make out the words, so affecting in the circumstances, My dear Husband."-No part of the field was more fertile in impressive associations, than the ground of the 30th and 73d regiments, brigaded under our gallant countryman, severely wounded in the battle, Sir Colin Halket. To no square did the artillery, and particularly the cuirassiers, pay more frequent and tremendous visits; and never was it shaken for a moment. The almost intimacy of the soldiers with these death-bringing visitants, increased so much as the day advanced, that they began to recognise their faces. Their boldness much provoked our men. They galloped up to the bayonet-point; where, of course, their horses made a full stop, to the great danger of pitching their riders into the square. They then rode round and round the fearless bulwark of bayonets: and, in all the confidence of panoply, often coolly walked their horses, to have more time to search for some chasm in the ranks, where they might ride in. The balls absolutely rung upon their mail, and nothing incommoded the rider, except bringing down his horse, which at last became the general order. In that event, he surrendered himself, and was received within the square, till he could be sent prisoner to the rear,—a generosity ill-merited, when it is considered that the French spared very few lives, which it was in their power to take. Many offi

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