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We went on to a cottage to visit old Widow Symons, who is "past fourscore," with a nice rosy face, but was bent quite double; she was most friendly, shaking hands with us all, asking which was I, and repeating many kind blessings : May the Lord attend ye with mirth and joy; may He ever be with ye in this world, and when ye leave it." To V when told she was going to be married, she said, 'May the Lord be a guide to ye in your future, and may every happiness attend ye." She was very talkative; and when I said I hoped to see her again, she expressed an expectation that "she should be called any day," and so did Kitty Kear.

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We went into three other cottages: to Mrs. Symons's (daughter-in-law to the old widow living next door), who had an "unwell boy"; then across a little burn to another old woman's; and afterwards peeped into Blair the fiddler's. We drove back, and got out again to visit old Mrs. Grant, who is so tidy and clean, and to whom I gave a dress and handkerchief, and she said, "You're too kind to me, you're over kind to me; ye give me more every year, and I get older every year." After talking some time with her, she said, "I am happy to see ye looking so nice." She had tears in her eyes, and speaking of V's going, said, "I'm very sorry, and I think she is sorry hersel';" and, having said she feared she would not see her (the Princess) again, said, "I am very sorry I said that, but I meant no harm; I always say just what I think, not what is fut” (fit). Dear old lady! she is such a pleasant person.

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BATTLE OF WATERLOO.

IN March, 1815, all Europe was startled with the intelligence that the lion1 encaged at Elba had contrived to escape, and was now at large in France. He was still the idol of the French nation. He was received with open arms, and by the 1st of June was ready to take the field with a large army.

Meanwhile a Prussian army of 100,000 men under Blucher, and one of about 80,000 British, Belgians, and Germans under Wellington, had marched into the Netherlands, while still larger armies of Austrians and Russians were rapidly approaching. Napoleon knew that his only chance depended on fighting before the allied forces could unite. On the

14th of June he crossed the frontier of France with 125,000 men, resolved to fight Blucher and Wellington separately, if possible. By the rapidity of his movements he engaged the two armies before they could unite. On the 16th of June he beat Blucher at Ligny,2 and compelled him to retire.

The English army meanwhile took up a position at Waterloo. There Napoleon and Wellington met in battle for the first and last time. The French army mounted 250 cannon, the allied army had only about half that number. Each army consisted of about 70,000 men. The combatants were drawn up on two parallel ridges, with a slight hollow between. The night before the battle was very wet. The soldiers lay down in the meadows and the rye-fields, wrapping themselves in their blankets and overcoats, and drawing close around their camp fires. At four o'clock the grey dawn appeared, and then the soldiers were astir to prepare and eat the breakfast that might prove to be their last.

The first cannon was fired at twenty minutes past eleven. There had been some delay occasioned by the rain of the

night before, which had damped the cartridges in the loaded muskets in each army, so that they could be neither fired nor drawn. It seemed at one time as if there was to be no battle, or a battle without musketry. However, an English sergeant found that, by whirling his musket rapidly round, the cartridge became loose, and gradually came out. His example was followed by the two armies, now drawn up within sight of each other. The battle consisted of a succession of attacks by the French upon the British lines. Napoleon, after sending a heavy storm of cannon-shot into the British columns, would immediately charge down upon them with his splendid cavalry. The British were formed into compact squares to meet these fierce charges. A welldirected cannon-ball would often cut a lane in one of these solid squares; but before the cuirassiers3 could arrive the living had drawn a little closer together and filled the places of the dead. Like an angry billow beaten back on a rockbound coast, the fiery horsemen recoiled from the triple hedge of bayonet points, unharming but not unharmed. As they rode back, many a horse lost its rider, and many a rider lost his horse. Then the artillery would try the effect of another iron storm, and before the smoke could clear away another troop of gallant horsemen would rush madly on. When the strength of the French cavalry was almost spent in these bootless charges, nearly the whole of the British cavalry, their horses being comparatively fresh, dashed at full gallop into the hollow, and swept the lancers and cuirassiers of the enemy before them.

The Duke had for some time been longing that “ either Blucher or night would come," when at four o'clock the boom of distant cannon gave the signal of his approach. Napoleon then knew that the time had come for one grand final attack. Putting himself at the head of the "Old Guard," which had been kept in reserve, he advanced with them to the foot of the British position, and there he left them under the command of Ney, his favourite general.

The British guards met them with a murderous volley at fifty yards, and then with a ringing cheer burst down the slope to encounter the "Invincibles "4 of France. "They are hopelessly mixed," cried the fallen Bonaparte, as he rode away to the rear. "Let the whole line advance," was

Wellington's final order.

The whole French army broke up like a frozen river by a sudden thaw; its fragments, some jammed together, and some loosely scattered, went rushing on in one headlong stream back to their own country. The forces under Wellington were too exhausted to pursue the vanquished foe.

But Blucher was already on the field, and his soldiers took a terrible revenge for their past defeats.

Napoleon now ceased to be the central figure in the civilized world. He was banished to the Isle of St. Helena, in the South Atlantic, and there he died in 1821.-[Dawe and Lawson's History of England, published in the Holborn Series].

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[MAJOR MACREADY gives the following narrative of what he observed at the Battle of Waterloo. It was published in the United Service Magazine in 1852.]

WHEN I reached Lloyd's abandoned guns, I stood near them for about a minute to contemplate the scene: it was grand beyond description. Hougoumont1 and its wood sent up a broad flame through the dark masses of smoke that overhung the field; beneath this cloud the French were indistinctly visible. Here a waving mass of long red feathers could be seen; there gleams as from a sheet of

steel showed that the cuirassiers2 were moving; four hundred cannon were belching forth fire and death on every side; the roaring and shouting were indistinguishably commixed -together they gave me the idea of a labouring volcano. Bodies of infantry and cavalry were pouring down on us, and it was time to leave contemplation, so I moved towards our columns, which were standing up in square.

Our regiment and 73rd formed one, and 33rd and 69th another; to our right beyond them were the Guards, and on our left the Hanoverian and German legion of our division. As I entered the rear face of our square I had to step over a body, and looking down, recognised Harry Beere, an officer of our Grenadiers, who about an hour before shook hands with me, laughing, as I left the columns.

I was on the usual terms of military intimacy with poor Harry—that is to say, if either of us had died a natural death, the other would have pitied him as a good fellow, and smiled at his neighbour as he congratulated him on the step; but seeing his herculean frame and animated countenance thus suddenly stiff and motionless before me (I know not whence the feeling could originate, for I had just seen my dearest friend drop, almost with indifference), the tears started in my eyes, as I sighed out, "Poor Harry!" The tear was not dry on my cheek when poor Harry was no longer thought of. In a few minutes after, the enemy's cavalry galloped up and crowned the crest of our position.

Our guns were abandoned, and they formed between the two brigades, about a hundred paces in our front. Their first charge was magnificent. As soon as they quickened their trot into a gallop, the cuirassiers bent their heads, so that the peaks of their helmets looked like visors, and they seemed cased in armour from the plume to the saddle.

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Not a shot was fired till they were within thirty yards, when the word was given, and our men fired away at them.

The effect was magical. Through the smoke we could

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