Further still, in the rear of the north bank of the Alma, on many a tree or branching brushwood, the carrion crow awaited in lonely solitude, unstirred by the roar of artillery, the grim repast of the coming night; or lazily turned his head as he heard the scream of the sea vulture, which perched on the barren cliffs which overhung the Euxine, stretched out its featherless neck, and screamed towards the scene of carnage, as if summoning all its kind to their awful meal. "The vulture mounteth up and maketh her nest on high; she dwelleth and abideth on the rock upon the crag of the rock; from thence she seeketh the prey, and her eyes behold afar off; her young ones suck up blood, and where the slain are there is she."

Beyond the charge of the Guards could be seen the mountain top crowned with the still unbroken lines of Russia, the masses of heavy cavalry, and the clouds of the Cossacks: while, as if to light up the gorgeous scene, as water lights up the expanse of distance, the unclouded noon-day sun shot fiery beams from bayonet point and glancing sword. Nor would it be right in such a survey survey of the battle field, in the height of its carnage, to pass by those noble coadjutors of the human race in their scenes of peril-the horses of war, as,-their flanks reeking and shining with sweat,—their sides spangled with the froth of their champed bit,-their mouths foaming with blood,—they strained up the side of the hill, bearing their gallant riders to victory or to death. Here riderless, with stirrups clanking beneath their belly, scared and terrified they took awful leaps or replunged into the stream; or there scattered far and

wide on hill and plain the honest brutes puffed out their leathern hides in dying groans without complaint, in sympathy with the officer who breathed his last with his head reclined on the neck of the gallant beast which had borne him through so many a day of life. "The glory of his nostril is terrible; he paweth in the valley, and rejoiceth in his strength: he goeth on to meet the armed men. He mocketh at fear, and is not affrighted; neither turneth back at the sword. The quiver rattleth against him, the glittering spear and the shield. He swalloweth the ground with fierceness and rage; neither believeth he that it is the sound of the trumpet. He saith among the trumpets, Ha, ha; and he smelleth the battle afar off, the thunder of the captains, and the shouting."

Such was the bird's-eye view of the battle.

The grey lines of Russia for a moment stared on the Fusiliers, as a wall of stones erected by the hands of man in the hour of expected tempest, may stand, as it were, gazing on the huge billow which far off at sea tosses its lofty head on high. Another, and yet another moment, and the advancing wave has dashed on the shore, hurling its impetuous head against the long grey wall. For an instant, the mass of waters hides the object of their wrathful attack. Another moment, and those waters in angry and murmuring tumult have returned to their mighty home; but the wall, shivered to a thousand fragments, is gone-save where here and there some mass of stones or rock heavier than the rest withstood the fury of the sea, and rear their shorn and isolated heads as if expectant of the next attack.

So the grey lines of Russia stood a moment gazing on the high head of that advancing wave as it swelled and rolled along the sea of battle; they watched the black beaver, and they heard the shout of the approach; another moment, and the advancing tide has hurled its impetuous fury on the line, and when smoke and dust had, in another minute subsided, yawning with a thousand gaps, the grey wall of Russia stood a shivered wreck-save here and there, where around some hero a few grey coated warriors still struggled to preserve their footing; or entangled amidst the heaps of slain, others were unable to retreat. They fled.

And at this moment the two regiments which had been hitherto treading in the footsteps of the guards, fell in the same line with them, and forming to almost a boundless extent, retook the battery, and charged on the vantage ground which they had taken. The Russians were driven back with a terrible slaughter. Codrington's light division, Pennyfather's second division of the guards formed line on the ground they had won.

At this moment the head of a column of two hundred Russians were seen moving over the still unattained ridge of the hill, and began to descend on the advancing line. From the bottom of the hill Lord Raglan saw the new danger, and ordering some guns to be immediately brought up to play upon them, firing over the heads of our own men made rapid lanes in the front of the new Russian columns. Another minute, and the enemy melted away behind the edge of the mountain. So rapid and soft was their dispersion, that their departure seemed more like the vanishing

of figures in a dream, or the thawing of snow figures beneath the sudden heat of the sun. Enough, they had fled; and the victory may at that moment be declared to have been won.

On the right of the Guards, loud cheers were now heard of a somewhat unwonted nature to British ears; having crawled or sprung like lynxes from the crags, the French regiments of Algiers, having gazed into the secrets of the sea-gull's nest, and startled the silent vulture from his lone dominion, had formed a line on the edge of a precipice. The Russians on all sides gave way, and the advancing French had now come up on the flank of the victorious English, while on the extreme left of our lines, the brigade of Highlanders directly in front of an enormous battery of seven guns, closed in like an opposite wing to the French. The carnage was horrible: the Russian columns recoiling from the charge of the Zouaves, only turned to meet death upon the British bayonet. For five minutes the noise of battle changed its peculiar sound, and instead of the roar of musketry or the voices of men, the sound that struck on the ear was the splash of blood. On the only side now open to them,-on the south-east of their position the Russians precipitately retreated; while two troops of horse artillery, which had plunged across the Alma, galloping up the hill, played with such terrible effect on the tumultuous rear of the retreating army, that they fell as if mown down by a sickle.

By three o'clock on the ever memorable 20th of September, on the crown of that proud hill-proud in the annals of British warfare,-Lord Raglan and his

staff met the victorious generals of France and England, and with the Guards and Highlanders around him, the river rolling beneath him, the hill-side covered with the mantle of the dead, the receding guns and columns of Russia roaring in fainter and fainter echoes towards the south-east, the victory of Alma was won and proclaimed!

CHAPTER V.

THE NIGHT ATTER THE BATTLE-THE DEAD.

DURING the hours of that brief afternoon that succeeded the battle, the intense excitement which had not yet subsided, so occupied the minds of the English army, that the condition of the wounded, the dying and the dead, who lay scattered and chilling beneath the rising stars, was forgotten in the attention paid to the retreating Russians, and the prisoners; the field that had been won, and the march that was to follow.

The soldier was resting for a moment after the anguish of those memorable three hours on the sepulchral turf or the wheel of the gun. His brain and his mind whirled in such a chaos of confusion that he was no more thinking of the multitudes of dead that lay beneath his touch, than we, when in deep conversation we pass a churchyard, think of the dusty occupant of the lowly grave. The still continued ring of the noise of the battle-field deafening the ear, the occasional discharge of the gun in pursuit of the Russians, or the