THIS famous battle field lies about ten miles from Brussels. It was a cloudy, gloomy day, that I left the city to visit this spot on which the fate of Europe was once decided. 1 stopped a moment to look at the house where the ball was held the night before the battle, and from the thoughtless gaiety of which so many officers were summoned by the thunders of cannon to the field of battle. Before reaching the field, we passed through the beautiful forest of Soignies, composed of tall beeches, and which Byron by poetical license has changed into the forest of Ardennes. Ardennes is more than thirty miles distant in an opposite direction, but still it was more classic than Soignies, and so Byron in describing the passage of the British army through it on their way to battle says:

"And Ardennes waves above them her green leaves

Wet with nature's tear-drops as they pass.
Grieving, if aught inanimate e'er grieves,
O'er the unreturning brave-alas!

Ere evening to be trodden like the grass,
Which, now beneath them, but above shall grow
In its next verdure, when this fiery mass,
Of living valor rolling on the foe,
And burning with high hope, shall moulder
cold and low."

At length we came to the small village of Waterloo, and, taking a guide, wandered over the field. Not to weary one with confused details, conceive a large undulating plain with two ridges rising out of it lying opposite to each other, and gently curving in from the cen

tre.

These opposing ridges are mere elevations of ground separated by a shallow valley, varying from a quarter to a half mile in width. Standing on one of these curved ridges, along which the English army was posted in two lines, the other ridge or elevation of ground faces you, along which the French were drawn up. The main road from Brussels to Genappe cuts directly across this valley, and through these ridges in the centre of the field. On the extreme right is the chateau of Hougoumont, a farm house with an orchard surrounded by a high wall in the shape of a parallelogram. This defended Wellington's right. The centre rested its left on a small house called La Haye Sainte, while the left wing extended farther on to another farm house called Ter la Haye. Thus fortified at both extremities and in the centre, the allied forces awaited the approach

of the French on the opposite ridge. Fifty-four thousand men are drawn up for the slaughter on one side a mile and a half in length, while Bonaparte brings to the battle seventy-five thousand Frenchmen. Back of the French lines is a house called La Belle Alliance, near which Bonaparte placed his observatory.

This was the position of the field and such the strength of the mighty armies that stood thirty years ago, on the morning of the 15th of June, looking each other in the faces. Two unconquered generals were at their head, and the fate of Europe the stake before them. As I stood on the mound reared over the slain, and looked over this field along which the grain waved as it waved on the day of that fierce battle, a world of conflicting emotions struggled in my heart. One moment the magnificence and pomp of this stern array converted it into a field of glory-the next the conception of the feelings that agitated the bosoms of these two military leaders, and the terrible results depending-all Europe hanging in breathless suspense on the battle, imparted to it a moral sublimity utterly overwhelming; the next the fierce onset, the charging squadron, the mêlée of horses and riders; the falling of mangled companies before the destructive fire; the roar of artillery, and the blast of the bugle, and braying of trumpets, and roll of drums, and the tossing of plumes and banners, and wheeling of regiments, and shock of cavalry, changed it into a scene of excitement, and daring, and horror, that made the blood flow back chill and dark on the heart. Then came the piles of the dead and the groans of the wounded, whole ranks of orphans and whole villages of mourners; till a half-uttered "wo to the warrior," was choked by tears of compassion.

Thirty years ago Wellington stood where I stood, and surveyed the field over which the two mighty armies were manœuvering. At length, at this very hour (eleven o'clock), when I am gazing upon it, the cannonading begins, and soon rolls the whole length of the line. In a moment it is all in imagination before me. Yonder on the extreme right Jerome Bonaparte with 12,000 men descends like a mountain stream on the Chateau of Hougoumont. Column after column, the dark masses march straight into the deadly fire that opens in every direction. In perfect order and steady front they press up to the very walls, and thrust their bayonets through the door itself.

At

length the house takes fire, and the shrieks of the wounded who are burning up, rise a moment over the roar of the strife, and then naught is heard but the confused noise of battle. Slowly, reluctantly, those 12,000 surge back from the wall—12,000, did I say? No, in this rapid half hour 1,500 have fallen to rise no more, and there in that orchard of four acres, their bodies are scattered, nay, rather piled, besmeared with powder and blood. Between me and them fresh columns of French infantry, headed by a long row of cannon that belch forth their fires every few moments, come steadily up to the English squares. Whole ranks of living men fall at every discharge, but those firm squares neither shake nor falter. The earth trembles as cannon answers cannon, burying their loads in solid masses of human flesh. In the midst of this awful mêlée, the brave Picton charges home on the French, and they roll back like a wave from the rock-but a bullet has entered his temple, and he sallies back and falls at the head of his followers. And yonder, to save their flying infantry, a column of French cavalry throw themselves with the ocean's mighty swing on the foe, but these rock-fast squares stand rooted to the ground. Slowly and desperately that daring column walk their horses round and round the squares, dashing in at every opening, but in vain. And now from wing to wing it is one wild battle, and I see nothing but the smoke of cannon, the tossing of plumes, and the soaring of the French eagle over the charging columns; and I hear naught but the roll of the drum, the sound of martial music, the explosion of artillery, and the blast of the bugle sounding the charge. There stands Wellington, weary and anxious. Wherever a square has wavered, he has thrown himself into it, cheering on his men. But now he stands and surveys the field of blood and sees his posts driven in, his army exhausted, and exclaims, while he wipes the sweat from his brow, "Would to God that Blucher or night would come." The noble Gordon steps up to him, begging him not to stand where he is so exposed to the shots of the enemy, and while he is speaking, a bullet pierces his own body and he falls. Bonaparte surveys the field of slaughter with savage ferocity, and pours fresh columns on the English lines, while the cavalry charge with desperate valor on the English infantry. For four long hours has the battle raged and victory wavered. But look a dark object emerges from yonder distant wood, and stretches out into the field. And now there are banners,

The

and horsemen, and moving columns. Prussians are coming. Bonaparte sees them, and knowing that nothing can save him but the destruction of the English lines before they arrive, orders up his old Imperial Guard, that had been kept aloof from battle all the day. He addresses them in a few fiery words, telling them that all rests on their valor. They shout "the Emperor for ever," till the sound is heard even to the British lines With the impetuous Ney at their head, they move in perfect order and beautiful array down the slope. The storm of battle is hushed. No drum, or trumpet, or martial strain, cheers them on. No bugle sounds the charge. In dead silence and with firm and steady step they come. The allied forces look with indescribable awe and dread on the approach of those battalions that had never yet been conquered. But the momentary pause is like the hush of the storm ere it gathers for a fiercer sweep. The cannon open at once, and whole ranks of that gallant band fall like a snow wreath from the mountain, yet they falter not;-over the mangled forms they pass, and with steady, resistless force, come up face to face with their foe. The lines reel, and totter, and sway backward. field seems lost-but no, that awful discharge on their bosoms from that rank of men that seemed to rise from the ground has turned the day-the invincible guard stop as if stunned by some terrible blow. A second discharge and they wheel and fly. The whole English line now advance to the assault. Look at that mangled column, how that discharge of artillery has torn its head and carried away half its number.

The

'Tis over, that magnificent army that formed in such beautiful order in the morning on the heights, is now rent, and the fugitives darken the field. 'Tis night, but the Prussians, fresh on the field, pursue the flying the long night. Oh, what scenes of horror and dread are witnessed, where the thunder of distant cannon comes booming on the midnight air! Death is dragging his car over the multitude, and the very heavens look aghast at the merciless slaughter.

'Tis night, the roar of the far off cannon is heard at intervals, but here it is all quiet. The battle is hushed, and the conflicting legions have parted to meet no more. The full round moon is sailing quietly up the blue heavens, serene and peaceful as ever. The stars shine on as if they looked on no scene of wo A weary form is slowly passing over the field. It

is Wellington, weeping as he goes, for his horse's hoofs strike at every step in puddles of human blood, and the moonbeams fall on more than twenty thousand corpses strewed over the trampled ground. The groans of the dying and the shrieks of the suffering mingle together, while the sudden death-cry rings over all. And the unconscious moon is smiling on, painting the far off landscape in beauty. God in heaven, is this thy earth, and are those mangled mountains of flesh thy creatures? How little nature seems to sympathize with the scenes that transpire in her presence! It is true the grain lies trampled, and crushed, and red on the plain, but the wind passes as gently over it, stirring the tree-tops as it goes, as if no groans were mingled with its breath. The full-orbed moon rides up her gorgeous pathway of stars, smiling down as sweetly on those crushed and shrieking masses, as if naught but the shepherd boy reclined on the field and gazed on her beauty. Nay, God himself seems not to notice this fierce attack on the happiness of his creatures, but lets nature, like a slumbering child, breathe peacefully on. And yet this is an awful night, and there is an aggregate of wo and agony here no mind can measure. And he, the author of it all, the haughty homicide who has strode like a demon over Europe and left his infatuated armies on three continents, where is he? A fugitive for his life; while the roar of the distant cannon coming faintly on his ear, tells him of the field and the power he has left behind. His race is run, that baleful star has gone down, and the nations can breathe free again."

Such were my thoughts as I stood on this greatest of human battle-fields. It is evident to an impartial observer, that if Grouchy had obeyed Bonaparte, as Blucher did Wellington; or had Blucher stayed away as did Grouchy, Bonaparte would have won the field, and no one could have told where that scourge of man would have stopped. But God had said, "thus far and no farther," and his chariot went down just as it was nearing the goal. The Christian cannot muse over such a field of blood without the deepest execration of Bonaparte's character. The warrior may recount the deeds wrought in that mighty conflict, but the Christian's eye looks farther-to the broken hearts it has made, and to the fearful retributions of the judgment. We will not speak of the physical suffering crowded into this one day, for we cannot appreciate it. The sufferings of one single man with his shattered bones piercing him as he struggles in his pain; his suffocation, and thirst, and bit

ter prayers drowned amid the roar of battle; his mental agony as he thinks of his wife and children; his last death-shriek, are utterly inconceivable. Multiply the sum of this man's suffering by twenty thousand, and the aggregate who could tell? Then charge all this over to one man's ambition and who shall measure his guilt, or say how dark and terrible his doom should be? Bonaparte was a man of great intellect, but he stands charged with crimes that blacken and torture the soul for ever, and his accusers and their witnesses will rise from almost every field in Europe and come in crowds from the banks of the Nile. He met and conquered many armies, but never stood face to face with such a terrible array as when he shall be summoned from his grave to meet this host of witnesses. The murderous artillery, the terrific charge, and the headlong courage will then avail him nothing. Truth, and Justice, and Mercy, are the only helpers there, and they cannot help him. He trod them down in his pride and fury, and they shall tread him down for ever. He assaulted the peace and happiness of the earth, and the day of reckoning is sure. He put his glory above all human good or ill, and drove his chariot over a pathway of human hearts, and the God of the human heart shall avenge them and abase him. I care not what good he did in founding institutions and overturning rotten thrones; good was not his object, but personal glory. Besides, this sacking and burning down cities to build greater, has always been a favorite measure with conquerors and the favorite apology with their eulogisers. It is false in fact, and false if true in the inference drawn from it. It is not true that improvement was his purpose, nor does it exculpate him if it was. God does not permit man to produce happiness this way without a special command. When he wishes a corrupt nation or people to be swept away, he sends his earthquake or pestilence, or if man is to be his anointed instrument, he anoints him in the presence of the world. He may, and does, allow one wicked thing to scourge another, but the Scourger is a criminal while he fulfils the design, for he acts not for the Deity, but for himself. The grand outline of Bonaparte's mental character-the great achievements he performed the mighty power he wielded and the awe with which he inspired the world, have blinded men to his true character, and he remains half apotheosised to this day, while the sadness of his fate-being sent to eat out his heart on a solitary rock in mid ocean-has created a

morbid sympathy for him, anything but manly or just. The very manner of his death we think has contributed to this wrong feeling. Dying amidst an awful storm, while trees were falling and the sea flinging itself as if in convulsions far up on the island, have imparted something of the supernatural to him. And then his fierceness to the last, for though the night was wild and terrible, a wilder night was over his heart, and his spirit, in its last fitful struggle, was watching the current of a heavy fight, and his last dying words were tête d'armée, "head of the army." He has gone, and his mighty armies with him, but the day shall come when the world shall read his history as they read that of Cesar Borgia, and point to his tomb with a shudder.

It is strange that such men as Bonaparte should always regard themselves as fated to perform what they do, as if themselves stupified with their own success, and conscious-acting voluntarily though they were-that the results were greater than human calculations could make them. Napoleon often spoke of himself as under a fate that protected him from death while he prosecuted his mad ambition. He may have been right, for Pharaoh was impelled on by his own wicked heart to accomplish a great and glorious plan. How sweet it is to know there is one right Being in the Universe who can and will eventually adjust all things well!

Before leaving the field I was struck with one fact my guide told me, illustrating the brutality of the soldier. He was a native of Waterloo, and the morning after the battle stole forth to the field to pillage the slain. But the soldiers had been before him, and weary and exhausted as they were with the hard day's fight, had spent the night in robbing the dead and the wounded, so that he, on his own confession, could find among the thousands heaped

together, nothing worth carrying away but an old silver watch. This single fact is volumes on the brutalizing tendency of war.

The field of Waterloo has undergone some change from the erection of a large tumulus over the slain in the centre of it, surmounted by a bronze lion. The dirt excavated to make it has deepened the valley, while several monuments are scattered here and there to commemorate some gallant deed.

In the little church of Waterloo repose many of the officers who fell in battle, and the walls are lined with tablets bearing some of them touching inscriptions. One of them was peculiarly so. It was written above a young man, the son of a noble family, who was one of Wellington's suite, and had been with him in the peninsular campaign. He was but eighteen years old, and Waterloo was his twentieth battle. Scarcely out of boyhood, he had passed through the storm of nineteen battles and perished in the twentieth. It is terrific to reflect on the moral effect of so many scenes of blood upon a youthful heart. Such training will ruin any man, even though he were an angel. Ah, the evils of war are felt not less on the living than the dead; not less on the mourner than the victor. The path of victory and defeat are both equally wasting. The blood of the slain has manured this field well, and the grain was waving richly over it, stirred by a gentle wind. I turned away a wiser if not a better man, and filled with deeper abhorrence of war and war's ambition. And yet how many pilgrims come to this battle-field, and how high Bonaparte stands in the world's estimation, while who seeks Howard's grave or mourns over his death of a martyr? But this is the world's way and always has been-neglect its benefactors and deify its destroyers-crucify its Saviour and build temples above its Cæsars.

WHEN Winter o'er the fertile land
Resumes his sway with chilling hand,
The mountain, hill, and quiet vale
With glistening robe are mantled o'er,
And Autumn flees the rising gale

Unbound where Boreas has his store.

The flowing stream is bound again,
No rippling music cheers the glen,
Nor softest whispers murmur praise
Which silent in its bosom stays;
Fast-fettered by the icy chain,
It utters not the wonted strain,
Whose liquid euphony can tell,
The soft orisons of the dell:
Its mirror-surface shines with light
And dazzles oft the watcher's sight,
But seems regardless of the beam
Which fills the noon with radiant gleam,
Whose fervid power is lost in air
Nor seems to melt an atom there-
Like minds where knowledge brightly shines
And draws its boldest master-lines,
Untouched with love to rouse the soul
And bid its deep emotions roll.

-Yet when the Spring returns, the rill
Shall speak its lowly accents still,
And hasting forth unbound and free
While leaping onward to the sea,
Shall sound a louder chorus then
While vespers steal along the glen ;
So hearts when freed from pain and care,
Their strong Deliverer humbly bless,
And sweetly blend their praise and prayer,
In faith, and hope, and holiness.

What art can imitate the skill

Which Frost displays in sportive hours,

When, with his touchings slight and still,
He brings to view his icy flowers?
Go, search the fields with care, and see
What things he cultivates for thee;
Whose thin transparent leaves are seen
In rainbow hues of red and green,
And yet so frail they melt away
Before the softest breath of day;
Bright crystals of the frozen air!*
So light and clear they flourish there,
They seem too pure to be of earth
And scarce an hour survive their birth.

The summer flowers are not alone

The only beauties Nature yields, In Winter they are freely thrown

Along the streamlet's side and fields; The window-panes are fretted o'er With Frost's own pencillings and lore, And oft might teach us lessons well If we would hear the tale they tell.

Alike and yet unlike they seem-
These flourish only in the beam
Of fortune's favored, genial hour,
With rank, and wealth, and health, and power;
While those in sorrow oft we glean,
Where cold Adversity is seen,
Which teach the lesson rich and free,

"AS THY DAY IS, THY STRENGTH SHALL BE !"

* During my residence in Virginia, I several times observed a number of most exquisite exhibitions of this kind. They excelled in delicacy of crystallization and beauty of iridescence anything I have ever noticed in the mineral kingdom or among the artificial productions of the processes of the chemist.