keeping up a disorderly fire; the ramparts badly furnished with guns; the streets of the town blocked with caissons, baggage wagons, and wounded, heaped together pell-mell; lastly, the troops had in case of defeat no other way of retreat than by the bridge of boats, which was very narrow, and six inches deep in water. Night was coming on, and the regiments of the different nations were so out of hand that it was quite possible for the sharpshooting to bring on a general action, which might be fatal to us. General Saint-Cyr's first act was to call in the skirmishers. He was certain that the tired enemy would follow his example as soon as they were no longer attacked; and in fact the fire soon ceased on both sides. The troops could concentrate and take some rest, and business seemed to be put off until the next day. So that he might be in a position to engage with best chances of success, Saint-Cyr took advantage of the night to make his arrangements for repulsing the enemy, or securing his retreat in the event of a reverse. To this end he assembled the regimental commanders, and after having explained the dangers of the situation, the most serious of which was the crowded state of the town and of the approaches to the bridge, he gave orders that the colonels, with other officers and patrols, should go through the streets directing all the uninjured soldiers of their regiments to the bivouacs, and sending the sick and wounded and all led horses and wagons across the bridge. He added that at break of day he would go round the town and suspend any colonel who had not carried out his orders. No excuse would be accepted. The orders were quickly carried out, and all that was not required for the fight-all the impedimenta of the army, in short was collected on the left bank. Soon the ramparts and streets, as well as the bridge, were completely clear. The bridge was strengthened, the cavalry and artillery brought back to the right bank and established in the suburb furthest from the enemy. Finally, to facilitate his means of retreat the prudent commander-in-chief had a second bridge, to be used only by infantry, constructed out of empty barrels and planks. All these preparations were finished before daylight, and the army awaited the enemy with confidence. -- THE BURIAL OF SIR JOHN MOORE. BY CHARLES WOLFE. [1791-1823.] NOT a drum was heard, not a funeral note, As his corse to the rampart we hurried; Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot O'er the grave where our hero we buried. We buried him darkly at dead of night, No useless coffin inclosed his breast, Nor in sheet or in shroud we wound him; But he lay like a warrior taking his rest, With his martial cloak around him. Few and short were the prayers we said, And we spoke not a word of sorrow; But we steadfastly gazed on the face that was dead, We thought, as we hollowed his narrow bed, And smoothed down his lonely pillow, That the foe and the stranger would tread o'er his head, And we far away on the billow; Lightly they talk of the spirit that's gone, And o'er his cold ashes upbraid him, But half of our heavy task was done, When the clock struck the hour for retiring; And we heard the distant and random gun That the foe was sullenly firing. Slowly and sadly we laid him down, From the field of his fame fresh and gory; We carved not a line, and we raised not a stone— UNDINE. BY LA MOTTE FOUQUÉ. [BARON FRIEDRICH DE LA MOTTE FOUQUÉ, German romance-writer, was born at Brandenburg in 1777. Grandson of a distinguished Prussian officer, he became one himself in 1792 and 1813; the rest of the time, till his death in 1843, he spent mostly in Paris, and on his country estate, feasting on the old legends of France, Spain, and the North, and shaping them into fantastic cloudland forms of prose and verse. Unreal as dreams, and full of quaint conceits and affectations, they are full also of pretty and elevated sentiment, and one of them, "Undine" (1811), rises into a symbolic beauty and pathos worthy of Goethe. "Sintram and his Companions" ranks next in popular memory; "Aslauga's Knight" and "The Companions" may be mentioned of stories filling several volumes. He wrote also dramas and epics.] HOW THE KNIGHT FOUND UNDINE. [Sir Huldbrand of Ringstetten, exploring a haunted forest to keep the favor of a court beauty, Bertalda, the foster-daughter of a great nobleman, is forced by a supernatural storm to take refuge in the hut.] DURING the conversation, the stranger had already occasionally heard a splash against the little low window, as if some one were sprinkling water against it. Every time the noise occurred, the old man knit his brow with displeasure; but when at last a whole shower was dashed against the panes, and bubbled into the room through the decayed casement, he rose angrily, and called threateningly from the window, “Undine! will you for once leave off these childish tricks? and to-day, besides, there is a stranger knight with us in the cottage." All was silent without, only a suppressed laugh was audible, and the fisherman said as he returned: "You must pardon it in her, my honored guest, and perhaps many a naughty trick besides; but she means no harm by it. It is our foster-child, Undine, and she will not wean herself from this childishness, although she has already entered her eighteenth year. But, as I said, at heart she is thoroughly good." Just then the door flew open, and a beautiful, fair girl glided into the room, and said, "You have only been jesting, father, for where is your guest?" At the same moment, however, she perceived the knight, and stood fixed with astonishment before the handsome youth. Huldbrand was struck with her charming appearance, and dwelt the more earnestly on her lovely features, as he imagined it was only her surprise that gave him this brief enjoyment, and that she would presently turn from his gaze with increased bashfulness. It was, however, quite otherwise; for after having looked at him for some time, she drew near him confidingly, knelt down before him, and said, as she played with a gold medal which he wore on his breast, suspended from a rich chain: "Why, you handsome, kind guest, how have you come to our poor cottage at last? Have you been obliged then to wander through the world for years, before you could find your way to us? Do you come out of that wild forest, my beautiful knight?" The old woman's reproof allowed him no time for reply. She admonished the girl to stand up and behave herself and to go to her work. Undine, however, without making any answer, drew a little footstool close to Huldbrand's chair, sat down upon it with her spinning, and said pleasantly, "I will work here." The old man did as parents are wont to do with spoiled children. He affected to observe nothing of Undine's naughtiness and was beginning to talk of something else. But this the girl would not let him do; she said, "I have asked our charming guest whence he comes, and he has not yet answered "I come from the forest, you beautiful little vision," returned Huldbrand; and she went on to say: "Then you must tell me how you came there, for it is usually so feared, and what marvelous adventures you met. with in it, for it is impossible to escape without something of the sort." Huldbrand felt a slight shudder at this remembrance, and looked involuntarily toward the window, for it seemed to him as if one of the strange figures he had encountered in the forest were grinning in there; but he saw nothing but the deep dark night, which had now shrouded everything without. Upon this he composed himself and was on the point of beginning his little history, when the old man interrupted him by saying, "Not so, Sir Knight! this is no fit hour for such things. Undine, however, sprang angrily from her little stool, and standing straight before the fisherman with her fair arms fixed in her sides, she exclaimed: "He shall not tell his story, father? He shall not? But it is my will. He shall! He shall in spite of you!" And thus saying, she stamped her pretty little foot vehemently on the floor, but she did it all with such a comically VOL. XII.—8 graceful air that Huldbrand now felt his gaze almost more riveted upon her in her anger than before in her gentle ness. The restrained wrath of the old man, on the contrary, burst forth violently. He severely reproved Undine's disobedience and unbecoming behavior to the stranger, and his good old wife joined with him heartily. Undine quickly retorted, "If you want to chide me, and won't do what I wish, then sleep alone in your old smoky hut!" and swift as an arrow she flew from the room, and fled into the dark night. [The fisherman restrains the knight from going in search of her, and tells her story that fifteen years before, their baby girl had leapt from her mother's arms into the lake while out in a boat, and was never found; that the same evening, a richly dressed little girl, three or four years old, dripping with water, came to their door, and they adopted her, and had her baptized by the name she herself insisted on - Undine.] The knight interrupted the fisherman to draw his attention to a noise, as of a rushing flood of waters, which had caught his ear during the old man's talk, and which now burst against the cottage window with redoubled fury. Both sprang to the door. There they saw, by the light of the now risen moon, the brook which issued from the wood, widely overflowing its banks, and whirling away stones and branches of trees in its sweeping course. The storm, as if awakened by the tumult, burst forth from the mighty clouds which passed rapidly across the moon; the lake roared under the furious lashing of the wind; the trees of the little peninsula groaned from root to topmost bough, and bent, as if reeling, over the surging waters. "Undine! for Heaven's sake, Undine!" cried the two men in alarm. No answer was returned, and regardless of every other consideration, they ran out of the cottage, one in this direction, and the other in that, searching and calling. The longer Huldbrand sought Undine beneath the shades of night, and failed to find her, the more anxious and confused did he become. The idea that Undine had been only a mere apparition of the forest, again gained ascendency over him; indeed, amid the howling of the waves and the tempest, the cracking of the trees, and the complete transformation of a scene lately so calmly beautiful, he could almost have considered the whole peninsula with its cottage and its inhabitants as a mocking illusive vision; but from afar he still ever heard ་ |