walls, had sustained internal as well as external damage. Among other claims upon English generosity, and which may serve to illustrate the idea which foreigners have formed of its illimitable extent, one was made by a proprietor of this district for a considerable sum, stated to be the damage which his property had sustained in and through the battle of Waterloo. He was asked, why he thought a claim so unprecedented in the usual course of warfare would be listened to. He replied, that he understood the British had made compensation in Spain to sufferers under similar circumstances. It was next pointed out to him that no English soldier had or could have been accessary to the damage which he had sustained, since the hamlets and houses plundered lay within Bonaparte's position. The Fleming, without having studied at Leyden, understood the doctrine of consequential damages. He could not see that the circumstance alleged made much difference, since he argued, if the English had not obstinately placed themselves in the way, the French would have marched quietly on to Brussels, without doing him any material damage; and it was not until he was positively informed that his demand would not be granted that he remained silenced, but not satisfied.

Hougoumont (a name bestowed, I believe, by a mistake of our great commander, but which will certainly supersede the more proper one of Chateau-Goumont) is the only place of consideration which was totally destroyed. The shattered and blackened ruins of this little chateau remain among the wreck of its garden, while the fruit-trees, half torn down, half fastened to the walls, give some idea of the Dutch neatness with which it had been kept ere the storm of war approached it. The garden wall being secured by a strong high hedge, it is supposed the French continued the attack for some time before they were aware of the great strength of their defences. Yet it is strange that Bonaparte, who witnessed the assault, never asked De Coster, who stood at his elbow, in what manner the garden was enclosed.

The wall was all loop-holed for the use of musketry, and the defenders also maintained a fire from scaffolds, which enabled them to level their guns. Most visitors bought peaches, and gathered hazelnuts and filberts in the garden, with the pious purpose of planting, when they returned to England, trees, which might remind them and their posterity of this remarkable spot. The grove of trees around Hougoumont was scattered by grave-shot and musketry in a most extraordinary manner. I counted the marks upon one which had been struck in twenty different places, and I think there was scarce any one which had totally escaped. I understand the gentleman to whom this ravaged domain belongs is to receive full compensation from the government of the Netherlands.

I must not omit to mention, that, notwithstanding the care which

had been bestowed in burying or burning the dead, the stench in several places of the field, and particularly at La Haye Sainte and Hougoumont, was such as to indicate that the former operation had been but hastily and imperfectly performed. It was impossible, of course, to attempt to ascertain the numbers of the slain; but, including those who fell on both sides before the retreat commenced, the sum of forty thousand will probably be found considerably within the mark, and I have seen officers of experience who compute it much higher. When it is considered therefore, that so many human corpses, besides those of many thousand horses, were piled upon a field scarcely two miles long, and not above half a mile in breadth, it is wonderful that a pestilential disease has not broken out, to sum up the horrors of the campaign.

If the peasants in the neighbourhood of Waterloo suffered great alarm and considerable damage in the course of this tremendous conflict, it must be acknowledged they had peculiar and ample means of indemnification. They had, in the first place, the greatest share of the spoils of the field of battle, for our soldiers were too much exhausted to anticipate them in this particular. Many country people were at once enriched by the plunder of the French baggage, and not a few by that of the British, which, having been ordered to retreat during the action, became embarrassed on the narrow causeway leading through the great forest of Soignies, and was there fairly sacked and pillaged by the runaway Belgians and the peasantry; a disgraceful scene, which nothing but the brilliancy of the great victory, and the consequent enthusiasm of joy, could have allowed to be passed over without strict enquiry. Many of our officers, and some but ill able to afford such a loss, were in this manner deprived of all their clothes and baggage at the moment of their advance into the territories of France. The servants of the officers themselves were sometimes accessary to this pillage; and it is said, that one of these fugitive domestics, with the address of one of Molière's servants, or Terence's slaves, had the art to extract from his master's parents a sum of money, which he pretended to have laid out upon his funeral, before they had received tidings that the pretended defunct had escaped the slaughter.

A more innocent source of profit has opened to many of the poor people about Waterloo, by the sale of such trinkets and arms as they collect daily from the field of battle; things of no intrinsic value, but upon which curiosity sets a daily increasing estimate. These memo→ rials, like the books of the Sibyls, rise in value as they decrease in number. Almost every hamlet opens a mart of them as soon as English visitors appear. Men, women, and children rushed out upon us, holding up swords, pistols, carabines, and holsters, all of which were sold when I was there à prix juste, at least to those who knew how to

drive a bargain. I saw a tolerably good carabine bought for five francs; to be sure there went many words to the bargain, for the old woman to whom it belonged had the conscience at first to ask a gold Napoleon for it, being about the value it would have borne in Birmingham. Crosses of the Legion of Honour were in great request, and already stood high in the market. I bought one of the ordinary sort for forty francs. The eagles which the French soldiers wore in front of their caps, especially the more solid ornament of that description which belonged to the Imperial Guards, were sought after, but might be had for a few sous. But the great object of ambition was to possess the armour of a cuirassier, which at first might have been bought in great quantity, almost all the wearers having fallen in that bloody battle. The victors had, indeed, carried off some of these cuirasses to serve as culinary utensils, and I myself have seen the Highlanders frying their rations of beef or mutton upon the breast-plates and back-pieces of their discomfited adversaries. But enough remained to make the fortunes of the people of St John, Waterloo, Planchenoit, etc. When I was at La Belle Alliance I bought the cuirass of a common soldier for about six francs; but a very handsome inlaid one, once the property of a French officer of distinction, which was for sale in Brussels, cost me four times the sum. As for the casques, or head-pieces, which by the way are remarkably handsome, they are almost introuvable, for the peasants immediately sold them to be beat out for old copper, and the purchasers, needlessly afraid of their being reclaimed, destroyed them as fast as possible.

The eagerness with which we entered into these negociations, and still more the zeal with which we picked up every trifle we could find upon the field, rather scandalized one of the heroes of the day, who did me the favour to guide me over the field of battle, and who considered the interest I took in things which he was accustomed to seo scattered as mere trumpery upon many a field of victory, with a feeling that I believe made him for the moment heartily ashamed of his company. I was obliged to remind him that as he had himself ga-thered laurels on the same spot, he should have sympathy, or patience at least, with our more humble harvest of peach-stones, filberts and trinkets. Fortunately the enthusiasm of a visitor, who went a bow-shot beyond us, by carrying off a brick from the house of La Belle Alliance, with that of a more wholesale amateur, who actually purchased the door of the said mansion for two gold Napoleons, a little mitigated my military friend's censure of our folly, by showing it was possible to exceed it. I own I was myself somewhat curious respecting the use which could be made of the door of La Belle Alliance, unless upon a speculation of cutting it up into trinkets, like Shakspeare's mulberry-tree.

A relic of greater moral interest was given me by a lady, whose

father had found it upon the field of battle. It is a manuscript collection of French songs, bearing stains of clay and blood, which probably indicate the fate of the proprietor. One or two of these romances I thought pretty, and have since had an opportunity of having them translated into English, by meeting at Paris with one of our Scottish men of rhyme.

ROMANCE OF DUNOIS.

It was Dunois, the young and brave, was bound for Palestine,
But first he made his orisons before Saint Mary's shrine:

"And grant, immortal Queen of Heaven," was still the soldier's prayer,
"That I may prove the bravest knight, and love the fairest fair."

His oath of honour on the shrine he graved it with his sword,
And follow'd to the Holy Land the banner of his Lord;
Where, faithful to his noble vow, his war-cry fill'd the air,-
"Be honour'd aye the bravest knight, beloved the fairest fair."

They owed the conquest to his arm, and then his liege-lord said,
"The heart that has for honour beat by bliss must be repaid,-
My daughter Isabel and thou shall be a wedded pair,
For thou art bravest of the brave, she fairest of the fair."

And then they bound the holy knot before Saint Mary's shrine,
That makes a paradise on earth if hearts and hands combine;
And every lord and lady bright that were in chapel there,
Cried, "Honour'd be the bravest knight, beloved the fairest fair!"

THE TROUBADOUR.

Glowing with love, on fire for fame,
A Troubadour that hated sorrow,
Beneath his lady's window came,

And thus he sung his last good-morrow:
"My arm it is my country's right,

My heart is in my true-love's bower;
Gaily for love and fame to fight
Befits the gallant Troubadour."

And while he march'd with helm on head
And harp in hand, the descant rung,
As, faithful to his favourite maid,
The minstrel-burden still he sung:
"My arm it is my country's right,
My heart is in my lady's bower;
Resolved for love and fame to fight,
I come, a gallant Troubadour."

Even when the battle-roar was deep,
With dauntless heart he hew'd his way,
Mid splintering lance and falchion-sweep,
And still was heard his warrior-lay;

"My life it is my country's right,
My heart is in my lady's bower;
For love to die, for fame to fight,
Becomes the valiant Troubadour."

Alas! upon the bloody field

He fell beneath the foeman's glaive,
But still, reclining on his shield,
Expiring sung the exulting stave:

"My life it is my country's right,
My heart is in my lady's bower;
For love and fame to fall in fight
Becomes the valiant Troubadour."

The tone of these two romances chimes in not unhappily with the circumstances in which the manuscript was found, although I do not pretend to have discovered the real effusions of a military bard, since the first of them, to my certain knowledge, and I have no doubt the other also, is a common and popular song in France.* The following Anacreontic is somewhat of a different kind, and less connected with the tone of feeling excited by the recollection, that the manuscript in which it occurs was the relic of a field of battle:

It chanced that Cupid on a season,
By Fancy urged, resolved to wed,
But could not settle whether Reason

Or Folly should partake his bed.
What does he then?-Upon my life,
'Twas bad example for a deity-.
He takes me Reason for his wife,

And Folly for his hours of gaiety.

Though thus he dealt in petty treason,

He loved them both in equal measure;
Fidelity was born of Reason,

And Folly brought to bed of Pleasure.

There is another verse of this last song, but so much defaced by stains, and disfigured by indifferent orthography, as to be unintelligible. The little collection contains several other ditties, but rather partaking too much of the freedom of the corps-de-garde, to be worthy the trouble of transcription or translation.

I have taken more pains respecting these poems than their intrinsic poetical merit can be supposed to deserve, either in the original or the English version; but I cannot divide them from the interest which they have acquired by the place and manner in which they were obtained, and therefore account them more precious than any other of the remains of Waterloo which have fallen into my possession.

Had these relics of minstrelsy, or any thing corresponding to them in tone and spirit, been preserved as actual trophies of the fields of Cressy and Agincourt, how many gay visions of knights and squires and troubadours, and sirventes and lais, and courts of Love and usages of antique chivalry, would the perusal have excited! Now, and brought close to our own times, they can only be considered as the stock in trade of the master of a regimental band; or at best, we may suppose the compilation to have been the pastime of some young and gay French officer, who, little caring about the real merits of the

Paul has since learned that these two romances were written by no less a personage than the Duchesse de St. Leu. [Hortense Beauharnois, Ex-Queen of Holland. - See Sir Walter Scott's Poetical Works, where these translations also appear.]