and if there were no other attractions to Waterloo, this circumstance would render it a ride well worthy the occupation of a leisure morning. We reached Mount St. Jean, which is about a mile and a half from Waterloo, (and at which place the battle was fought,) about ten. We breakfasted at a little auberge at the end of the village, and having obtained the famous Jean-Baptiste La Coste, who was Buonaparte's guide on the memorable occasion of the battle, as our Cicerone, we proceeded to view the ground.

The high road through Waterloo to Charleroi passes directly across the centre of the scene of action. The first object that arrested our attention was a solitary tree, on a little elevation, and on a rising bank close on the right hand side of the road. This is called Wellington tree, from the circumstance that it was the station occupied by Lord Wellington-if he can be said to have had any station at all, for he was perpetually riding about, to animate his men, and during the whole of the day performed the service of a colonel to the respective regiments that needed the inspiration of his presence. But it was the rallying point for his staff, and there he was frequently himself. Just behind that tree, a cart path over the farm, crosses the road. It has a bank of about three feet in height on each side of it, and here our troops hid themselves from the fury of the enemy's fire, by lying down upon the ground till they were wanted. One

officer, who was in this lane, was greatly alarmed and extremely restless. His comrades cried out to him, that if he was afraid, the best thing he could do would be to lie still-but he would lift up his head to see what was going on, and that instant a cannon ball carried it off. To the left of the road, a little beyond Wellington tree, are two other trees, the first about forty or fifty yards from the road, and the second about the same distance from the first. By the first, Gen. Picton fell, and by the second, Lord Uxbridge lost his leg—and still further to the left, in the valley, Colonel Ponsonby was killed. Far to the left, in that direction, is the wood from which the Prussians sallied at four, under Bulow, and at seven, under Blucher, when Lord Wellington perceiving their approach made his final charge, and in ten minutes, as our guide expressed himself, the French were all in flight. Not many yards beyond Wellington tree, on the bank, close by the road side, Colonel Gordon, his aid-de-camp, received his mortal wound. A noble monument of black marble is now erecting on the spot, to perpetuate the memory of the event, by his sister and five brothers. From this monument you look down upon

It stands close

the farm-house of La Haye Sainte. to the right side of the road. There the Hanoverians of the German legion fought, till all their ammunition was exhausted, and then, to the amount of four hundred, they were put to the bayonet by the French. This seems to have been the only circum

Every

stance of omission with which Lord Wellington charged himself after the engagement. "We ought," said he, " to have made a hole in the wall at the back of the house, and have supplied them by that method with ammunition-but I could not think of every thing." The house and the barn face each other-the yard is between them, and they are connected at their gable ends by high walls—within this enclosure were the Hanoverians. where in the walls, and roofs, and timbers of the house and barn, are marks of the cannon and musketry, and on the walls of the barn, are still to be seen the stains of the blood that was spilt, when, their ammunition being exhausted, the poor fellows were unable any longer to resist, and the French, forcing their way into the enclosure, mowed them down like corn. We enquired for the old woman who remained uninjured in the cellar of the house during the whole of the action, but were told, that she was not there, as the family who then had the farm had since removed. At the top of the hill, about a quarter of a mile from the farm-house of La Haye Sainte, on the left hand side of the road, is the pot-house, called La Belle Alliance, and about half way between the farmhouse and the Belle Alliance, where the high banks on either side the road defended him from the enemy's cannon, which passed over his head, was the principal station of Buonaparte during the greater part of the action, and where the guide said he remained five hours at one time. We halted, like

exhausted heroes, for we were weary with wading in the mud, and drenched with rain, at the Belle Alliance. I took a glass of eau de vie, while we warmed ourselves by the fire which blazed on the hearth, in the miserable kitchen. The woman of the house told us she was there at the time of the battle, but that she fled to the woods during the heat of the action, and on her return, she found the house filled with the wounded. It was near this place that Wellington and Blucher met after the battle.

La Coste said, that Buonaparte spoke but little during the battle-and when the fate of the day was determined against him, he simply cried, "It is all over," and fled. He was as pale as death. La Coste was with him till four in the morning, when he was dismissed.

What most of all struck me, and must I think strike every body, is the narrow compass of ground in which two such large armies were engaged, and so terrible a slaughter took place. It was not, as La Coste observed, a battle, it was a massacréand the Duke of Wellington is understood to consider it as by no means so just an exhibition of his skill in military tactics as many of his former engagements.

The field of Waterloo is now rich in waving corn, ripening for the sickle of the husbandman.

What a scene must it have been when death was the reaper, and gathered in his thousands of sheaves to the garner of the grave! And what a scene will it be again, when the trump of the archangel shall awake the sleepers that repose beneath its clods, and the mighty armies, that day annihilated, shall start up to life upon the plain on which they fell! I never heard a sermon so impressive as the silence that reigned around me on the field of Waterloo. I could not but connect their everlasting destinies, with the thousands of the dead upon whose dust I trod. The eternity that seemed to open there upon my view, peopled with the spirits of the slain, was an awful scene. The bitterness of dying on the field of battle-the widow's cries-the orphan's tears-the agonies of surviving friendship—were all forgotten; I only saw the immortal soul hurried unprepared, and, perhaps, blaspheming, into the presence of its God! I shuddered at the contemplation, and felt how deadly a scourge, how bitter a curse, is war!

I shall not weary you with a description of this eity, now as well known to Englishmen as any fashionable watering place on our own coast. The number of English residents here is very considerable; but I find that the great advance in the price of provisions has determined many to leave, and some are already returned to their own country. There is not much splendour in the court, and there is more of elegance than magnificence in the