Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844

"In so conflicting a state of things[30 - He had been drawing the usual painful picture of the distress of the manufacturing classes, and citing for his authority some English journal. In doing this he has made a somewhat alarming mistake. The colloquial phrase job-work has perplexed, and very excusably, the worthy Belgian, and he has drawn from a very harmless expression a terrible significance. "Partout le travail est le métier de job (job-work) comme disent les Anglais —un métier à mourir sur le fumier." In another place he has understood the turn out of our factories as the expulsion of the artisans by the master manufacturers.] there remains but one remedy: to re-establish violated equity, to restore to the producers their legitimate share of what is produced, to bring back industry to its primitive aim and object – such is the work which is now, by the aid of every influence, individual and social, to be prosecuted. It is not a partial relief that is called for, but the complete restoration (réhabilitation complète) of the labourer. The mark which ages of servitude have impressed upon his front, cannot be effaced but by an energetic and sustained effort. The palliatives hitherto employed, have only exposed the magnitude of the evil. This evil we must henceforth attack in its origin, in the organization of labour, and the constitution of society.

"What is the existing base of the relations between master and workman? Selfishness. Every one for himself, that is, every thing for me and nothing, or the least quantity possible, for others. Here is the evil. A blind and bitter contest must spring from this opposition of interests. To put an end to this there is but one means: the recognition of the law of union, (la loi de solidarité,) by virtue of which interests will amalgamate and divisions disappear. This law is the palladium of industry; refuse to acknowledge it, and every thing remains in a state of chaos: proclaim it, and every thing is remedied, every thing prospers. The capitalist comes in aid of the workman as the workman comes in aid of the capitalist; it is a common prosperity they enjoy, and if any thing menaces it, they are united for its defence. The law of union puts an end to an unfeeling employment of our fellow men, (à l'exploitation brutale;) it replaces men in their natural position; it re-establishes amongst them the relations of respect, esteem, and mutual benevolence which Christian fraternity demands; it substitutes association for rivalry; it restores to justice her empire, and to humanity its beneficence."

Translating all this into simple language, there is to be a partition by the legislature, according to some rule of natural equity, between the capitalist and the labourer, of the proceeds of their common enterprise. We confess ourselves utterly incapable of devising any such rule of equity. The share which falls to the capitalist under the name of profits, and the share which falls to the labourer under the name of wages, is regulated under the present system by the free competition amongst the labourers on the one hand, and the capitalists on the other; it is the result of an unfettered bargain between those who possess capital and those who practise industry. This is, at all events, an intelligible ground, and has in it a species of rough equity; but if we desert this position, and appeal to some natural rule of justice to make the division, we shall find ourselves without any ground whatever. For what are the rights of capital in the face of any à priori notions of justice? We shall stumble on from one vague proposition to another, till we find ourselves landed in the revolutionary doctrine of the equal imprescriptible rights of man. This is the first stage at which we can halt. Judged by this law of equality, the capitalist is but one man, and capital is but another name for the last year's harvest, or the buildings, tools, and manufactures which the labourers themselves, or their predecessors, have produced. The utmost the ex-capitalist could expect – and he must practise his handicraft before he can be entitled even to this – is to be admitted on a footing of equality in the extensive firm that would be constituted of his quondam operatives.

We often observe, in this country, an inclination manifested to regulate by law the rate of wages, not with the view of instituting any such naturally equitable partition, but of establishing a minimum below which life cannot be comfortably supported. These reasoners proceed, it will at once be admitted, not on the rights of man, but on the claims of humanity. To such a project there is but one objection; it will assuredly fail of its humane intention. It is presumed that the competition amongst the workmen to obtain employment has so far advanced, that these cease to obtain a sufficient remuneration for their labour. The thousand men whom a great capitalist employs, are inadequately paid. The legislature requires that they should be paid more liberally. But the amount which the capitalist has to expend in wages is limited. The same amount which sustained a thousand men, can, under the new scale of remuneration, sustain only nine hundred. The nine hundred are better fed, but there is one hundred without any food whatever. Our well-intentioned humanity looks round aghast at the confusion she is making.

Suppose, it may be said, that a law of this description should be passed at so fortunate a conjuncture, that it should not interfere with the existing relations between the capitalist and the workman, but have for its object to arrest the tendency which wages have to fall; suppose that the legislature, satisfied with the existing state of things, should pronounce it a punishable offence to offer or accept a lower rate of remuneration, would not such a law be wise? The answer is obvious. If there is a tendency at any time in wages to fall, it is because there is a tendency in population to increase, or in capital to diminish; circumstances, both of them, which it is not in the power of criminal jurisprudence to wrestle with.

We hear political economy frequently censured by these advocates for violent and legislative remedies, for paying more attention to the accumulation than the distribution of wealth. But in what chapter of political economy is it laid down, that the distribution and enjoyment of wealth is a matter of less moment than its production and accumulation? The simple truth is, that the same law of liberty, which is so favourable to the accumulation of wealth, provides also the best distribution which human ingenuity has yet been able to devise. Less has been said on this head because there was less to say. But surely no sane individual ever wished that property should accumulate merely for the sake of accumulation, that society should have the temper of a miser, and toil merely to increase its hoards. Still less has any one manifested a disposition to confine the enjoyment of wealth to any one class, treating the labourer and the artisan as mere tools and instruments for the production of it. The fundamental principles of political economy to which we have been alluding, and with which alone we are here concerned, will be always found to embrace the interests of the whole community. They should be defended with the same jealousy that we defend our political liberties with.

It was with regret we heard the argument we have just stated against the legislative interference with the rate of wages, introduced in the discussion of the ten-hours' bill, and applied against the principle of that measure. It was plainly misapplied. Why do we not relish any legislative interposition, on whatever plea of humanity, between workmen and capitalist? Because it will fail of its humane intention. We should heartily rejoice – who would not? – if a reasonable minimum of wages could be established and secured. But it cannot. Is the legislature equally incompetent when it steps in to prevent children and very young persons from being overworked; from being so employed that the health and vigour of ensuing generations may be seriously impaired, (which would be a grave mistake even in the economy of labour;) from being so entirely occupied that no time shall remain for education? We think not. The legislature is not in this case equally powerless. It may here prevent an incipient abuse from growing into a custom. The law cannot create an additional amount of capital to be distributed over its population in the shape of an advance of wages, but the law can say to all parents and all masters – you shall not profit by the labour of the child, to the ruin of its health, and the loss of all period for mental and moral discipline. Such an overtasking of the child's strength has not hitherto been an element in your calculation, and it shall not become one.

All these various schemes – socialist or otherwise – of legislative interference, take their rise from the aspect, sufficiently deplorable, of the distress of the manufacturing population; and it is almost excusable if the contemplation of such distress should throw men a little off their balance. But it is not so easily excusable if men, once launched on their favourite projects, endeavour to prove their necessity by heightened descriptions of that distress, and by unauthorized prophecies of its future and continual increase. What a formidable array of figures – figures of speech as well as of arithmetic – are brought down upon us with gloomy perseverance, to convince us that the manufacturing population of this country is on the verge of irreparable ruin! We think it right to put our readers upon their guard against these over-coloured descriptions. Even when Parliamentary reports are quoted, whose authority is not to be gainsaid, they ought to defend themselves against the first impression which these are calculated to make. The facts stated may be true, but there are other facts which are not stated equally true, and which the scope and purpose of such reports did not render it necessary to collect. If, in this country, there is much distress, if in some places there is that utter prostration of mind and body which extreme poverty occasions, there is also much prosperity; there is also, in other places, much vigorous industry, receiving its usual, and more than its usual recompense. If there are plague-spots in our population, there are also large tracts of it still sound and healthy. Set any one down to read list after list of all the maimed and halt and sick in our great metropolis, and the whole town will seem to him, for the time being, one wide hospital: he must throw open the window and look on the busy, animated, buoyant crowd that is rushing through the streets, before he shakes off the impression that he is living in a city of the plague.

Without a doubt, he who approaches the consideration of the distress of the labouring classes, should have a tender and sympathizing spirit; how else can the subject possess for him its true and profound interest? But it is equally necessary that he bring to it a cultivated and well-disciplined compassion; that he should know where, in the name of others, he should raise the voice of complaint, and where, in the name of suffering humanity at large, he should be silent and submit. It should always be borne in mind, that it is very difficult for persons of one condition of life, to judge of the comparative state of well-being of those of another condition. An inhabitant of cities, a man of books and tranquillity, goes down into the country, without previous preparation, to survey and give report of the distress of a mining or agricultural district. In what age since the world has been peopled, could such an individual be transported into the huts of peasants, or amongst the rude labours of the miner, without receiving many a shock to his sensibility? Perhaps he descends, for the first time in his life, the shaft of a coal-mine. How foul and unnatural must the whole business seem to him! – these men working in the dark, begrimed, half-naked, pent up in narrow galleries. He has gone to spy out hardships – he sees nothing else. Or perhaps he pays his first visit to the interior of the low-roofed crazy cottage of the husbandman, and is disgusted at the scant furniture and uninviting meal that it presents; yet the hardy labourer may find his rest and food there, with no greater share of discontent than falls to most of us – than falls, perhaps, to the compassionate inspector himself. We have sometimes endeavoured to picture to ourselves what would be the result if the tables were turned, and a commission of agricultural labourers were sent into the city to make report of the sort of lives led there, not by poor citizens or the lowest order of tradesmen, but by the very class who are occupied in preparing largo folio reports of their own distressful condition. Suppose they were to enter into the chambers of the student of law – of the conveyancer, for example. They make their way through obscure labyrinths into a room not quite so dark, it must be allowed, nor quite so dirty as the interior of a coal-mine, and there they find an unhappy man who, they are given to understand, sits in that gloomy apartment, in a state of solitary confinement, from nine o'clock in the morning till six or seven in the evening. They learn that, for several months in the year, this man never sees the sun; that in the cheerful season when the plough is going through the earth, or the sickle is glittering in the corn, and the winds are blowing the great clouds along the sky, this pale prisoner is condemned to pore over title-deeds which secure the "quiet enjoyment" of the land to others; and if they imitate the oratory of their superiors, they will remark upon the strange injustice, that he should be bound down a slave to musty papers, which give to others those pastures from which he never reaps a single blade of grass, and which he is not even permitted to behold. These commissioners would certainly be tempted to address a report to Parliament full of melancholy representations, and ending with the recommendation to shake out such unhappy tenants into the fields. It would be long before they could be brought to understand that he of the desk and pen would, at the end of half an hour, find nothing in those fields but a mortal ennui. To him there is no occupation in all those acres; and therefore they would soon be to him as barren as the desert.

If there is any apparent levity in the last paragraph we have penned, it is a levity that is far from our heart. There is no subject which gives us so much concern as this – of the undoubted distress which exists amongst the labouring population, and the necessity that exists to alleviate and to combat it. Coming from the immediate perusal of Utopian schemes, promising a community of goods, and from the reconsideration of those arguments which prove such schemes to be delusive and mischievous, the impression that is left on our mind is the profound conviction of the duty of government, to do whatever lies really in its power for the amelioration of the condition of the working classes. The present system of civilized society works, no doubt, for the good of the whole, but assuredly they do not reap an equal benefit with other classes, and on them falls the largest share of its inevitable evils. May we not say that, whatever the social body, acting in its aggregate capacity, can do to redress the balance – whether in education of their children, in sanatory regulations which concern their workshops and their dwellings, or in judicious charity that will not press upon the springs of industry – it is bound to do by the sacred obligation of justice?

MARSTON; OR, THE MEMOIRS OF A STATESMAN

Part XIV

"Have I not in my time heard lions roar?
Have I not heard the sea, puft up with wind,
Rage like an angry boar chafed with sweat?
Have I not heard great ordnance in the field,
And Heaven's artillery thunder in the skies?
Have I not in the pitched battle heard
Loud 'larums, neighing steeds, and trumpets clang?"

    Shakspeare.
Europe had never seen so complete or so powerful an army as that which was now assembled within sight of Valenciennes. The city was already regarded as in our possession; and crowds of military strangers, from every part of the Continent, came day by day pouring into the allied camp. Nothing could equal the admiration excited by the British troops. The admirable strength, stature, and discipline of the men, and the successes which they had already obtained, made them the first object of universal interest; and the parades of our regiments formed a daily levee of princes and nobles. It was impossible that soldiership could be on a more stately scale. Other times have followed, which have shown the still statelier sight of nations marching to battle; but the hundred thousand men who marched under Cobourg to take up their positions in the lines of Valenciennes, filled the eye of Europe; and never was there a more brilliant spectacle. At length orders were sent to prepare for action, and the staff of the army were busily employed in examining the ground. The Guards were ordered to cover the operations of the pioneers; and all was soon in readiness for the night on which the first trench was to be opened. A siege is always the most difficult labour of an army, and there is none which more perplexes a general. To the troops, it is incessant toil – to the general, continual anxiety. The men always have the sense of that disgust which grows upon the soldier where he contemplates a six weeks' delay in the sight of stone walls; and the commander, alive to every sound of hazard, feels that he yet must stand still, and wait for the attack of every force which can be gathered round the horizon. He may be the lion, but he is the lion in a chain – formidable, perhaps, to those who may venture within its length, but wholly helpless against all beyond. Yet those feelings, inevitable as they are, were but slightly felt in our encampment round the frowning ramparts of the city. We had already swept all before us; we had learned the language of victory; we were in the midst of a country abounding with all the good things of life, and which, though far from exhibiting the luxuriant beauty of the British plains, was yet rich and various enough to please the eye. Our camp was one vast scene of gaiety. War had, if ever, laid aside its darker draperies, and "grim-visaged" as it is, had smoothed its "wrinkled front." The presence of so many visitors of the highest rank gave every thing the air of royalty. High manners, splendid entertainments, and all the habits and indulgences of the life of courts, had fled from France only to be revived in Flanders. Our army was a court on the march; and the commander of the British – the honest, kind-hearted, and brave Duke of York – bore his rank like a prince, and gathered involuntarily round him as showy a circle as ever figured in St James's, or even in the glittering saloons of the Tuileries. Hunting parties, balls, suppers, and amateur theatrical performances, not merely varied the time, but made it fly. Hope had its share too, as well as possession. Paris was before us; and on the road to the capital lay but the one fortress which was about to be destroyed with our fire, and of which our engineers talked with contempt as the decayed work of "old" Vauban.

But the course of victory is like the course of love, which, the poet says, "never does run smooth." The successes of the Allies had been too rapid for their cabinets; and we had found ourselves on the frontiers of France before the guardian genii of Europe, in the shape of the stiff-skirted and full-wigged privy councillors of Vienna and Berlin, had made up their minds as to our disposal of the prize. Startling words suddenly began to make their appearance in the despatches, and "indemnity for the past and security for the future" – those luckless phrases which were yet destined to form so large a portion of senatorial eloquence, and give birth to so prolific an offspring of European ridicule – figured in diplomacy for the first time; while our pioneers stood, pickaxe in hand, waiting the order to break ground. We thus lost day after day. Couriers were busy, while soldiers were yawning themselves to death; and the only war carried on was in the discontents of the military councils. Who was to have Valenciennes? whose flag was to be hoisted on Lille? what army was to garrison Condé? became national questions. Who was to cut the favourite slices of France, employed all the gossips of the camp, in imitation of the graver gossips of the cabinet; and, in the mean time, we were saved the trouble of the division, by a furious decree from the Convention ordering every man in France to take up arms – converting all the churches into arsenals, anathematizing the German princes as so many brute beasts, and recommending to their German subjects the grand republican remedy of the guillotine for all the disorders of the government, past, present, and to come.

Circumstances seldom give an infantry officer more than a view of the movements in front of his regiment; but my intimacy with Guiscard allowed me better opportunities. Among his variety of attainments he was a first-rate engineer, and he was thus constantly employed where any thing connected with the higher departments of the staff required his science. He was now attached to the Prussian mission, which moved with the headquarters of the British force, and our intercourse was continued. I thus joined the reconnoitring parties under his command, and received the most important lessons in my new art. But one of my first questions to him, had been the mode of his escape on the night of our volunteer reconnoisance.

"Escape? Why, I committed the very blunder against which I had cautioned you, and fell into the hands of the first hussar patrole I could possibly have met. But my story is of the briefest kind. I had not rode forward above an hour, when my horse stumbled over something in that most barbaric of highways, and lamed himself. I then ought to have returned; but curiosity urged me on, and leading my unfortunate charger by the bridle, I threaded my way through the most intricate mesh of hedge and ditch within my travelling experience. The trampling of horses, and the murmur of men in march, at last caught my ear; and I began to be convinced that the movement which I expected from Dampier's activity was taking place. I then somewhat questioned my own insouciance in having thrust you into hazard; and attempted to make my way across the country in your direction. To accomplish this object I turned my horse loose, taking it for granted that, lame as he was, he was too good a Prussian to go any where but to his own camp. This accounts for his being found at morn. I had, however, scarcely thus taken the chance of losing a charger which had cost me a hundred and fifty gold ducats, when I received a shot from behind a thicket which disabled my left arm, and I was instantly surrounded by a dozen French hussars. I was foolish enough to be angry, and angry enough to fight. But as I was neither Samson, nor they Philistines, my sabre was soon beaten down, and I had only to surrender. I was next mounted on the croup of one of their horses, and after a gallop of half an hour reached the French advanced guard. It was already hurrying on, and I must confess that, from the silence of the march and the rapid pace of their battalions, I began to be nervous about the consequences, and dreaded the effects of a surprise on some of our camps. My first apprehension, however, was for you. I thought that you must have been entangled in the route of some of the advancing battalions, and I enquired of the colonel of the first to whom I was brought, whether he had taken any prisoners.

"'Plenty,' was the answer of the rough Republican – 'chiefly peasants and spies; but we have shot none of them yet. That would make too much noise; so we have sent them to the rear, where I shall send you. You will not be shot till we return to-morrow morning, after having cut up those chiens Anglais.'"

I could not avoid showing my perturbation at the extreme peril in which this distinguished man had involved himself on my account; and expressed something of my regret and gratitude.

"Remember, Marston," was his good-humoured reply, "that, in the first place, the Frenchman was not under circumstances to put his promise in practice – he having found the English chien more than a match for the French wolf; and, in the next, that twelve hours form a very important respite in the life of the campaigner. I was sent to the rear with a couple of hussars to watch me until the arrival of the general, who was coming up with the main body. On foot and disarmed, I had only to follow them to the next house, which was luckily one of the little Flemish inns. My hussars found a jar of brandy, and got drunk in a moment; one dropped on the floor – the other fell asleep on his horse. I had now a chance of escape; but I was weary, wounded, and overcome with vexation. It happened, as I took my last view of my keeper outside, nodding on his horse's neck, that I glanced on a huge haystack in the stable-yard. The thought struck me, that helpless as I was, I might contrive to give an alarm to some of the British videttes or patroles, if your gallant countrymen should condescend to employ such things. I stole down into the yard, lantern in hand; thrust it into the stack, and had the satisfaction of seeing it burst into a blaze. I made my next step into the stable, to find a horse for my escape; but the French patroles had been before me, and those clever fellows seldom leave any thing to be gleaned after them. What became of my escort I did not return to enquire; but I heard a prodigious galloping through the village, and found the advantage of the flame in guiding me through as perplexing a maze of thicket and morass as I ever attempted at midnight. The sound of the engagement which followed directed me to the camp; and I remain, a living example to my friend, of the advantage of twelve hours between sentence and execution."

I had another wonder for him; and nothing could exceed his gratification when he heard, that his act had enabled me to give the alarm of the French advance. But for that blaze I should certainly have never been aware of their movement; the light alone had led me into the track of the enemy, and given me time to make the intelligence useful.

"The worst of all this," said he, with his grave smile, "is that the officer in command of your camp on that night will get a red riband and a regiment; and that you will get only the advantage of recollecting, that in war, and perhaps in every situation of life, nothing is to be despaired of, and nothing is to be left untried. A candle in a lantern, properly used, probably saved both our lives, the lives of some thousands of your brave troops, the fate of the campaign, and, with it, half the thrones of Europe, trembling on the chance of a first campaign. I shall yet have some of my mystical countrymen writing an epic on my Flemish lantern."

During this little narrative, we had been riding over the bleak downs which render the environs of Valenciennes such a barren contrast to the general luxuriance of northern France; and were examining the approaches to the city, when Guiscard called to his attendant for his telescope. We were now in the great coal-field of France; but the miners had fled, and left the plain doubly desolate. "Can those," said he, "be the miners returning to their homes? for if not, I am afraid that we shall have speedy evidence of the hazards of inactivity." But the twilight was now deepening, and neither of us could discern any thing beyond an immense mass of men, in grey cloaks, hurrying towards the city. I proposed that we should ride forward, and ascertain the facts. He checked my rein. "No! Amadis de Gaul, or Rolando, or by whatever name more heroic your chivalry prefers being called, we must volunteer no further. My valet shall return to the camp and bring us any intelligence which is to be found there, while we proceed on our survey of the ground for our batteries."

We had gone but a few hundred yards, and I was busily employed in sketching the profile of the citadel, when we heard the advance of a large party of British cavalry, with several of the staff, and the Duke of York, then a remarkably handsome young man, at their head. I had seen the Duke frequently on our parades in England; but even the brief campaign had bronzed his cheek, and given him the air which it requires a foreign campaign to give. He communicated the sufficiently interesting intelligence, that since the victory over Dampier, the enemy had collected a strong force from their garrisons, and after throwing ten thousand men into Valenciennes, had formed an intrenched camp, which was hourly receiving reinforcements. "But we must put a stop to that," said the Duke, with a smile; "and, to save them trouble and ourselves time, we shall attack them to-morrow." He then addressed himself to Guiscard, with the attention due to his name and rank, and conversed for a few minutes on the point of attack for the next day – examined my sketch – said some flattering words on its correctness, and galloped off.

"Well," said Guiscard, as he followed with his glance the flying troop, "war is a showy spectacle, and I can scarcely wonder that it should be the game of princes; but a little more common sense in our camps would have saved us to-morrow's battle. The delays of diplomacy are like the delays of law – the estate perishes before the process is at an end. But now to our work." We rode to the various points from which a view of the newly arrived multitude could be obtained. Their fires began to blaze; and we were thus enabled to ascertain at once their position, and, in some degree, their numbers. There could not be less than thirty thousand men, the arrival of the last few hours. "For this contretemps," said Guiscard, as he examined their bivouac with his telescope, "we have to thank only ourselves. Valenciennes ought to have been stormed within the first five minutes after we could have cut down those poplars for scaling ladders," and he pointed to the tapering tops of the large plantations lining the banks of the Scheldt; "but we have been quarreling over our portfolios, while the French have been gathering every rambling soldier within a hundred miles; and now we shall have a desperate struggle to take possession of those lines, and probably a long siege as finale to the operation. There, take my glass, and judge for yourselves." I looked, and if the novelty and singularity could have made me forget the serious business of the scene, I might have been amply amused. The whole French force were employed in preparing for the bivouac, and fortifying the ground, which they had evidently taken up with the intent of covering the city. All was in motion. At the distance from which we surveyed it, the whole position seemed one huge ant-hill. Torches, thickets burning, and the fires of the bivouac, threw an uncertain and gloomy glare over portions of the view, which, leaving the rest in utter darkness, gave an ominous and ghostly look to the entire. I remarked this impression to Guiscard, and observed that it was strange to see a "scene of the most stirring life so sepulchral."

"Why not?" was his reply. "The business is probably much the same."

"Yet sepulchral," I observed, "is not exactly the word which I would have used. There is too much motion, too much hurried and eager restlessness, too much of the wild and fierce activity of beings who have not a moment to lose, and who are busied in preparations for destruction."

"Have you ever been in the Sistine Chapel?" asked my companion.

"No; Italy has been hitherto beyond my flight; but the longing to see it haunts me."

"Well, then, when your good fortune leads you to Rome, let your first look be given to the noblest work of the pencil, and of Michael Angelo: glance at the bottom of his immortal picture, and you will see precisely the same wild activity, and the same strange and startling animation. The difference only is, that the actors here are men – there, fiends; here the scene is the field of future battle – there, the region of final torment. I am not sure that the difference is great, after all."

At daybreak, the British line was under arms. I feel all words fail, under the effort to convey the truth of that most magnificent display; not that a simple detail may not be adequate to describe the movements of a gallant army; but what can give the impression of the time, the form and pressure of collisions on which depended the broadest and deepest interests of the earth. Our war was then, what no war was since the old invasions under the Edwards and Henrys – national; it was as romantic as the crusades. England was fighting for none of the objects which, during the last three hundred years, had sent armies into the field – not for territory, not for glory, not for European supremacy, not even for self-defence. She was fighting for a Cause; but that was the cause of society, of human freedom, of European advance, of every faculty, feeling, and possession by which man is sustained in his rank above the beasts that perish. The very language of the great dramatist came to my recollection, at the moment when I heard the first signal-gun for our being put in motion.

"Now all the youth of England are on fire,
And silken dalliance in the wardrobe lies.
Now thrive the armourers; and honour's thought
Reigns solely in the breast of every man.
They sell the pasture now to buy the horse,
Following the mirror of all Christian kings
With winged heels, as English Mercuries."

Our troops, too, had all the ardour which is added even to the boldest by the assurance of victory. They had never come into contact with the enemy but to defeat them, and the conviction of their invincibility was so powerful, that it required the utmost efforts of their officers to prevent their rushing into profitless peril. The past and the present were triumphant; while, to many a mind of the higher cast, the future was, perhaps, more glittering than either. In the same imperishable eloquence of poetry —

"For now sits expectation in the air,
And hides a sword, from hilt unto the point,
With crowns imperial, crowns and coronets,
Promised to Harry and his followers."

The ambition of the English soldier may be of a more modified order than that of the foreigner; but the dream of poetry was soon realized in the crush of the Republicans, who had trampled alike the crown and the coronet in the blood of their owners. Twenty-seven thousand men were appointed for the attack of the French lines; and on the first tap of the drum, a general shout of exultation was given from all the columns. The cavalry galloped through the intervals to the front, and parks of the light guns were sent forward to take up positions on the few eminences which commanded the plain; but the day had scarcely broke, when one of those dense fogs, the customary evil of the country, fell suddenly upon the whole horizon, and rendered action almost impossible. Nothing could exceed the vexation of the army at this impediment; and if our soldiers had ever heard of Homer, there would have been many a repetition of his warrior's prayer, that "live or die, it might be in the light of day."

But in the interval, important changes were made in the formation of the columns. The French lines had been found of unexpected strength, and the Guards were pushed forward to head a grand division placed under command of General Ferrari. The British were, of course, under the immediate orders of an officer of their own, and a more gallant one never led troops under fire. I now, for the first time, saw the general who was afterwards destined to sweep the French out of Egypt, and inflict the first real blow on the military supremacy of France under Napoleon. General Abercromby was then in the full vigour of life; a strongly formed, manly figure, a quiet but keen eye, and a countenance of remarkable steadiness and thought, all gave the indications of a mind firm in all the contingencies of war. Exactly at noon, the fog drew up as suddenly as it had descended, and we had a full view of the enemy's army. No foreign force ever exhibits so showy and soldierly an appearance as the British. The blue of the French and Prussians looks black, and the white of the Austrian looks faded and feeble, compared with the scarlet. As I cast my glance along our lines, they looked like trails of flame. The French were drawn up in columns in front of their camp, which, by the most extraordinary exertion, they had covered during the night with numerous batteries, and fortified with a circle of powerful redoubts; the guns of the fortress defended their flank and rear, and their position was evidently of the most formidable kind. But all view was lost, from the moment when the head of our brigade advanced. Every gun that could be brought to bear upon us opened at once, and all was enveloped in smoke. For a full hour we could see nothing but the effect of the grape-shot on our own ranks as we poured on, and hear nothing but the roar of the batteries. But at length shouts began to arise in distant parts of the field, and we felt that the division which had been appointed to assault the rear of the camp was making progress. Walmoden, commanding a brigade under Ferrari, now galloped up, to ascertain whether our men were ready to assault the intrenchments. "The British troops are always ready," was Abercromby's expressive, and somewhat indignant, answer. In the instant of our rushing forward, an aide-de-camp rode up, to acquaint the general that the column under the Duke of York had already stormed three redoubts. "Gentlemen," said Abercromby, turning to the colonels round him, "we must try to save our friends further trouble – forward!" Within a quarter of an hour we were within the enemy's lines, every battery was stormed or turned, and the French were in confusion. Some hurried towards the fortress, which now began to fire; a large body fled into the open country, and fell into the hands of his royal highness; and some, seizing the boats on the river, dropped down with the stream. All was victory: yet this was to be my day of ill luck. In pursuing the enemy towards the fortress, a battalion, which had attempted to cover the retreat, broke at the moment when my company were on the point of charging them. This was too tempting a chance to be resisted; we rushed on, taking prisoners at every step, until we actually came within sight of the gate by which the fugitives were making their escape into the town. But we were in a trap, and soon felt that we were discovered, by a heavy discharge of musketry from the rampart. We had now only to return on our steps, and I had just given the word, when the firing was renewed on a bastion, round which we were hurrying in the twilight. I felt a sudden shock, like that of electricity, which struck me down; I made a struggle to rise on my feet, but my strength wholly failed me, and I lost all recollection.

On my restoration to my senses, in a few hours after, I found that I had been carried into the town, and placed in the military hospital. My first impulse was, to examine whether any of my brave fellows had shared my misfortune; but all round me were French, wounded in the engagement of the day. My next source of congratulation was, that I had no limb broken. The shot had struck me in the temple, and glanced off without entering; but I had lost much blood, had been trampled, and felt a degree of exhaustion, which gave me the nearest conception to actual death.

Of the transactions of the field I knew nothing beyond my own share of the day; but I had seen the enemy in full flight, and that was sufficient. Within a day or two, the roaring of cannon, the increased bustle of the attendants, and the tidings that a black flag had been erected on the hospital, told me that the siege had begun. I shall pass over its horrors. Yet, what is all war but a succession of horrors? The sights which I saw, the sounds which I heard from hour to hour, were enough to sicken me of human nature. In the gloom and pain of my sleepless nights, I literally began to think it possible that a fiendish nature might supplant the human condition, and that the work before my eyes was merely an anticipation of those terrors, which to name startles the imagination and wrings the heart. Surrounded with agonies, the involuntary remark always came to my mind with renewed freshness, in the common occurrences of the hospital day. But, besides the sufferings of the wounded, a new species of suffering, scarcely less painful, and still more humiliating, began to be prominent. The provisions of the people, insufficiently laid in at the approach of the besiegers, rapidly failed, and the hospital itself was soon surrounded by supplicants for food. The distress, at last, became so excessive, that it amounted to agony. Emaciated figures of both sexes stole or forced their way into the building, to beg our rations, or snatch them from our feeble hands; and I often divided my scanty meal with individuals who had once been in opulent trade, or been ranked among the semi-noblesse of the surrounding country. Sometimes I missed faces to which I had been accustomed among those unfortunate beings, and I heard a still more unhappy tale – shall I call it more unhappy? They had perished by the cannon-shot, which now poured into the city day and night, or had been buried in the ruins of some of the buildings, which were now constantly falling under the heaviest bombardment in the annals of war. Of those scenes I say no more. If the siege of a great fortress is the most trying of all hazards to the soldier without, what must it be to the wretches within? Valenciennes was once the centre of the lace manufactories of France. The war had destroyed them at once. The proprietors had fled, the thousands of young and old employed in those delicate and beautiful productions, had fled too, or remained only to perish of famine. A city of twenty thousand of the most ingenious artists was turning day by day into a vast cemetery. As I tossed on my mattress hour after hour, and heard the roar of the successive batteries, shuddered at the fall of the shells, and was tortured by the cries of the crowd flying from the explosions all night long – I gave the deepest curses of my spirit to the passion for glory. It is true, that nations must defend themselves; the soldier is a protector to the industry, the wealth, and the happiness of the country. I am no disciple of the theory, which, disclaiming the first instinct of nature, self-preservation, invites injury by weakness, and creates war by impunity; but the human race ought to outlaw the man who dares to dream of conquest, and builds his name in the blood of man.

On my capture, one of my first wishes had been to acquaint my regiment with the circumstances of my misfortune, and to relieve my friends of their anxiety for the fate of a brother officer. But this object, which, in the older days of continental campaigning, would have been acceded to with a bow and a compliment by Monsiegneur le Comte, or Son Altesse Royale, the governor, was sturdily refused by the colonel in charge of the hospital – a firm Republican, and the son of a cobbler, who, swearing by the Goddess of Reason, threatened to hang over the gate the first man who dared to bring him another such proposal. I next sent my application to the commandant, a brave old soldier, who had served in the royal armies, and had the feelings of better times; but it was probably intercepted, for no answer came. This added deeply to my chagrin. My absence must give rise to conjecture; my fall had been unseen even by my men; and while I believed that my character was above the scandal of either pusillanimity or desertion, it still remained at the mercy of all.

But chance came to my relief. It happened that I had unconsciously won the particular regard of one of the Béguines who attended the hospital; and my tristesse, which she termed 'effrayante,' one evening attracted her peculiar notice. Let not my vanity be called in question; for my fair admirer was at least fifty years old, and was about the figure and form of one of her country churns, although her name was Juliet! Pretty as the name was, the Béguine had not an atom of the poetic about her. Romance troubled her not. Yet with a face like the full moon, and a pile of petticoats which would have made a dowdy of the "Belvedere Diana," she was a capital creature. Juliet, fat as she was, had the natural frolic of a squirrel; she was everywhere, and knew every thing, and did every thing for every body; her tongue and her feet were constantly busy; and I scarcely knew which was the better emblem of the perpetual motion. My paleness was peculiarly distressing to her; "it hurt her feelings;" it also hurt her honour; for she had been famous for her nursing, and as she told me, with her plump hands upon her still plumper hips, and her head thrown back with an air of conscious merit, "she had saved more than the doctors had killed." I had some reluctance to tell her the cause of my tristesse; for I knew her zeal, and I dreaded her plunging into some hazard with the authorities. But who has ever been able to keep a secret, where it was the will of the sex to extort it? Juliet obtained mine before she left the ward for the night; and desired me to give her a letter, which she pledged herself to transmit to my regiment. But this I determined to refuse, and I kept my determination. I had no desire to see my "fat friend" suspended from the pillars of the portico; or to hear of her, at least, being given over to the mercies of the provost-marshal. We parted, half in anger on her side, and with stern resolution on mine.

During the day Juliet was not forthcoming, and her absence produced, what the French call, a "lively sensation" – which, in nine instances out of ten, means an intolerable sense of ennui – in the whole establishment. I shared the general uneasiness, and at length began to cast glances towards the gate, where, though I was not exactly prepared to see the corpulent virtues of my friend in suspension, I had some tremblings for the state, "sain et sauf;" of my Béguine. At last her face appeared at the opening of the great door, flushed with heat and good-nature, and, as it came moving through the crowd which gathered round her with all kinds of enquiries, giving no bad resemblance to the moon seen through a fog; whether distinct or dim, full and florid to the last. Her good-humoured visage revived me, as if I had met a friend of as many years standing as she numbered on her cradle. But all my enquiries for the news of earth outside the hospital, were answered only by an "order" to keep myself tranquil – prevent the discomposure of my pulse, and duly drink my ptisan. All this, however, was for the general ear. The feebleness which kept me confined to my bed during the day, had made my nights wakeful. On this night, whether on the anxiety of the day, or the heavier roar of the siege, for the bombardment was now at its height, I exhibited signs of returning fever, and the Béguine remained in attendance. But when the crowd had gone to such rest as they could find, amid the thunder of batteries and the bursting of shells, Juliet approached my pillow with a broad smile, which distended her good-natured mouth from ear to ear, and thrust under my pillow a small packet – the whole operation being followed by a finger pressed to her lips, and a significant glance to every corner of the huge melancholy hall, to see that all was secure. She then left me to my meditations!

The mysterious packet contained three letters; and, eager as I was for their perusal, I almost shuddered at their touch; for they must have been obtained with infinite personal peril, and if found upon the Béguine they might have brought her under the severest vengeance of the garrison. They were from Guiscard, Mariamne, and Mordecai. Thus to three individuals, all comparatively strangers, was my world reduced. But they were no common strangers; and I felt, while holding their letters in my hand, and almost pressing them to my heart, how much more strongly friendship may bind us than the ties of cold and negligent relationship. I opened the soldier's letter first. It was like every thing that Guiscard ever did; manly, yet kind. "Your disappearance in that unfortunate rencontre has created much sorrow and surprise; but the sorrow was all for your loss to the 'corps of corps,' and the surprise was, that no tidings could be heard of you, whether fallen or surviving. The flag and trumpet sent in next morning to recover the remains of such as had suffered in that mad rush to the gates of the town, came back without being permitted to pass beyond the outworks, bringing a brutal message from the officer on duty, 'that the next flag should be fired on,' and that the 'brave soldiers of the Republic allowed of no compromise with the slaves of tyranny!' The bravado might be laughed at, but it left me in the dark relative to your fate; and if you are to be flattered by the feelings of men who cannot get at you but by cannon-shot, you may congratulate yourself on having had as many fine things said of you as would make an epitaph for a duke – and, I believe, with a sincerity at least equal to the best of them. I write all this laughingly now, but suspense makes heaviness of heart, and you cost me some uneasy hours, of course. I send you none of our news; as you will hear all in good time, and communications on public matters might bring your messenger or yourself into difficulties. You are alive, and in good hands; that is the grand point. Your character is now in my hands, and I shall take care of it; I shall see you a general officer yet, if you have not the greater luck to retire and live an honest farmer, sitting under your own fig-tree and your own vine, with an unromantic spouse, and some half-dozen of red-cheeked children. Farewell, we shall soon see each other."