dignant scorn which such a mind as his must feel at a notion then commonly entertained, or said to be entertained, by the party to whose opinions he had in some degree attached himself. He looked upon the result of this last of a long series of fights for freedom's sake as the changing the despotism of one into that of several tyrants, under the title of the Holy Alliance. This notion has been satisfactorily disproved, at least to Englishmen. We should not have noticed the subject but for the sake of observing upon the happy contrast which there is between the passage we have last alluded to and those which immediately follow it, and describe the revelling in Brussels on the night before the battle of Quatre Bras. The sudden alarm and hurrying to the field are given with the utmost power:

There was a sound of revelry by night,

And Belgium's Capital had gathered then

Her beauty and her chivalry, and bright

The lamps shone o'er fair women and brave men ;
A thousand hearts beat happily; and when

Music arose with its voluptuous swell,

Soft eyes looked love to eyes which spake again,

And all went merry as a marriage-bell;

But hush! hark! a deep sound strikes like a rising knell !

Did ye not hear it ?-No; 'twas but the wind,
Or the car rattling o'er the stony street;

On with the dance! let joy be unconfined;

No sleep till morn, when Youth and Pleasure meet
To chase the glowing Hours with flying feet-
But, hark!-that heavy sound breaks in once more,
As if the clouds its echo would repeat;
And nearer, clearer, deadlier, than before!
Arm! Arm! it is-it is-the cannon's opening roar !

And there was mounting in hot haste the steed,
The mustering squadron, and the clattering car,
Went pouring forward with impetuous speed,
And swiftly forming in the ranks of war;
And the deep thunder peal on peal afar;

And, near, the beat of the alarming drum
Roused up the soldier ere the morning star;

While thronged the citizens with terror dumb,

Or whispering, with white lips, 'The foe! They come ! they come!'

And Ardennes waves above them her green leaves,

Dewy with nature's tear-drops, as they pass,
Grieving, if aught inanimate e'er grieves,

Over 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 valour, rolling on the foe,

And burning with high hope, shall moulder cold and low.
Last noon beheld them full of lusty life,

Last eve in Beauty's circle proudly gay—

The midnight brought the signal sound of strife-
The morn the marshalling in arms-the day
Battle's magnificently-stern array!

The thunder-clouds close o'er it, which-when rent,
The Earth is covered thick with other clay,
Which her own clay shall cover, heaped and pent,

Rider and horse,-friend, foe,—in one red burial blent!

In the two succeeding stanzas the poet repairs in some measure the rude sneers he had launched, in another poem, at the Earl of Carlisle, who, as Lord Byron seems now to have thought, deserved better treatment at his hands:

Their praise is hymned by loftier harps than mine;
Yet one I would select from that proud throng,

Partly because they blend me with his line,

And partly that I did his sire some wrong,
And partly that bright names will hallow song;
And his was of the bravest, and when showered

The death-bolts deadliest the thinned files along,
Even where the thickest of war's tempest lowered,
They reached no nobler breast than thine, young, gallant Howard!
There have been tears and breaking hearts for thee—
And mine were nothing, had I such to give;

But when I stood beneath the fresh green tree,

Which living waves where thou didst cease to live,

And saw around me the wide field revive
With fruits and fertile promise, and the Spring
Come forth her work of gladness to contrive,
With all her reckless birds upon the wing,

I turned from all she brought to those she could not bring.

The note to these stanzas is curious; the noble poet was a cɔnoisseur in battle plains, and, as he was not too fond of praising any thing modern, his opinion of Waterloo must have been sincere.

My guide from Mont St. Jean over the field seemed intelligent and accurate. The place where Major Howard fell was not far from two tall and solitary trees (there was a third cut down, or shivered in the battle) which stand a few yards from each other at a pathway's side.-Beneath these he died and was buried. The body has since been removed to England. A small hollow for the present marks where it lay, but will probably soon be effaced; the plough has been upon it, and the grain is.

After pointing out the different spots where Picton and other gallant men had perished, the guide said, "Here Major Howard lay; I was near him when wounded." I told him my relationship, and he seemed then still more anxious to point out the particular spot and circumstances. The place is one of the most marked in the field, from the peculiarity of the two trees above-mentioned.

'I went on horseback twice over the field, comparing it with my recollection of similar scenes. As a plain, Waterloo seems marked out for the scene of some great action-though this may be mere imagination: I have viewed with attention those of Platea, Troy, Mantinea, Leuctra, Chæronea, and Marathon; and the field around Mont St. Jean and Hougoumont appears to want little but a better cause, and that undefinable but impressive halo which the lapse of ages throws around a celebrated spot, to vie in interest with any or all of these, except perhaps the last mentioned.'

There is no part of the poem which gives us more real satisfaction, or is more congenial to the interest which we feel for Lord Byron's character, than this, in which he does himself great honour by handsomely seizing the opportunity of making amends for the rough manner in which he had formerly handled the Earl of Carlisle. His resentment against that nobleman was of a purely personal nature; and, if his noble kinsman and guardian had only written bad poetry, he would probably have remained to this day unwhipped by Lord Byron's satirical lash. The

first cause of quarrel was that Lord Carlisle either disparaged, or praised too coldly, some of his ward's youthful poetry; but the dissatisfaction which this occasioned was much increased by the unkindness with which the elder nobleman declined to present Lord Byron on his taking his seat in the House of Lords. It required no small effort from a man of Lord Byron's temper, after the opinion he had formed and expressed of Lord Carlisle, to seem to request his countenance and assistance on such an occasion. Lord Byron did, however, make that effort; he wrote to his relation, reminding him that he should have attained his majority at the commencement of the ensuing session of Parliament; and he expected, as one should think naturally enough, that Lord Carlisle would on this have offered to present him. Such a proceeding would have been at once sensible and dignified, and would have proved that, with a proper sense of his own consequence, his lordship had at least enough wisdom and good temper to overlook the boyish failings of one who had many undoubted claims to his protection. Lord Carlisle, however, thought otherwise, and, in reply to Lord Byron's letter, merely pointed out to him the forms commonly observed by Peers upon their taking seats in the House of Lords. This it was, much more than any previous offences, and still more than his bad poetry, that drew upon Lord Carlisle the fierce attack of an enemy whom he too much despised. The circumstances under which he was thus compelled to take his seat in the House were highly painful to Lord Byron. Having been refused in a quarter where he did not expect it (for, in point of fact, Lord Carlisle, by not offering to present him, did refuse), Lord Byron did not choose to apply to any other person to do that for him which many among his noble acquaintance would most willingly have done. He resolved to go without any introduction, and he put this resolution into practice. We have heard, from the narration of an eye-witness, that Lord Byron went through the whole affair as if he was performing a very unwilling sacrifice.

When he entered the House he looked paler than usual; and, although he was much mortified, his features wore a look which seemed to say that there had never been a prouder spirit within those old walls. A very few Peers were present, for it was quite early in the afternoon. Lord Byron passed by the woolsack without stopping to speak to the Lord-Chancellor, who was occupied in the dispatch of some of the routine business of the House, and went straight to the table, where the oaths were administered to him by the proper officer. When this ceremony was concluded the Lord-Chancellor approached him, and,

with that good-tempered manner which he possesses, congratulated him upon his accession to his place in that House. Lord Byron looked all this time stiff, cold, and even displeased.. Lord Eldon put out his hand frankly and warmly; Lord Byron requited his courtesy by merely putting the ends of his fingers into it. The Chancellor went back to the woolsack; and Lord Byron, after lounging for a few minutes on one of the opposition benches, quitted the House. One of the men in whom his talents and virtues had excited a high and disinterested affection, and who witnessed this odd scene with considerable pain, remonstrated with him upon the coolness with which he received the Lord Chancellor's compliments. Lord Byron said, if he had done otherwise, it would have been thought he meant to join the court party; but that he had resolved to have nothing to do with any of the parties then existing in England. He added, that he should now go abroad; and a very short time elapsed before he put this intention into practice.

Probably Lord Carlisle has regretted that he thought fit to act with so much coldness, upon this occasion, to so near a relative; it is to be hoped that he has; and, without meaning to imply any harsh reflection upon that nobleman, we are justified in adding that it is not the only occasion upon which Lord Byron's conduct has appeared improper for want of kind and careful advisers. In the third canto of Childe Harold,' from which this anecdote of Lord Byron's life has induced us to digress-we trust not unpleasingly to our reader-his lordship proved that he had forgiven the unkindness he had experienced; and to that poem we now recur.

The other stanzas, alluding to the grief of those who lost husbands, lovers, parents, children—all that were dearest to their hearts-in the slaughter at Waterloo, are highly beautiful and affecting. Still alluding to Major Howard, he says:

I turned to thee, to thousands, of whom each,
And one as all, a ghastly gap did make
In his own kind and kindred, whom to teach
Forgetfulness were mercy for their sake.

The Archangel's trump, not Glory's, must awake
Those whom they thirst for though the sound of Fame
May for a moment sooth, it cannot slake

The fever of vain longing; and the name
So honoured but assumes a stronger, bitterer, claim.