A GREAT battle had been fought and won, and

the newspapers were filled with nothing but long, long melancholy lists of killed and wounded.

After all, what a vain and empty dream is the hope of achieving military glory! A desperate fight takes place; some one man performs prodigies of valour: if he be an officer he may possibly earn a separate mention in the Gazette, and a paragraph in the morning papers; if a private, his individuality will never be recognised at all, but his death will be recorded after the following fashion

Killed: Colonel Hawkes, Major Vaux, Captain Stalks--97 rank and file.

Oh the horror of those wholesale butcheries called battles! and what a mistaken idea is presented of them by amateurs and artists, in pictures and poems! Really, until late events had brought home to every heart a more just idea of the frightful details of such scenes of carnage, youthful enthusiasts of both sexes, who "lived at home at ease," fancied a battle to be a kind of magnified review; painting a sunny landscape, say a cornfield, with a few spirited chargers rushing riderless hither and thither, a few wounded in picturesque attitudes and stainless uniforms, a few unsullied and extremely bright swords,

a few uninjured banners, and a great deal of smoke; with the dead and dying kept discreetly in the background.

What a contrast to the hideous reality! the crushed and crimson grain, the writhing, dying horses (and a dying horse is perhaps the most doleful-looking object one can behold), the broken swords and tattered banners, the agonized contortions of wounded men trampled down under the flying feet of enemy's chargers, the convulsive death-cry of countless heroes drowned by the wild war-shout of their revengeful comrades, the hundreds of brave hearts stilled for ever for one day's triumph, the mud, the dirt, the blood, the misery-and oh! the anguish of fond hearts at home, the dire suspense, the dreadful certainty! The white-haired father proud amid the agony of his loss for his gallant boy, and sorrowing, even as David did for Absalom: "would I had died for thee, my son-my son!" the gentle, high-born mother, grieving quietly, with the self-composure of her class, yet not less deeply than the wild Irish peasant-girl, cast down on the earthen floor of her mountain

hovel in all the wild abandonment of grief for her lost lover; and, worse than all, the cold, stony despair, the nights of sleepless horror, the days of silent torment, to those whom conventionality forbids to proclaim their wretchedness those allied by no acknowledged ties of blood or affection to the departed, but who feel their whole heart die within them as they listen with a seeming careless look to the world's idle pity for "that gallant young fellow in the 129th, who fell in the very first charge at the head of his regiment-really now-most deplorable-wasn't it?" "Oh, shocking!-may I give you an ice?"

This last worse torture was at least spared to my mother, and I cannot sufficiently express my sympathy and compassion for those who have to endure it. How many hundreds are enduring it, even whilst I am writing these pages!

But though my mother's grief and anxiety were open and acknowledged, and consequently less hard to bear, I have not forgotten-I shall never forget the misery of the last few weeks of our residence in Wales; the dread of the arrival of "post-time," yet the constant deferring

of every act and deed until "post-time" had arrived. Many and many a year,

"Each bearing its burden of sorrow,"

has passed away since then, but vividly as in a picture seen but yesterday can I behold my poor mother's face when the patter of our country postman's pony's feet was heard along the sunbaked lane. How well I remember her unconscious whisper of, "Now, courage! it is coming," as the first puff of dust announced his arrival at a certain turn in the tortuous road leading to our house! How well I remember the strange, stern rigidity of her pale face on one day in particular, when she seemed to have had some presentiment of coming evil: and also my sister Angelica's wondering exclamation of, “Mamma, how strange! I can hear your heart beat." I can see the old gardener Michael going to the gate, and my mother standing in a sort of rustic verandah or trellised bower; the handiwork and especial glory of my brother Otho. Yes-I can see her now, as she stood, clasping him tightly to her heart; while he, never very observant or