lamps a terrible enchantment seemed to be in operation; they saw only an illumination and heard only low whispering around them, while the tumult at the breaches was like the crashing of thunder. Plainly, however, the fight was there raging; and hence, quitting the square, they attempted to take the garrison in reverse by attacking the ramparts from the town side, but they were received with a rolling musketry, driven back with loss, and resumed their movement through the streets. At last the breaches were abandoned by the French; other parties entered; desultory combats took place. Veillande and Phillipon, who was wounded, seeing all ruined, passed the bridge with a few hundred soldiers and entered San Christoval, which was surrendered next morning upon summons to Lord Fitzroy Somerset ; for that officer had with great readiness pushed through the town to the drawbridge ere the French had time to organise further resistance. But even in the moment of ruin the night before, this noble governor had sent some horsemen out from the fort to carry the news to Soult, and they reached him in time to prevent a greater misfortune. Now commenced that wild and desperate wickedness which tarnished the lustre of the soldiers' heroism. All, indeed, were not alike; hundreds risked and many lost their lives in striving to stop the violence, but madness generally prevailed, and as the worst men were leaders here, all the dreadful passions of human nature were displayed. Shameless rapacity, brutal intemperance, savage lust, cruelty and murder, shrieks and piteous lamentations, groans, shouts, imprecations, the hissing of fires bursting from the houses, the crashing of doors and windows, and the reports of muskets used in violence, resounded for two days and nights in the streets of Badajos! On the third, when the city was sacked, when the soldiers were exhausted by their own excesses, the tumult rather subsided than was quelled; the wounded men were then looked to, the dead disposed of! Five thousand men and officers fell in this siege, and of these, including seven hundred Portuguese, three thousand five hundred had been stricken in the assault, sixty officers and more than seven hundred men being slain on the spot. The five generals, Kempt, Harvey, Bowes, Colville, and Picton, were wounded, the first four severely; six hundred men and officers fell in the escalade of San Vincente, as many at the castle, and more than two thousand at the breaches, each division there losing twelve hundred! And how deadly the breach strife was may be gathered from this: the Forty-third and Fiftysecond Regiments of the light division lost more men than the seven regiments of the third division engaged at the castle ! Let it be considered that this frightful carnage took place in a space of less than a hundred yards square; that the slain died not all suddenly nor by one manner of death-that some perished by steel, some by shot, some by water-that some were crushed and mangled by heavy weights, some trampled upon, some dashed to atoms by the fiery explosions; that for hours this destruction was endured without shrinking and the town was won at last. Let these things be considered, and it must be admitted a British army bears with it an awful power. And false would it be to say the French were feeble men; the garrison stood and fought manfully and with good discipline, behaving worthily: shame there was none on any side. Yet who shall do justice to the bravery of the British soldiers? the noble emulation of the officers ? Who shall measure out the glory of Ridge, of Macleod, of Nicholas, of O'Hare of the Ninety-fifth, who perished on the breach at the head of the stormers, and with him nearly all the volunteers for that desperate service? Who shall describe the springing valour of that Portuguese grenadier who was killed the foremost man at the Santa Maria? or the martial fury of that desperate rifleman who, in his resolution to win, thrust himself beneath the chained sword-blades, and there suffered the enemy to dash his head to pieces with the ends of their muskets? Who can sufficiently honour the intrepidity of Walker, of Shaw, of Canch, or the hardiness of Ferguson of the Forty-third, who, having in former assaults received two deep wounds, was here, his former hurts still open, leading the stormers of his regiment, the third time a volunteer, the third time wounded? Nor would I be understood to select these as pre-eminent; many and signal were the other examples of unbounded devotion, some known, some that will never be known; for in such a tumult much passes unobserved, and often the observers fell themselves ere they could bear testimony to what they saw; but no age, no nation, ever sent forth braver troops to battle than those who stormed Badajos. When the extent of the night's havoc was made known to Lord Wellington the firmness of his nature gave way for a moment, and the pride of conquest yielded to a passionate burst of grief for the loss of his gallant soldiers. The following outburst on Byron-intercalated in Napier's defence of his brother-shows the historian of the Peninsular war in another light : On Byron. But while the Lord High Commissioner, Adam, could only see in the military resident of Cephalonia a person to be crushed by the leaden weight of power without equity, there was another observer in that island who appreciated and manfully proclaimed the great qualities of the future conqueror of Scinde. This man, himself a butt for the rancour of envious dullness, was one whose youthful genius pervaded the world while he lived, and covered it with a pall when he died. For to him mountain and plain, torrent and lake, the seas, the skies, the earth, light and darkness, and even the depths of the human heart, gave up their poetic secrets; and he told them again, with such harmonious melody, that listening nations marvelled at the sound; and when it ceased they sorrowed. Sir John Kincaid (1787-1862) was one among several of Wellington's soldiers who wrote picturesque memoirs of their services under him in the Napoleonic wars. Born near Falkirk, he held a lieutenant's commission in the North York Militia, but in 1809 enlisted in the old 95th-the present Rifle Brigade as a volunteer. In the ranks at first, but afterwards as a lieutenant, he served through the Peninsular war from Torres Vedras to Toulouse, and fought also at Quatre Bras and Waterloo. After the peace he rose to be a captain in 1826 and Yeoman of the Guard in 1844, and was knighted in 1852. In 1830 appeared his Adventures in the Rifle Brigade, describing in familiar and unsystematic fashion, but with wonderful spirit and vividness, his experiences in the Peninsular and Belgian campaigns. Kincaid had a genuine literary gift, and his book ranks first in a group of camp memoirs wherein the next best is probably the Recollections (1848) of Rifleman' Harris, a private of the 95th during the campaigns of Vimeiro and Corunna. The following glimpse of Waterloo is from Kincaid : The Riflemen at Waterloo. The silencing of these guns was succeeded by a very extraordinary scene on the same spot. A strong regiment of Hanoverians advanced in line to charge the enemy out of La Haye Sainte; but they were themselves charged by a brigade of cuirassiers, and, excepting one officer on a little black horse, who went off to the rear like a shot out of a shovel, I do believe that every man of them was put to death in about five seconds. A brigade of British light dragoons advanced to their relief, and a few on each side began exchanging thrusts; but it seemed likely to be a drawn battle between them, without much harm being done, when our men brought it to a crisis sooner than either side anticipated, for they previously had their rifles eagerly pointed at the cuirassiers, with a view of saving the perishing Hanoverians; but the fear of killing their friends withheld them, until the others were utterly overwhelmed, when they instantly opened a terrific fire on the whole concern, sending both sides to flight; so that, on the small space of ground within a hundred yards of us, where five thousand men had been fighting the instant before, there was not now a living soul to, be seen. It made me mad to see the cuirassiers in their retreat stooping and stabbing at our wounded men as they lay on the ground. How I wished that I had been blessed with Omnipotent power for a moment, that I might have blighted them! The same field continued to be a wild one the whole of the afternoon. It was a sort of duelling-post between the two armies, every half-hour showing a meeting of some kind upon it; but they never exceeded a short scramble, for men's lives were held very cheap there. For the two or three succeeding hours there was no variety with us, but one continued blaze of musketry. The smoke hung so thick about that, although not more than eighty yards asunder, we could only distinguish each other by the flashes of the pieces. I shall never forget the scene which the field of battle presented about seven in the evening. I felt weary and worn out, less from fatigue than anxiety. Our division, which had stood upwards of five thousand men at the commencement of the battle, had gradually dwindled down into a solitary lot of skirmishers. The 27th Regiment were lying literally dead, in square, a few yards behind us. My horse had received another shot through the leg, and one through the flap of the saddle, which lodged in his body, sending him a step beyond the pension-list. The smoke still hung so thick about us that we could see nothing. I walked a little way to each flank, to endeavour to get a glimpse of what was going on; but nothing met my eye except the mangled remains of men and horses, and I was obliged to return to my post as wise as I went. I had never yet heard of a battle in which everybody was killed; but this seemed likely to be an exception, as all were going by turns. We got excessively im patient under the tame similitude of the latter part of the process, and burned with desire to have a last thrust at our respective vis-a-vis; for, however desperate our affairs were, we had still the satisfaction of seeing that theirs were worse. Sir John Lambert continued to stand as our support at the head of three good old regiments, one dead (the 27th) and two living ones, and we took the liberty of soliciting him to aid our views; but the Duke's orders on that head were so very particular that the gallant general had no choice. Presently a cheer, which we knew to be British, commenced far to the right, and made every one prick up his ears—it was Lord Wellington's long-wished-for orders to advance; it gradually approached, growing louder as it grew near-we took it up by instinct, and charged through the hedge down upon the old knoll, sending our adversaries flying at the point of the bayonet. Lord Wellington galloped up to us at the instant, and our men began to cheer him ; but he called out, 'No cheering, my lads, but forward, and complete your victory!' This movement had carried us clear of the smoke; and, to people who had been for so many hours enveloped in darkness, in the midst of destruction, and naturally anxious about the result of the day, the scene which now met the eye conveyed a feeling of more exquisite gratification than can be conceived. It was a fine summer's evening, just before sunset. The French were flying in one confused mass. British lines were seen in close pursuit, and in admirable order, as far as the eye could reach to the right, while the plain to the left was filled with Prussians. The enemy made one last attempt at a stand on the rising ground to our right of La Belle Alliance; but a charge from General Adams's brigade again threw them into a state of confusion, which was now inextricable, and their ruin was complete. Artillery, baggage, and everything belonging to them fell into our hands. After pursuing them until dark, we halted about two miles beyond the field of battle, leaving the Prussians to follow up the victory. Selections from the Memoirs of Kincaid, Harris, and others were edited by the Rev. W. H. Fitchett under the title of Wellington's Men (1900). James Silk Buckingham (1786-1855), traveller and lecturer, was born, a farmer's son, at Flushing near Falmouth, and went to sea before he was ten. After years of wandering, he in 1818 started a journal at Calcutta, whose strictures on the Indian Government led to its suppression (1823). In London he established the Oriental Herald (1824) and the Athenæum (1828), which he edited for a year or two, selling his interest in it ultimately to John Sterling. From 1832 to 1837 he was member for Sheffield, and then travelled for four years in North America. He was projector of the British and Foreign Institute (18431846), and president of the London Temperance League (1851). Between 1822 and 1855 he published nearly a score of volumes of travel (in Palestine, Syria, Mesopotamia, Assyria, America, as well as in Western Europe) and many political treatises, besides two volumes of an Autobiography, of which the third and fourth never appeared. James Sheridan Knowles (1784-1862) was long accounted the most successful of modern tragic dramatists. Born at Cork, he was the son of a respected teacher and author of a dictionary, a first cousin of Richard Brinsley Sheridan; and the boy, after being trained mainly in his father's school, was successively an ensign in the militia, a medical student, an actor, a schoolmaster, an actor again, and from about 1844 an оссаsional Baptist preacher, fierce in denunciation of Catholicism. His first play, Caius Gracchus, was performed at Belfast in 1815; the next, Virginius (1820), which had a good run at Covent Garden, was based on the familiar story of Virginia and Appius. Knowles afterwards brought out William Tell (1825), in which Macready achieved a triumph, The Hunchback (1832), The Love Chase (1837), and other pieces. Several of his pieces are still standard acting plays. For more than a dozen years he enjoyed a civil list pension of £200. To a considerable knowledge of stage-effect he united a lively, inventive imagination, and a poetical colouring which, if at times too florid, set off familiar images and illustrations. His style was formed on that of Massinger and the other elder dramatists, carried often to extravagance; he frequently violated Roman history and classical propriety, ran into conceits and affected metaphors, and had little sense of humour; his blank verse is mostly wooden and irregular, never in very perfect rhythm, and the style is not seldom stilted. These faults were counterbalanced by a happy art of constructing situations and plots, romantic, not too improbable, though usually somewhat conventional; by skilful delineation of character, especially in domestic life; and by the infusion of not a little warm feeling and some real poetry. He had a happy knack of utilising commonplaces or paradoxes for his purposes-thus: 'It follows not because the hair is rough, the dog's a savage one;' 'What merit to be dropped on fortune's hill? The honour is to mount it;' 'When fails our dearest friend, there may be refuge with our direst foe.' Do I not look at you? Vir. She is mine, then : Your eye does, truly, But gives the port of impudence to falsehood Protection of the Decemvir! App. Vir. I demand You shall have it. Doubtless! Vir. Man, I must speak, or else go mad! And if I do go mad, what then will hold me From speaking? She was thy sister, too! Well, well, speak thou. I'll try, and if I can, Be silent. or [Retires. Num. Will she swear she is her child? In jeopardy by such a barefaced trick! App. Fear not, love; a thousand oaths You swear the girl's your child, App. Your answer now, Virginius. The stem. Yet who from such a stem would look For such a shoot. My witnesses are these-- That saw her lying at the generous And sympathetic fount, that at her cry Sent forth a stream of liquid living pearl To cherish her enamelled veins. The lie Is most unfruitful, then, that takes the flower- Women and Citizens. You have, Virginius. I feel for you; but though you were my father, Vir. And if he must, I should advise him, Appius, The tongues that told him she was not my child His pleasure-markets for him, picks, and scents, This second Tarquin had already coiled His arms around her. Look upon her, Romans! Tear her from Appius and his Lictors while She is unstained.-Your hands! your hands! your hands! Citizens. They are yours, Virginius. But for a moment ! Had I relied upon myself alone, I had kept them still at bay! I kneel to youLet me but loose a moment, if 'tis only To rush upon your swords. Vir. Icilius, peace! [Virginia, shrieking, falls half-dead upon Vir. Another moment, pray you. Bear with me Lo, Appius, with this innocent blood [Stabs her. If they dare To tempt the desperate weapon that is maddened Knowles's Dramatic Works were collected (3 vols.) in 1843; of a Life by his son (1872) only twenty-five copies were printed. Basil Hall (1788-1844), writer of travels, was born in Edinburgh, the son of Sir James Hall of Dunglass, chemist and founder of experimental geology. Basil entered the navy in 1802, and in 1816 commanded a sloop in the naval escort of Lord Amherst's mission to Peking, visiting Corea, then a region hardly known, and described for the first time in his Voyage of Discovery to Corea (1818). He also wrote a Journal on the Coast of Chili, Peru, and Mexico in 1820-22; Travels in North America in 1827-28, a vivacious work whose free criticisms of things American gave great offence in the United States; and Fragments of Voyages and Travels (1831-40). Schloss Hainfeld (1836) was a semi-romance, and Patchwork (1841) a collection of tales and sketches. Hall died insane in Haslar Hospital. Bryan Waller Procter ('Barry Cornwall; ' 1787-1874) was born at Leeds, and educated at Harrow, with Byron and Peel for schoolfellows. Articled to a solicitor at Calne, about 1807 he came to London to live, and in 1815 began to contribute poetry to the Literary Gazette. In 1816 he succeeded by his father's death to about £500 a year, and in 1823 married Basil Montagu's step-daughter, Anne Benson Skepper. He had meanwhile published four volumes of poems, and produced a tragedy, Mirandola (1821), at Covent Garden, the success of which was largely due to the acting of Macready and Charles Kemble. Procter was called to the Bar in 1831, from 1832 to 1861 was a Metropolitan Commissioner of Lunacy. In 1857 a windfall came to Procter and other poets. Mr John Kenyon, a wealthy West Indian gentleman, fond of literary society and author of a Rhymed Plea for Tolerance, bequeathed over £140,000 in legacies to friends and writers whom he admired. Thus to Elizabeth Barrett Browning, a sum of £4000 was allotted; to her husband, £6500; and to Procter also £6500. Procter's works, published under the pseudonym 'Barry Cornwall' (a faulty anagram of his real name), comprise Dramatic Scenes (1819), A Sicilian Story and Marcian Colonna (1820), The Flood of Thessaly (1823), and English Songs (1832), besides memoirs of Edmund Kean (1835) and Charles Lamb (1866). The poems are rarely more than studies or graceful exercises, harmonious echoes of bygone and contemporary singers. Yet Barry Cornwall' will |