been for two days employed in assisting the
burial parties, pointed out some excavations like
gravel-pits, just beyond the village, at the bottom
of which, in broad and deep pits, the greater
part of the fallen had been interred, dressed as
they fell. One of these graves contained
two hundred and eigthy-three bodies; but
the hole being not sufficiently sunk, some
corpses were piled up, and covered with soil so
shallowly that, in several places, arms and legs
were visible. My guide declared most positively
that on the two days—Sunday and Monday—
succeeding the battle, fourteen thousand bodies,
whereof nearly five thousand were French, had
been buried between Buffalora and Magenta.
This was the lowest of the many estimates I
had heard, and certainly the most likely to be
correct.

As we proceeded towards Buffalora, the traces
of the fight augmented. Although more than
twenty-five thousand knapsacks had been col-
lected and sent to Milan (where they are burned
for the sake of the oil obtained from their calf's-
hide covers), many hundreds yet strewed the
ground, while at Cascina Nuova, a large old
farm-château, the Hougoumont of the fight, there
was a pile of hats, caps, cartridge-boxes, &c.,
as high as a little house.

The unlucky owner of this much mishandled
dwelling, who was tending silkworms with his
whole family, including the grandmother (every
family in Italy has its grandmother), talked
bitterly of the treatment he had experienced at
the hands of the Austrians, who had impressed
him and his cattle into their service, and had
wounded him severely in the person of a
favourite cow. "The French doctor," he said,
"had paid a cursory visit to the cow, and
made light of the injury; but he would feel
obliged if the signori would examine the da-
maged brute," the which we did, and comforted
him with the assurance that the cow would cer-
tainly survive, though with a limp in her gait
for the remainder of her days. There was a
broken brick in the window, and he told us how,
while engaged with his bullocks, under the eye
of an Austrian soldier, a Frenchman had ap-
proached within three steps of the window, and,
firing in, smashed the brick, killing the Aus-
trian on the spot.

All agreed in indicating the spot, near the
custom-house buildings, where Gyulai stood
during the heat of the action, enraged, a
wounded Austrian officer averred, at his defeat,
and furiously upbraiding the officers who re-
presented to him the imminent probability of his
positions being forced.

Under the wall of a pretty little cemetery, a
part of which, including some rich monumental
tablets, had been ruthlessly torn down to admit
of the working of a gun, we came upon the first
grave distinguished with the name of the fallen:
"Jean Mincent, aux Zouaves de la Garde.
Tué à l'assaut de Buffalora, le 4 juin."

Not far from hence we discerned the wooden
cross that had attracted my notice the previous
day. It stood at the corner of an orchard, half
a mile from Buffalora, and bore a pencil inscrip-
tion, thus:

"Ci-gît Bouisson, Jean-François, Adjudant à
la 3me Batt. du régiment d'artillerie à cheval de
la Garde Impériale. Tué le 4 juin d'un coup de
baïonnette en défendant sa pièce.

The crosses are not many; but, a few hun-
dred yards further, near a much-trampled
garden, we see two large dark mounds bearin-
respectively the intimation:

"Gren. de la Garde. Ci-gisent douze braves
tués le 4 juin." And, " Quatre-vingt-trois sold,
autrichiens ont été enterrés le 4 juin."

Crossing the railway line, we encounter a
column of Austrian prisoners, eight hundred and
thirty-two in number, as one of their escort of
fifteen informs us. They are mostly fine young
men, and march gaily enough along, though
some bandages and pale faces show that certain
of them have but recently been discharged from
hospital.

The old church of Magenta, a very large
building, has not escaped in the conflict. Innu-
merable bullets are imbedded in the walls. We
dug out two as memorials, which, being above
easy reach, had evaded the perquisitions of the
"signori del paese," who, we were told, had
carried off almost every available souvenir of the
fight. Three cannon-balls had struck the church,
one of which, entering above the principal door,
traversed the building and struck off a large
mass of masonry beside the pulpit. Through
the grating of a crypt might be seen a pile of
a hundred and fifty skulls, carefully arranged
upon a solid substratum of thigh-bones, the
skull which formed the apex being moreover
adorned with a clerical hat. These were a few of
the hamlet's forefathers, who, with their pastors,
had been exhumed after nearly a century's repose,
to make room for more recent generations.

After a visit to the cemetery, the scene of an
obstinate struggle which cost the Austrians six
hundred men, and in which the pioneers have
made sad work with the Pinettis, Berrettas, and
other noble houses who had therein set up their
rest, we bid adieu to Magenta, henceforth re-
nowned in story, for Milan—for Milan, all flag,
and flutter, and triumph, and talk, and tears—
for there is a dark page to every book of glory
—and within forty miles of which then hovered
the defeated foe.

On Thursday, the twenty-second of June,
rumours of a battle likely to occur on the next
day but one, between Brescia and Peschiera,
determined me, after one final and unsuccessful
effort to obtain a French pass, to set off for the
scene of expected operations without one. The
French consul, however, polite but powerless,
intimated that an application to General Castel
Borgo, commanding at Milan, might be happier
in its results, and so indeed it proved.

Thus provided, and accompanied by an Eng-
lish lady resident in Italy, who with her servant
had been engaged in administering to the needs
of the sick and wounded in the crowded hos-
pitals of Milan, and desired to extend her cares