the road–side, little dreaming that he was to
fall one of the very first victims of the
impending and most terrible slaughter.

Before arriving, however, at this part of
the road, we had turned off, and entered the
left–hand road through the wood. Well may
Scott call it "Thy wood, dark Soigne;" for a
more densely-grown forest is not easily to be
met with. Still, it is no "salvage wood," but
one of trained growth. It consists of beech;
the trees remarkably lofty, and their fine,
slender, and remarkably straight boles ranged
so thickly side by side, that their tops shut
out nearly all the day-light. Below, the
ground is almost entirely free from brushwood,
so that you might range freely all over
it, if the fear of being lost did not prevent
you. Through this dense and shadowy region
runs the road for seven miles, the tops of the
trees even meeting over your heads, and the eye
ranging through the solemn gloom in which
showed all the endless columns of the wood
below. Sometimes the track of a footpath tells
that the peasants cross it; and here and there
beautiful openings let in the light of heaven,
and seem to invite you to stay awhile in their
sylvan and profoundly silent enclosures. The
people of Brussels often form picnics in this
wood, and, probably, sometimes call to mind
the fearful day when no less than twelve
thousand of the soldiers of the Allied Army
are said to have stolen away from the horrible
carnage of the fight, preferring the green
wood and loss of honour to loss of the "dear
life." "It was quite amusing," says one
writer, who was engaged in the battle, "to
see some of the foreign troops cut away from
the angles of their squares, and our staff-
officers galloping after them to intercept
their flight." And Lieutenant-Colonel Basil
Jackson, without finding it amusing, says,
"I had an opportunity of witnessing how
disgraceful had been the conduct of many of
the foreign troops. I saw thousands making
their way to the forest, who had quitted their
colours during the battle, and fled. The
commanding-officer of a cavalry regiment showed
me one hundred and forty men, stating that
his loss in the battle had reduced it to that
number; but very nearly the original complement
of eight hundred men were forthcoming a
few days afterwards. The Duke degraded it."

In the shades of this green Soigne did these
fine fellows, that trying day, seek "the better
part of valour." M. Gozlan could not find a
single singing bird in the wood, and gravely
states that all the birds fled in terror on the
day of the roaring battle, and have never
since come back.—One thousand acres of this
wood belong to the Duke of Wellington; a
testimony to his services from the government
of the Netherlands.

Soon after issuing from Soigne to the great
paved road again, we began to see the
pyramidal hill, surmounted by the Lion raised by
the Belgians on the spot where the chief fury
of the battle raged, showing itself aloft in the
opening of the road. It is strange what a.
sensation the first sight of this monument of
the grand conflict, which at once terminated
the lives of seventy thousand human creatures,
and the destinies of Napoleon, gave us. A
solemn brooding horror seemed to hover
about it; a vivid consciousness of the reality
of the terrible scenes which had taken place
there, comes with its presence. It stood up
like a giant spectre of the past, assuring us
that we were now actually on the spot which
had, for a great part of our lives, been talked
of as something afar off, and, therefore, like
the things of another world, only half real.

Waterloo is an ordinary Belgian village,
with its cottages and gardens scattered on
each side of the road; but since the battle, it
has been continually extending itself, and
now nearly joins Mont St. Jean, the village
from which the French name the fight. In
this village, which has prospered and grown
by the influx of visitors and the sale of relics
for six-and-years, lie buried in the
churchyard a considerable number of British
officers who fell in the conflict; and a woman
presented herself to show their monuments.
There, also, but in a private garden, is buried
the leg of the Marquis of Anglesea, which the
owner of the house has honoured with a
monument and epitaph, and found these,
along with the boot belonging to the leg, a
most profitable possession. But still more
interesting to us was the house where the
Duke of Wellington took up his quarters
before the battle; and that interest, we are
not ashamed to say, was created not so much
by the great commander, as the commander's
cook. During the battle, as, from hour to
hour, thousands on thousands of fugitives
poured along towards Brussels, or at least
towards the Forest of Soigne, crying that all
was lost—the English beaten—the French
victorious, and coming—the incredulous cook
continued unmoved his preparations for his
master's dinner. "Fly!" cried one after
another, "the French are coming, and you
will be killed!" But the imperturbable cook,
strong in his faith of invariable victory, only
replied, "No, I have served my master while
he has fought a hundred battles, and he never
yet failed to come to his dinner." And he
cooked on, spite of flying thousands of "brave
Belges" and Hanoverians; and the Duke
came, though rather late!

In Waterloo, there is an excellent hotel
kept by Serjeant Munday, an Englishman
who was in the battle, and who has succeeded
as guide to his brother-in-law, the late well-
known Serjeant-Major Cotton, the author of
the admirable little guide-book, "A Voice
from Waterloo." The house cannot be missed
by the Englishman or American visiting the
spot; its name and the name of the host being
painted in bold letters along its front. It is
a cheering thing to an Englishman who comes
here, and finds himself surrounded by Belgian
peasants, in blue slops and cloth caps,