unacquaintance with those polished manners, and little elegancies of life to which he had been accustomed , soon dissolved much of the charm which her beauty and artlessness had at first thrown around him. After struggling for some time with poverty and discontent, he enlisted in a regiment of heavy dragoons ; and, being ordered to the continent, left his wife, with an infant daughter, in a wretched lodging in London . Chance brought us together in Belgium ; and a similarity of tastes soon produced a friendship.
"Depressed as I was in spirit myself, I was struck with the melancholy tone in which, he that night, accosted me. He felt a presentiment, he said , that he should not survive the battle of the ensuing day. He wished to bid me farewell, and to entrust to my care his portrait, which, with his farewell blessing, was all he had to bequeath to his wife and child. Absence had renewed, or rather redoubled, all his fondness for the former, and pourtrayed her in all the witching loveliness that had won his boyish affection. He talked of her, while the tears ran down his cheeks ; and conjured me, if I ever reached England, to find her out, and make known her case to his father. In vain, while I pledged my word to the fulfilment of his wishes, I endeavored to cheer him with better hopes. He listened in mournful silence to all I could suggest ; flung his arms round my neck,— wrung my hand, and we parted. I saw him but once again. It was during the hottest part of the next and terrible day, when, with a noise that drowned even the roar of the artillery, Sir William Ponsonby's brigade of cavalry dashed past our hollow square, bearing before them , in that tremendous charge, the flower of Napoleon's chivalry. Far ahead even of his national regiment, I saw the manly figure of my friend. It was but for a moment. The next instant he was fighting in the centre ofthe enemy's squadron ; and the clouds of smoke that closed in masses round friend and foe, hid all from my view. When the battle was over, and all was hushed but the groans of the wounded, and the triumphant shouts and rolling drums of the victorious Prussians, who continued the pursuit during the entire of the night-I quitted the shattered remains of the gallant regiment in whose ranks I had that day the honor of standing. The moon was wading through scattered masses of dark and heavy clouds, when I commenced my search for my friend. The light was doubtful and uncertain ; yet it was easy to keep along the track that marked the last career of Ponsonby. Shuddering, lest in every face I should recognize my friend, I passed by, and sometimes trod upon, the cold and motionless heaps, where
' Rider and horse, friend and foe, in one red burial blent,' now looked so unlike the " fiery masses of living valor,' that a few hours before had commingled with a concussion more dreadful than the earthquake's shock.
Although I at first felt a certain conviction of his fate, I afterward began to hope that the object of my search had, contrary to his prediction , survived the terrible encounter. I was about to retire, when a heap of slain, in a ploughed field on which the moon was now shining clearly, attracted my notice. Literally piled on each other, were the bodies of five curassiers ; and lying beneath his horse, was the dead body of my friend. You may form some idea of my astonishment, on finding, by a nearer inspection, that his head was supported and his neck entwined by the arms of a female, from whom also the spirit had taken its departure ; but you can form no conception of the horror I felt, at beholding, in this scene of carnage and desolation,-in the very arms of death, and on the bosom of a corpse, a living infant, sleeping calmly, with the moon-beam resting on its lovely features, and a smile playing on its lips, as if angels were guarding its slumbers and inspiring its dreams ! -And who knows but, perhaps they were ? The conviction now flashed on my mind, that these were the wife and child of my unfortunate friend ; and the letters we afterward found on the person of the former, proved that I was right in the conjecture. Driven aside by the gales of pleasure or ambition, or by the storms of life, the affections of many may veer ; but unchangeable and unchanging is a true heart in woman. 'She loves, and loves for ever.' This faithful wife had followed her husband through a land of strangers, and over the pathless sea,-through the crowded city and the bustling camp, till she found him stretched on the battle field. Perhaps she came in time to receive his parting sigh, and her spirit, quitting its worn-out tenement of clay, winged its way with his, to Him who gave them being. With the assistance of some of my comrades, I consigned this hapless pair to the earth, wrapped in the same military cloak ; and enveloping the infant,-this dear child of my adoption, in my plaid, I returned to the spot where our regiment lay. "But it is time to bring this melancholy story to a conclusion : and there are some circumstances I would rather only glance at. It had been my good fortune, in the course of the day, to attract the notice of an officer of high rank, to whom, toward the evening, I was able to render an essential service. I was advanced to the halbert on the spot ; and the kindness of my patron did not cease, till, shortly after my arrival at Paris, I was presented with a pair of colors. In the pride and joy of my heart, I wrote home an account of my good fortune to my mother, and employed the interval that elapsed before I could receive an answer, in picturing my return to my native village, through the thronging comrades of my school-boy days, and flinging myself into the arms of my delighted parent. Soon, too soon, I had an answer from home. My heart sunk in me as I broke the seal. It was black, the emblem of my future lot. My mother was dead, had died heart-broken !
