a moment forgotten. Reviews,
parades, and inspections were of daily occurrence, and even a superficial
observer could not fail to detect that under this apparent devotion to
amusement and enjoyment, our commander-in-chief concealed a deep stroke of
his policy.

The spirits of both men and officers, broken, in spite of their successes,
by the incessant privations they had endured, imperatively demanded this
period of rest and repose. The infantry, many of whom had served in the
ill-fated campaign of Walcharen, wore still suffering from the effects of
the intermittent fever. The cavalry, from deficient forage, severe marches,
and unremitting service, were in great part unfit for duty. To take the
field under circumstances like these was therefore impossible; and with the
double object of restoring their wonted spirit to his troops, and checking
the ravages which sickness and the casualties of war had made within his
ranks, Lord Wellington embraced the opportunity of the enemy's inaction to
take up his present position on the Tagus.

But while we were enjoying all the pleasures of a country life, enhanced
tenfold by daily association with gay and cheerful companions, the
master-mind, whose reach extended from the profoundest calculations of
strategy to minutest details of military organization, was never idle.
Foreseeing that a period of inaction, like the present, must only be like
the solemn calm that preludes the storm, he prepared for the future by
those bold conceptions and unrivalled combinations which were to guide him
through many a field of battle and of danger to end his career of glory in
the liberation of the Peninsula.

The failure of the attack upon Badajos had neither damped his ardor nor
changed his views; and he proceeded to the investment of Ciudad Rodrigo
with the same intense determination of uprooting the French occupation in
Spain by destroying their strongholds and cutting off their resources.
Carrying aggressive war in one hand, he turned the other towards the
maintenance of those defences which, in the event of disaster or defeat,
must prove the refuge of the army.

To the lines of Torres Vedras he once more directed his attention. Engineer
officers were despatched thither; the fortresses were put into repair; the
bridges broken or injured during the French invasion were restored; the
batteries upon the Tagus were rendered more effective, and furnaces for
heating shot were added to them.

The