sted
in his conviction, "that we had come at the wrong time, either too early
or too late; _before_ the nation had grown weary of anarchy, and _after_
they had triumphed over the throne. "The rebound," said he energetically,
"will be terrible. Ten times our force would be thrown away in this war.
The army may drive all things before its front; but it will be assailed in
the rear, in the flanks--every where. It is like the lava which I have
seen pour down from Etna into the sea. It drove the tide before it, and
threw the water up in vapour; but they were too powerful for it after all.
And there stands the lava fixed and cold, and there roll the surges once
again, burying it from the sight of man."

A sudden harmony of trumpets, from various points of the vast encampment,
pierced the ear, and in another moment the whole line of the hills was
crowned with flame. The signal for lighting the fires of the Austrian and
Prussian outposts had been given, and the effect was almost magical. In
this army all things were done with a regularity almost perfect. The
trumpet spoke, and the answer was instantaneous. All comparisons are
feeble to realities of this order--seen, too, while the heart of man is
quickened to enjoy and wonder, and feels scarcely less than a new
existence in the stirring events every where round him. The first
comparison that struck me was the vague one of a shower of stars. The
mountain pinnacles were in a blaze. The general fires of the bivouacs soon
spread through the forest, and down the slopes of the hills, all round to
the horizon.

The night was fine, the air flowed refreshingly from the verdure of the
immense woods, and the scent of the thyme and flowers of the heath,
pressed by my foot, rose "wooingly on the air." All was calm and odorous.
The flourish of the evening trumpets still continued to swell in the rich
harmonies which German skill alone can breathe, and thoughts of the past
and the future began to steal over my mind. I was once more in England,
gazing on the splendid beauty of Clotilde; and imagining the thousand
forms in which my weary fortunes must be shaped, before I dared offer her
a share in my hopes of happiness. I saw Mariamne once more, with her smile
reminding me of Shakspeare's exquisite picture--

"Oh, what a deal of scorn looks beautiful,
In the contempt and anger of that lip!"

Then came a vision of my early home. The halls of Mortimer castle--the
feebly surviving parent t