ith as complete an unconsciousness of the hours past away, as if
I had lain down but the moment before, and started from night into
sunshine--all belong to the campaigner: he has his troubles, but his
enjoyments are his own, exclusive, delicious, incomparable.

An officer of the staff now rode up to make a report on some movement of
the division intended to lead in the morning, and the duke gave me
permission to retire. He galloped off in the direction of the column, and
I slowly pursued my way to my quarters. Yet I could not resist many a halt,
to gaze on the singular beauty of the bursts of flame which lighted the
landscape. More than once, it reminded me of the famous Homeric
description of the Trojan bivouac by the ships. All the images were the
same, except that, for the sea, we had the endless meadows of Champagne,
and, for the ships, the remote tents of the enemy. We had the fire, the
exulting troops, the carouse, the picketed horses, the shouts and songs,
the lustre of the autumnal sky, and the bold longings for victory and the
dawn. Even in Pope's feeble translation, the scene is animated--

"The troops exulting sate in order round,
And beaming fires illumined all the ground."

Then follows the famous simile of the moon, suddenly throwing its radiance
over the obscure features of the landscape.

But Homer, the poet of realities, soon returns to the true material--

"So many flames before proud Ilion blaze,
And lighten glimmering Xanthus with their rays,
A thousand piles the dusky horrors gild,
And shoot a shadowy lustre o'er the field.
Full fifty guards each flaming pile attend,
Whose umber'd arms by fits thick flashes send;
Loud neigh the coursers o'er their heaps of corn,
And ardent warriors wait the rising morn."

I leave it to others to give the history of this campaign, one of the most
memorable of Europe from its consequences--the tramp of that army roused
the slumbering giant of France. If the Frenchman said of a battle, that it
was like a ball-room, you see little beyond your opposite partner; he
might have said of a campaign, that you scarcely see even so much. The
largeness of the scale is beyond all personal observation. I can answer
only for myself, that I was on horseback before daybreak, and marched in
the midst of columns which had no more doubt of beating up the enemy's
quarters than they had of eating their first meal. All were in the highest
spirits; and the opinions