n, and the staff of the army were busily employed in examining the
ground. The Guards were ordered to cover the operations of the pioneers;
and all was soon in readiness for the night on which the first trench
was to be opened. A siege is always the most difficult labour of an
army, and there is none which more perplexes a general. To the troops,
it is incessant toil--to the general, continual anxiety. The men always
have the sense of that disgust which grows upon the soldier where he
contemplates a six weeks' delay in the sight of stone walls; and the
commander, alive to every sound of hazard, feels that he yet must stand
still, and wait for the attack of every force which can be gathered
round the horizon. He may be the lion, but he is the lion in a
chain--formidable, perhaps, to those who may venture within its length,
but wholly helpless against all beyond. Yet those feelings, inevitable
as they are, were but slightly felt in our encampment round the frowning
ramparts of the city. We had already swept all before us; we had learned
the language of victory; we were in the midst of a country abounding
with all the good things of life, and which, though far from exhibiting
the luxuriant beauty of the British plains, was yet rich and various
enough to please the eye. Our camp was one vast scene of gaiety. War
had, if ever, laid aside its darker draperies, and "grim-visaged" as it
is, had smoothed its "wrinkled front." The presence of so many visitors
of the highest rank gave every thing the air of royalty. High manners,
splendid entertainments, and all the habits and indulgences of the life
of courts, had fled from France only to be revived in Flanders. Our army
was a court on the march; and the commander of the British--the honest,
kind-hearted, and brave Duke of York--bore his rank like a prince, and
gathered involuntarily round him as showy a circle as ever figured in St
James's, or even in the glittering saloons of the Tuileries. Hunting
parties, balls, suppers, and amateur theatrical performances, not merely
varied the time, but made it fly. Hope had its share too, as well as
possession. Paris was before us; and on the road to the capital lay but
the one fortress which was about to be destroyed with our fire, and of
which our engineers talked with contempt as the decayed work of "old"
Vauban.

But the course of victory is like the course of love, which, the poet
says, "never does run smooth." The successes of the All