Think of this moving town; this
portable village of royal belligerents covered with glory and medals,
breasting the billows! Is there not something glorious in such a
spectacle? And yet I was told by a brave officer, who wore the decorations
of the four great battles on his breast, that of his regiment, the
Sixty-third, but thirty men were now living, and of the thirty, seventeen
only were able to attend drill. That regiment numbered a thousand at Alma!

No gun broke the silence of the Sabbath morning, as the giant ship moved
from the Admiralty, on the day following our visit to Point Pleasant, and
silently furrowed her path oceanward on her return to Gibraltar. A long
line of thick bituminous smoke, above the low house-tops, was the only
hint of her departure, to the citizens. It was a grand sight to see her
vast bulk moving among the islands in the harbor, almost as large as they.

And now, being Sunday, after looking in at the Cathedral, which does not
represent the usual pomp of the Romish Church, we will visit the Garrison
Chapel. A bugle-call from barracks, or Citadel Hill, salutes us as we
stroll towards the chapel; otherwise, Halifax is quiet, as becomes the
day. Presently we see the long scarlet lines approaching, and presently
the men, with orderly step, file from the street through the porch into
the gallery and pews. Then the officers of field and line, of ordnance and
commissary departments, take their allotted seats below. Then the chimes
cease, and the service begins. Most devoutly we prayed for the Queen, and
omitted the President of the United States.

As the Crimeans ebbed from the church, and, floating off in the distance,
wound slowly up Citadel Hill against the quiet clear summer sky, I could
not but think of these lines from Thomas Miller's "Summer Morning:"

"A troop of soldiers pass with stately pace,
Their early music wakes the village street:
Through yon turned blinds peeps many a lovely face,
Smiling perchance unconsciously how sweet!
One does the carpet press with blue-veined feet,
Not thinking how her fair neck she exposes,
But with white foot timing the drum's deep beat;
And when again she on her pillow dozes,
Dreams how she'll dance that tune 'mong summer's sweetest roses

"So let her dream, even as beauty should!
Let the while plumes athwart her slumbers away!
Why should I steep their swaling snows in