nt has constituted an epoch in my
life--that I shall never forget the lightest word of it--that I cannot
throw the impression aside, and never saw anything so real, so
touching, and so actually present before my eyes, is nothing. I am
husband and wife, dead man and living woman, Emma and General Dundas,
doctor and bedstead--everything and everybody (but the Prussian
officer--damn him) all in one. What I have always looked upon as
masterpieces of powerful and affecting description, seem as nothing in
my eyes. If I live for fifty years, I shall dream of it every now and
then, from this hour to the day of my death, with the most frightful
reality. The slightest mention of a battle will bring the whole thing
before me. I shall never think of the Duke any more, but as he stood
in his shirt with the officer in full-dress uniform, or as he
dismounted from his horse when the gallant man was struck down.

"It is a striking proof of the power of that most extraordinary man
Defoe that I seem to recognise in every line of the narrative
something of him. Has this occurred to you? The going to Waterloo with
that unconsciousness of everything in the road, but the obstacles to
getting on--the shutting herself up in her room and determining not to
hear--the not going to the door when the knocking came--the finding
out by her wild spirits when she heard he was safe, how much she had
feared when in doubt and anxiety--the desperate desire to move towards
him--the whole description of the cottage, and its condition; and
their daily shifts and contrivances; and the lying down beside him in
the bed and both _falling asleep_; and his resolving not to serve any
more, but to live quietly thenceforth; and her sorrow when she saw him
eating with an appetite so soon before his death; and his death
itself--all these are matters of truth, which only that astonishing
creature, as I think, could have told in fiction.

"Of all the beautiful and tender passages--the thinking every day how
happy and blest she was--the decorating him for the dinner--the
standing in the balcony at night and seeing the troops melt away
through the gate--and the rejoining him on his sick bed--I say not a
word. They are God's own, and should be sacred. But let me say again,
with an earnestness which pen and ink can no more convey than toast
and water, in thanking you heartily for the perusal of this paper,
that its impression on me can never be told; that the ground she
trav