w.
"What, Francis!" "Give Charlotte my last farewell."
Wilder the slaughter roars, fierce and fell.
"I'll give----Look, comrades, beware--beware
How the bullets behind us are whirring there----
I'll give thy Charlotte thy last farewell,
Sleep soft! where death's seeds are the thickest sown,
Goes the heart which thy silent heart leaves alone."
Hitherward--thitherward reels the fight,
Darker and darker comes down the night--
_Brothers, God grant when this life is o'er,
In the life to come that we meet once more_!

Hark to the hoofs that galloping go!
The Adjutants flying,--
The horsemen press hard on the panting foe,
Their thunder booms in dying--
Victory!
The terror has seized on the dastards all,
And their colours fall.
Victory!
Closed is the brunt of the glorious fight.
And the day, like a conqueror, bursts on the night.
Trumpet and fife swelling choral along,
The triumph already sweeps marching in song.
_Live--brothers--live!--and when this life is o'er,
In the life to come may we meet once more_!

* * * * *

THE LAST OF THE SHEPHERDS.

CHAPTER I.

I wish I had lived in France in 1672! It was the age of romances in
twenty volumes, and flowing periwigs, and high-heeled shoes, and
hoops, and elegance, and wit, and rouge, and literary suppers, and
gallantry, and devotion. What names are those of La Calprenede, and
D'Urfe, and De Scuderi, to be the idols and tutelary deities of a
circulating library!--and Sevigne, to conduct the fashionable
correspondence of the _Morning Post_!--and Racine, to contribute to
the unacted drama!--and ladies skipping up the steepest parts of
Parnassus, with petticoats well tucked up, to show the beauty of
their ankles, and their hands filled with artificial flowers--almost
as good as natural--to show the simplicity of their tastes! I wish I
had lived in France in 1672; for in that year Madame Deshoulieres,
who had already been voted the tenth muse by all the freeholders of
Pieria, and whose pastorals were lisped by all the fashionable
shepherdesses in Paris, left the flowery banks of the Seine to
rejoin her husband. Monsieur Deshoulieres was in Guyenne; Madame
Deshoulieres went into Dauphine. Matrimony seems to be rather hurtful
to geographical studies, but Madame Deshoulieres was a poetess; and
in spite of the thirty-eight sum