"Yet are Spain's maids no race of Amazons,
But formed for all the witching arts of love!"

Their house, under the circumstances in which we were placed, became an agreeable lounge for many of us for a month or two; for though the sports of the field, with the limited means at our disposal, formed our daily amusement, we always contrived that it should terminate somewhere in the neighbourhood of the Quinta, where we were sure of three things-a hearty welcome, a dish of conversation, and another of chestnuts fried in hog's lard, with a glass of aguadente to wind up with; which, after the fatigues of the day, carried us comfortably home to our more substantial repast, with a few little pleasing recollections to dream about.

The French marshal, as if envious of our enjoyments, meager as they were, put a sudden stop to them. His advance, however, was not so rapid but that we were enabled to give our first care towards providing for the safety of our friends of the Quinta, by assisting them with the means of transporting themselves to a more remote glen in the mountains, before it was necessary to look to our own, and

Although the links of love that morn

Which War's rude hands had asunder torn

had not been patent ones, yet did it savour somewhat of chivalric times when we had been one evening in the field in the front of the Quinta sporting with the young and the lovely of the land, as if wars and rumours of wars were to be heard of no more.

I say I felt it rather queerish or so, to be spreading down my boat-cloak for a bed in the same field the next night, with an enemy in my front, for so it was, and to find myself again before daylight next morning, from my cold clay couch, gazing at the wonderful comet of 1811, that made such capital claret, and

wishing that he would wag his fiery tail a little nearer to my face, for it was so stiff with hoar frost that I dared neither to laugh nor cry for fear of breaking it.

We passed yet another night in the same field hallowed by such opposite recollections; but next day, independently of the gathered strength of the enemy in our front, we found a fight of some magnitude going on behind us, the combat of Elbodon; and our majorgeneral, getting alarmed at last at his own temerity, found a sleeping place for us, some distance in the rear, in a hollow, where none but the comet and its companions might be indulged with a look.

Our situation was more than ticklish-with an enemy on three sides and an almost impassable mountain on the fourth-but starting with the lark next morning and passing through Robledillo, we happily succeeded in joining the army in front of Guinaldo in the afternoon, to the no small delight of his Grace of Wellington, whose judicious and daring front with half the enemy's numbers, had been our salvation. And it must no doubt have been a mortifying reflection to our divisional chief, to find that his obstinacy and disobedience of orders had not only placed his own division, but that of the whole army in such imminent peril.

Marmont had no doubt a laurel-wreath in embryo for the following day, but he had allowed his day to go by; the night was ours and we used it, so that when daylight broke, he had nothing but empty field-work to wreak his vengeance on. He followed us along the road, with some sharp partial fighting at one or two places, and there seemed a probability of his coming on to the position in which Lord Wellington felt disposed to give him battle; but a scarcity of provisions forced him to retrace his steps, and break up to a certain extent for the subsistence of his army, while our retreat terminated at Soita, which it appeared was about the spot on which Lord Wellington had determined to make a stand.

I shall ever remember our night at Soita for one

thing. The commissariat had been about to destroy a cask of rum in the course of that day's retreat, when at the merciful intercession of one of my brother officers, it was happily spared and turned over to his safe keeping, and he showed himself deserving of the trust, for by wonderful dexterity and management, he contrived to get it wheeled along to our resting-place, when establishing himself under the awning of a splendid chestnut-tree, he hung out the usual emblem of its being the head-quarters of a highland chief-not for the purpose of scaring way-fairers as erst did his forefathers of yore, to exclude the worthy Baillie Nicol Jarvie from the clachan of Aberfoyle-but for the more hospitable one of inviting them to be partakers, thereof; and need I add that among the many wearers of empty calabashes which the chances of war had there assembled around him, the call was cheerfully responded to, and a glorious group very quickly assembled.

The morrow promised to be a bloody one; but we cared not for the morrow:-"sufficient for the day is the evil thereof:"-the song and the jest went merrily round, and, if the truth must be told, I believe that though we carried our cups to the feast, we all went back in them, and with the satisfaction of knowing that we had relieved our gallant chieftain of all farther care respecting the contents of the cask.

The enemy having withdrawn the same night, we retraced our steps, next day, to our former neighbourhood; and though we were occasionally stirred up and called together by the menacing attitudes of our opponents, yet we remained the unusually long period of nearly three months without coming again into actual contact with them.

No officer during that time had one fraction to rub against another; and when I add that our paunches were nearly as empty as our pockets, it will appear almost a libel upon common sense to say that we enjoyed it; yet so it was,-our very privations were a subject of pride and boast to us, and there still continued to be an esprit de corps,-a buoyancy of feel

ing animating áll, which nothing could quell; we were alike ready for the field or for frolic, and when not engaged in the one, went headlong into the other.

Ah me! when I call to mind that our chief support in those days of trial was the anticipated delight of recounting those tales in after years, to wondering and admiring groups around our domestic hearths, in merry England; and when I find that so many of these after years have already passed, and that the folks who people these present years, care no more about these dearbought tales of former ones than if they were spinningwheel stories of some "auld wife ayont the fire;" 1 say it is not only enough to make me inflict them with a book, as I have done, but it makes me wish that I had it all to do over again; and I think it would be very odd if I would not do exactly as I have done, for I knew no happier times, and they were their own reward!

It is worthy of remark that Lord Wellington, during the time I speak of, had made his arrangements for pouncing upon the devoted fortress of Ciudad Rodrigo, with such admirable secrecy, that his preparations were not even known to his own army.

I remember, about a fortnight before the siege commenced, hearing that some gabions and fascines were being made in the neighbourhood, but it was spoken of as a sort of sham preparation, intended to keep the enemy on the qui vive, as it seemed improbable that he would dare to invest a fortress in the face of an army which he had not force enough to meet in the field, unless on some select position; nor was it until the day before we opened the trenches that we became quite satisfied that he was in earnest.

The sieges, stormings, and capture of Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajos followed hard on each other's heels; and as I gave a short detail of the operations in my former volume, it only remains for me now to introduce such anecdotes and remarks as were there omitted.

The garrison of Ciudad was weak in number, but

had a superabundant store of ammunition, which was served out to us with a liberal hand; yet, curious enough, except what was bestowed on the working parties, (and that was plenty in all conscience,) the greater portion of what was intended for the supporting body was expended in air, for they never seemed to have discovered the true position of the besieging force; and though some few of us, in the course of each night, by chance-shots, got transferred from natural to eternal sleep, yet their shells were chiefly empleyed in the ploughing-up of a hollow way between two hills, where we were supposed to have been, and which they did most effectually at their own cost.

When our turn of duty came for the trenches, however, we never had reason to consider ourselves neglected, but, on the contrary, could well spare what was sent at random.

I have often heard it disputed whether the most daring deeds are done by men of good or bad repute, but I never felt inclined to give either a preference over the other, for I have seen the most desperate things done by both. I remember one day during the siege that a shell pitched in the trenches within a few yards of a noted bad character of the 52d regiment, who, rather than take the trouble of leaping out of the trench until it had exploded, went very deliberately up, took it in his arms, and pitched it outside, obliging those to jump back who had there taken shelter from it.

A wild young officer, whose eccentricities and death, at Waterloo, were noticed in my former volume, was at that time at variance with his father on the subject of pecuniary matters, and in mounting the breach, at Ciudad, sword in hand, while both sides were falling thick and fast, he remarked to a brotherofficer alongside of him, in his usual jocular way, "Egad, if I had my old father here now, I think I should be able to bring him to terms!"

Nothing shows the spirit of daring and inherent