Page:Letters from Abroad to Kindred at Home (Volume 1).djvu/137

134 pièces!" The Catholic sentiment is nearly untranslateable into Protestant English.

The inner wall is written over with the names of visitors. Byron's was there; but some marauding traveller has broken away the plaster and carried it off to Paris. "Do you not think," said our guide, with an honest indignation, "that a man must be crazy to do this?" The simple peasant-guide knew the worth of Byron's name. This is fame.

We drove round the rich wheat-field to La Haye Sainte. There is no ground in all rich Belgium so rich as this battle-field. In the spring the darkest and thickest corn tells where the dead were buried! The German legion slaughtered at La Haye Sainte are buried on the opposite side of the road, when there is a simple monument over them.

La Belle Alliance, where Wellington and Blucher met after the battle, was pointed out to us; and Napoleon's different portions, the very spot where he stood when he first descried Blucher, and his heart for the last time swelled with anticipated triumph. How I wished for Hal to stand with me where Wellington gave that lining order, "Up, guards, and at them!"

We were shown the places where Gordon, Picton, and others of note fell; and there, where the masses lay weltering in blood, the unknown, unhonoured, unrecorded, there was