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[Glendower. "I can call spirits from the vasty deep.
Hotspur. Why so can I, or so can any man:

But will they come when you do call for
them?" Henry IV.]

["the dread of something after death,—
The undiscover'd country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns."- Hamlet.]

3[Talus,-the slope or inclination of a wall, whereby, reclining at the top so as to fall within its base, the thickness is gradually lessened according to the height." — Milit. Dict.]

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4 ["Appellant ceux des chasseurs qui étaient autour de moi en assez grand nombre, je m'avançai et reconnus ne m'étre point trompé dans mon calcul; c'était en effet cette colonne qui à l'instant parvenait au sommet du rempart. Les Turcs de derrière les travers et les flancs des bastions voisins fasaient sur elle un feu très-vif de canon et de mousqueterie. Je gravis, avec les gens qui m'avaient suivi, le talus intérieur du rempart."-Hist. de la N. R. p. 211.]

5 ["Ce fut dans cet instant que je reconnus combien l'ignorance du constructeur des palissades était importante pour nous; car, comme elles étaient placés au milieu du parapet," &c.ibid. p. 211.]

XLVII.

So that on either side some nine or ten

Paces were left, whereon you could contrive To march; a great convenience to our men, At least to all those who were left alive, Who thus could form a line and fight again;

And that which farther aided them to strive
Was, that they could kick down the palisades,
Which scarcely rose much higher than grass blades. I
XLVIII.

Among the first, I will not say the first,
For such precedence upon such occasions
Will oftentimes make deadly quarrels burst

Out between friends as well as allied nations:
The Briton must be bold who really durst

Put to such trial John Bull's partial patience,
As say that Wellington at Waterloo
Was beaten,

though the Prussians say so too ;-
XLIX.

And that if Blucher, Bulow, Gneisenau,

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And God knows who besides in "au" and "ow," Had not come up in time to cast an awe

Into the hearts of those who fought till now

As tigers combat with an empty craw,

The Duke of Wellington had ceased to show His orders, also to receive his pensions;

Which are the heaviest that our history mentions.

L.

But never mind; -" God save the king!" and kings! For if he don't, I doubt if men will longer

I think I hear a little bird, who sings

The people by and by will be the stronger:
The veriest jade will wince whose harness wrings
So much into the raw as quite to wrong her
Beyond the rules of posting, and the mob
At last fall sick of imitating Job.

LI.

At first it grumbles, then it swears, and then,
Like David, flings smooth pebbles 'gainst a giant;
At last it takes to weapons such as men

Snatch when despair makes human hearts less pliant.

Then comes" the tug of war; "-'t will come again, I rather doubt; and I would fain say "fle on 't," If I had not perceived that revolution

Alone can save the earth from hell's pollution.

LII.

But to continue: -I say not the first,

But of the first, our little friend Don Juan Walk'd o'er the walls of Ismail, as if nursed

[one Amidst such scenes - though this was quite a new To him, and I should hope to most. The thirst Of glory, which so pierces through and through one, Pervaded him- although a generous creature, As warm in heart as feminine in feature.

1["Il y avait de chaque côté neuf à dix pieds sur lesquels on pouvait marcher; et les soldats, après être montés, avaient pu se ranger commodément sur l'espace extérieur, qui ne s'éleva que d'à-peu-près deux pieds au-dessus du niveau de la terre."-Hist. de la N. R. p. 211.]

2 [It has been a favourite assertion with almost all the French, and some English writers, that the English were on the point of being defeated, when the Prussian force came up. The contrary is the truth. Baron Muffling has given the most explicit testimony," that the battle could have afforded no favourable result to the enemy, even if the Prussians had never come up." The laurels of Waterloo

LIII.

And here he was- who upon woman's breast,
Even from a child, felt like a child; howe'er
The man in all the rest might be confest,
To him it was Elysium to be there;
And he could even withstand that awkward test

Which Rousseau points out to the dubious fair, "Observe your lover when he leaves your arms; " But Juan never left them, while they had charms,

LIV.

Unless compell'd by fate, or wave, or wind,

Or near relations, who are much the same. But here he was!-where each tie that can bind Humanity must yield to steel and flame :

And he whose very body was all mind,

Flung here by fate or circumstance, which tame The loftiest, hurried by the time and place, Dash'd on like a spurr'd blood-horse in a race.

LV.

So was his blood stirr'd while he found resistance,
As is the hunter's at the five-bar gate,
Or double post and rail, where the existence

Of Britain's youth depends upon their weight,
The lightest being the safest at a distance
He hated cruelty, as all men hate
Blood, until heated-and even then his own
At times would curdle o'er some heavy groan.
LVI.

The General Lascy, who had been hard press'd,
Seeing arrive an aid so opportune

As were some hundred youngsters all abreast,
Who came as if just dropp'd down from the moon,
To Juan, who was nearest him, address'd

His thanks, and hopes to take the city soon, Not reckoning him to be a " base Bezonian," 3 (As Pistol calls it) but a young Livonian. +

LVIL

Juan, to whom he spoke in German, knew
As much of German as of Sanscrit, and
In answer made an inclination to

The general who held him in command;
For seeing one with ribands, black and blue,
Stars, medals, and a bloody sword in hand,
Addressing him in tones which seem'd to thank,
He recognised an officer of rank.

LVIII.

Short speeches pass between two men who speak
No common language; and besides, in time
of war and taking towns, when many a shriek
Rings o'er the dialogue, and many a crime

Is perpetrated ere a word can break

Upon the ear, and sounds of horror chime In like church-bells, with sigh, howl, groan, yell, prayer, There cannot be much conversation there.

must be divided - the British won the battle, the Prussians achieved and rendered available the victory. - SIR WALTER SCOTT.]

3 [Pistol's" Bezonian" is a corruption of bisognoso-a needy man-metaphorically (at least) a scoundrel.]

4"Le Général Lascy, voyant arriver un corps, si à propos à son secour, s'avança vers l'officier qui l'avait conduit, et, le prenant pour un Livonien, lui fit, en Alleman 1, les complimens les plus flatteurs; le jeune militaire (le Duc de Richelieu) qui parlait parfaitement cette langue, y répondit avec sa modestie ordinaire."- Hist. de la N. R. p. 211.]

Y y

LIX.

And therefore all we have related in

Two long octaves, pass'd in a little minute; But in the same small minute, every sin

Contrived to get itself comprised within it. The very cannon, deafened by the din,

Grew dumb, for you might almost hear a linnet, As soon as thunder, 'midst the general noise Of human nature's agonising voice!

LX.

The town was enter'd. Oh eternity! —

"God made the country, and man made the town," So Cowper says-and I begin to be

Of his opinion, when I see cast down
Rome, Babylon, Tyre, Carthage, Nineveh,

All walls men know, and many never known;
And pondering on the present and the past,
To deem the woods shall be our home at last:
LXI.

Of all men, saving Sylla1 the man-slayer,

Who passes for in life and death most lucky, Of the great names which in our faces stare, The General Boon, back-woodsman of Kentucky, Was happiest amongst mortals any where;

For killing nothing but a bear or buck, he Enjoy'd the lonely, vigorous, harmless days Of his old age in wilds of deepest maze. 2

LXII.

Crime came not near him-she is not the child
Of solitude; Health shrank not from him - for
Her home is in the rarely trodden wild,

Where if men seek her not, and death be more
Their choice than life, forgive them, as beguiled
By habit to what their own hearts abhor-
In cities caged. The present case in point I
Cite is, that Boon lived hunting up to ninety;
LXIII.

And what's still stranger, left behind a name
For which men vainly decimate the throng,
Not only famous, but of that good fame,

Without which glory 's but a tavern song—
Simple, serene, the antipodes of shame,

Which hate nor envy e'er could tinge with wrong; An active hermit, even in age the child Of Nature, or the Man of Ross run wild.

LXIV.

'Tis true he shrank from men even of his nation,
When they built up unto his darling trees,—
He moved some hundred miles off, for a station
Where there were fewer houses and more ease; 3
The inconvenience of civilisation

Is, that you neither can be pleased nor please;
But where he met the individual man,
He show'd himself as kind as mortal can.

1 [See antè, p. 461.]

2["The wildest solitudes are to the taste of some people. General Boon, who was chiefly instrumental in the first settlement of Kentucky, is of this turn. It is said, that he is now (1818), at the age of seventy, pursuing the daily chase two hundred miles to the westward of the last abode of civilised man. He had retired to a chosen spot, beyond the Missouri, which, after him, is named Boon's Lick, out of the reach, as he flattered himself, of intrusion; but white men, even there, encroached upon him, and, two years ago, he went back two hundred miles farther."- Birkbeck's Notes on America.]

3 ["Such is the restless disposition of these back-woodsmen, and so averse are their habits from those of a civilised neighbourhood, that nothing short of the salt, sandy desert

LXV.

He was not all alone: around him grew
A sylvan tribe of children of the chase,
Whose young, unawaken'd world was ever new,
Nor sword nor sorrow yet had left a trace
On her unwrinkled brow, nor could you view
A frown on Nature's or on human face; -
The free-born forest found and kept them free,
And fresh as is a torrent or a tree.

LXVI.

And tall, and strong, and swift of foot were they,
Beyond the dwarfing city's pale abortions,
Because their thoughts had never been the prey
Of care or gain; the green woods were their portions;
No sinking spirits told them they grew grey,

No fashion made them apes of her distortions;
Simple they were, not savage; and their rifles,
Though very true, were not yet used for trifles.
LXVII.

Motion was in their days, rest in their slumbers,
And cheerfulness the handmaid of their toil;
Nor yet too many nor too few their numbers;

Corruption could not make their hearts her soil; The lust which stings, the splendour which encumbers, With the free foresters divide no spoil;

Serene, not sullen, were the solitudes
Of this sighing people of the woods.
LXVIII.

So much for Nature: - by way of variety,
Now back to thy great joys, Civilisation!
And the sweet consequence of large society,
War, pestilence, the despot's desolation,
The kingly scourge, the lust of notoriety,

The millions slain by soldiers for their ration,
The scenes like Catherine's boudoir at threescore,
With Ismail's storm to soften it the more.

LXIX.

The town was enter'd: first one column made
Its sanguinary way good-then another;
The reeking bayonet and the flashing blade
Clash'd 'gainst the scimitar, and babe and mother
With distant shrieks were heard Heaven to upbraid:
Still closer sulphury clouds began to smother
The breath of morn and man, where foot by foot
The madden'd Turks their city still dispute.

LXX.

Koutousow, he who afterward beat back

(With some assistance from the frost and snow) Napoleon on his bold and bloody track,

It happen'd was himself beat back just now : He was a jolly fellow, and could crack

His jest alike in face of friend or foe, Though life, and death, and victory were at stake;◄ But here it seem'd his jokes had ceased to take:

can stop them. The notorious Daniel Boon, who about fifty different times has shifted his abode westward, as civilisation approached his dwelling, when asked the cause of his frequent change, replied, I think it time to remove, when I can no longer fell a tree for fuel, so that its top will lie within a few yards of my cabin.'"— Quart. Rev. vol. xxix. p. 14.]

4[" Parmi les colonnes, une de celles qui souffrirent le plus était commandée par le Général Koutouzow (aujourd'hui Prince de Smolensko). Ce brave militaire réunit l'intrépidite à un grand nombre de connaissances acquises; il marche au feu avec la même gaieté qu'il va à une fête; il sait commander avec autant de sang froid qu'il déploie d'esprit et d'amabilité dans le commerce habituel de la vie." -Hist. de la Nouvelle Russie, tom. iii. p. 212]

LXXI.

For having thrown himself into a ditch, Follow'd in haste by various grenadiers, Whose blood the puddle greatly did enrich,

He climb'd to where the parapet appears; But there his project reach'd its utmost pitch

('Mongst other deaths the General Ribaupierre's
Was much regretted), for the Moslem men
Threw them all down into the ditch again. 1
LXXII.

And had it not been for some stray troops landing
They knew not where, being carried by the stream
To some spot, where they lost their understanding,
And wander'd up and down as in a dream,
Until they reach'd, as daybreak was expanding,
That which a portal to their eyes did seem,
The great and gay Koutousow might have lain
Where three parts of his column yet remain. 2

LXXIII.

And scrambling round the rampart, these same troops, After the taking of the "Cavalier," 3

Just as Koutousow's most "forlorn" of "hopes'

Took, like chameleons, some slight tinge of fear, Open'd the gate call'd " Kilia," to the groups + Of baffled heroes, who stood shyly near, Sliding knee-deep in lately frozen mud, Now thaw'd into a marsh of human blood.

LXXIV.

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The Kozacks, or, if so you please, Cossacques-
(I don't much pique myself upon orthography,
So that I do not grossly err in facts,

Statistics, tactics, politics, and geography)—
Having been used to serve on horses' backs,
And no great dilettanti in topography
Of fortresses, but fighting where it pleases
Their chiefs to order, - were all cut to pieces. 5
LXXV.

Their column, though the Turkish batteries thunder'd
Upon them, ne'ertheless had reach'd the rampart, 6
And naturally thought they could have plunder'd
The city, without being farther hamper'd;
But as it happens to brave men, they blunder'd-
The Turks at first pretended to have scamper'd,
Only to draw them 'twixt two bastion corners, 7
From whence they sallied on those Christian scorners.

1 ["Ce brave Koutouzow se jéta dans le fossé, fut suivi des siens, et ne pénétra jusqu'au haut du parapet qu'après avoir éprouvé des difficultés incroyables. (Le brigadier Ribaupierre perdit la vie dans cette occasion: il avait fixé l'estime générale, et sa mort occasionna beaucoup de regrets. Les Turcs accoururent en grand nombre; cette multitude repoussa deux fois le général jusqu'au fossé."-Hist. de la Nouvelle Russie, p. 212.]

2 [Quelques troupes Russes, emportées par le courant, n'ayant pu dabarquer sur le terrein qu'on leur avait préscrit," &c. Ibid. p. 213.]

3 ГА "Cavalier" is an elevation of earth, situated ordinarily in the gorge of a bastion, bordered with a parapet, and cut into more or fewer embrasures, according to its capacity.” -Milit. Dict.]

4 [..."longèrent le rempart, après la prisé du cavalier, et ouvrirent la porte dite de Kilia aux soldats du Général Koutouzow."-Hist. de la N. R. p. 213.]

5 ["Il était réservé aux Kozaks de combler de leur corps la partie du fossé où ils combattaient; leur colonne avait été divisée entre MM. Platow et d'Orlow..."-Ibid. p. 213.]

6 [... La première partie, devant se joindre à la gauche du Général Arsenieu, fut foudroyée par le feu des batteries, et parvint néanmoins au haut du rempart."-Ibid. p. 213.]

7 ["Les Turcs la laissèrent un peu s'avancer, dans la ville,

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et firent deux sorties par les angles saillans des bastions."— Hist. de la N. R. tom. ii. p. 213.]

8["Alors, se trouvant prise en queue, elle fut écrasée ; cependant le Lieutenant-colonel Yesouskoi, qui commandait la réserve composée d'un bataillon du régiment de Polozk, traversa le fossé sur les cadavres des Kozaks..."-Ibid. p. 212.]

9 [...". "et extermina tous les Turcs qu'il eut en tête: ce brave homme fut tué pendant l'action."— Ibid. p. 213.] 10 ["L'autre partie des Kozaks, qu'Orlow commandait, souffrit de la manière la plus cruelle: elle attaqua à maintes reprises, fut souvent repoussée, et perdit les deux tiers de son monde. Et c'est ici le lieu de placer une observation, que nous prenons dans les mémoires qui nous guident; elle fait remarquer combien il est mal vu de donner beaucoup de cartouches aux soldats qui doivent emporter un poste de vive force, et par conséquent où la baionnette doit principalement agir; ils pensent ne devoir se servir de cette dernière arme, que lorsque les cartouches sont épuisées: dans cette persuasion, ils retardent leur marche, et restent plus long-temps exposés au canon et à la mitraille de l'ennemi."— Ibid. p. 214.]

11["La jonction de la colonne de Meknop― (le général étant mal secondé fut tué) — s'étant effectuée avec celle qui l'avoisinait, ces colonnes attaquèrent un bastion, et éprouvèrent un résistance opiniàtre; mais bientôt des cris de victoire se font entendre de toutes parts, et le bastion est emporté: le séraskier défendait cette partie."— Ibid. p. 214.]

LXXXI.

For all the answer to his proposition

Was from a pistol-shot that laid him dead; 1 On which the rest, without more intermission, Began to lay about with steel and leadThe pious metals most in requisition

On such occasions: not a single head

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LXXXVII.

The city's taken, but not render'd! - No!
There's not a Moslem that hath yielded sword:
The blood may gush out, as the Danube's flow
Rolls by the city wall; but deed nor word
Acknowledge aught of dread of death or foe:
In vain the yell of victory is roar'd

Was spared;-three thousand Moslems perish'd here, By the advancing Muscovite — the groan
And sixteen bayonets pierced the Seraskier. ?

LXXXII.

The city's taken-only part by part

And Death is drunk with gore: there's not a street Where fights not to the last some desperate heart, For those for whom it soon shall cease to beat. 3 Here War forgot his own destructive art

In more destroying Nature; and the beat Of carnage, like the Nile's sun-sodden slime, Engender'd monstrous shapes of every crime. LXXXIII.

A Russian officer, in martial tread

Over a heap of bodies, felt his heel

Scized fast, as if 't were by the serpent's head

Whose fangs Eve taught her human seed to feel; In vain he kick'd, and swore, and writhed, and bled, And howl'd for help as wolves do for a mealThe teeth still kept their gratifying hold, As do the subtle snakes described of old.

LXXXIV.

A dying Moslem, who had felt the foot

Of a foe o'er him, snatch'd at it, and bit

The very tendon which is most acute

(That which some ancient Muse or modern wit Named after thee, Achilles) and quite through't He made the teeth meet, nor relinquish'd it Even with his life- -for (but they lie) 't is said To the live leg still clung the sever'd head.

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[..."un officier de marine Anglais, veut le faire prisonnier, et reçoit un coup de pistolet qui l'étend roide mort." -Hist. de la N. R. p. 214.]

["Les Russes passent trois mille Turcs au fil de l'épée ; seize baionnettes percent à la fois le séraskier."— Ibid p. 214.]

3 ["La ville est emportée; l'image de la mort et de la destruction se représente de tous les côtés; le soldat furieux n'écoute plus la voix de ses officiers, il ne respire que le

Of the last foe is echoed by his own.

LXXXVIII.

The bayonet pierces and the sabre cleaves,

And human lives are lavish'd every where, As the year closing whirls the scarlet leaves

When the stripp'd forest bows to the bleak air, And groans; and thus the peopled city grieves, Shorn of its best and loveliest, and left bare; But still it falls in vast and awful splinters, As oaks blown down with all their thousand winters. LXXXIX.

It is an awful topic - but 't is not

My cue for any time to be terrific : For checker'd as is seen our human lot

With good, and bad, and worse, alike prolific
Of melancholy merriment, to quote

Too much of one sort would be soporific ; —
Without, or with, offence to friends or foes,
I sketch your world exactly as it goes.

XC.

And one good action in the midst of crimes
Is" quite refreshing," in the affected phrase
Of these ambrosial, Pharisaic times,

With all their pretty milk-and-water ways,
And may serve therefore to bedew these rhymes,
A little scorch'd at present with the blaze
Of conquest and its consequences, which
Make epic poesy so rare and rich.

XCI.

Upon a taken bastion, where there lay

Thousands of slaughter'd men, a yet warm group Of murder'd women, who had found their way To this vain refuge, made the good heart droop And shudder; -while, as beautiful as May, A female child of ten years tried to stoop And hide her little palpitating breast Amidst the bodies lull'd in bloody rest.

XCII.

Two villanous Cossacques pursued the child
With flashing eyes and weapons: match'd with
them,

The rudest brute that roams Siberia's wild
Has feelings pure and polish'd as a gem,-
The bear is civilised, the wolf is mild;

And whom for this at last must we condemn ?
Their natures? or their sovereigns, who employ
All arts to teach their subjects to destroy?

carnage; altéré de sang, tout est indifferent pour lui.". Hist. de la N. R. p. 214.]

4 ["Je sauval la vie à une fille de dix ans, dont l'innocence et la candeur formaient un contraste bien frappant avec la rage de tout ce qui m'environnait. En arrivant sur le bastion où commença le carnage, j'apperçus un groupe de quatre femmes égorgées, entre lesquelles cet enfant, d'une figure charmante, cherchait un asile contre la fureur de deux Kozaks qui étaient sur le point de la massacrer."-DỤC DE RICHELIEU. See Hist. de la Nour. Russ. tom. iii. p. 217.]

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