der;
there was nothing to interrupt the silence but our own echoing footsteps
and the groans of the poor patients all round. The Nurses were in the
costume of Nuns, and from religious principles undertake the care of
the sick--there was something very awful in marching up the aisles with
these conductors at this time. My poor countryman was asleep when I came
to his bedside. I took down memorandums of his case, and promised to
write to his friends, and left him money to assist him on his road home,
should he (of which I much doubt) ever recover.

I staid with him some time; in the course of the conversation some
wounded Prussians came up on their crutches, and it was quite gratifying
to see their kindness and goodwill to this poor fellow who, sole of his
nation and kindred, was wasting away amongst strangers. They patted him
on his head, called him their _cher_ and _bon garcon_, lifted him up
that he might see and hear better, and he assured me that by them and by
all the attendants he was treated with the utmost kindness and
attention. Amongst 400 wounded soldiers whose deep groans and ghastly
countenances announced that many were almost passing the barrier which
separates the mortal from the immortal, with their nurses by my side
holding their glimmering tapers, each arrayed in the order of their
religion and wearing the Cross as the badge of their profession, was a
situation in which I had never before been placed. In offering
ministerial advice, and, I trust, affording religious consolation under
circumstances so solemn and peculiar, you may conceive that I did speak
with all the earnestness and fervour in my power. I told the nurses who
and what I was, and so far from entertaining any illiberal ideas as to
the propriety of my interfering in what might be called their clerical
department, they expressed the greatest pleasure and seemed to rejoice
that their patient was visited by one of his own ministers.... Thus
ended my visit to the Hospital at Rheims, which I never can forget.

We travelled the next day to Verdun, bidding adieu to the Hibberts at
Chalons.

You will ask if we have seen any vestiges of war on the soil such as
bodies. We have met with a tolerable quantity of dead horses by the
road-side and in ditches, but only one human being, half scratched up by
a dog, has appeared; a few rags of uniform dangling upon the skeleton
bones called our attention to it.

Verdun is a very comfortable town of conside