e yards 4,000 bodies were found dead. The ditches
and the field formed one great grave. The earth told in very visible
terms what occasioned its elasticity; upon forcing a stick down and
turning up a clod, human bodies in an offensive state of decay
immediately presented themselves. I found four Belgian peasants
commenting upon one figure which was scarcely interred, and on walking
under the outer wall of La Haye Sainte a hole was tenanted by myriads of
maggots feasting upon a corpse.

Here stands the Wellington tree,[113] peppered with shot and stripped as
high as a man can jump of its twigs and leaves, for every passenger
jumps up for a relic. We stood upon the road where Buonaparte (defended
by high banks) sent on, but _didn't_ lead, 6,000 of his old Imperial
Guard. They charged along the road up to La Haye Sainte, dwindling as
they went by the incessant fire of 80 pieces of Artillery, many of them
within a few yards, till their number did not exceed 300. Then Napoleon
turned round to Bertrand, lifted his hand, cried out, "C'est tout perdu,
c'est tout fini," and galloped off with La Corte and Bertrand,[114]
quitting most probably for ever a field of battle.

A continued sheet of corn or fallowed fields occupy the whole plain. The
crops are indifferent and the reason assigned is curious. The whole
being trampled down last year, became the food of mice, which in
consequence repaired thither from all quarters and increased and
multiplied to such a degree that the soil is quite infested by them.

Upon the heights where the British squares received the shock of the
French Cavalry, we found an English officer's cocked hat, much injured
apparently by a cannon shot, with its oilskin rotting away, and showing
by its texture, shape, and quality that it had been manufactured by a
fashionable hatter, and most probably graced the wearer's head in Bond
Street and St. James's. Wherever we went we were surrounded by boys and
beggars offering Eagles from Frenchmen's helmets, cockades, pistols,
swords, cuirasses, and other fragments.

At Brussels they gave the Belgian troops a dinner in a long, shady
avenue, which was more than they deserved, and in the evening the Town
was illuminated. In the Newspaper I daresay there will be a splendid
account of it, but it was a wretched display in the proportion of one
tallow candle to 50 windows stuck up to glimmer and go out without the
slightest taste or regularity.

From Brussels we start