t a more picturesque and dashing character
in literature outside of the adventures of Claude Duval. Everywhere we
behold him waving his steel (as he calls his sword); he wheels before
our dazzled eyes like a meteor; he charges, and the foe fly like sheep
before him. And no sooner is he come into town from killing a score or
two of Yankees, than the ladies--who are all good Union women and have
just taken the oath of allegiance--crowd to kiss and caress him; or, as
he puts it in his own vivid language, he receives "a kiss from more than
one pair of ruby lips, and gives many a hearty hug and kiss in return."
In his wild way, he takes a pleasure in evoking the tender solicitude of
the ladies for his safety,--eats a dish of strawberries in a house upon
which the Yankees are charging to capture him, and remains for some
minutes after the strawberries are eaten, while the ladies, proffering
him his arms, are "dancing about, and positively screaming with
excitement." At another time, when the bullets of the enemy are hissing
about his ears, he puts on a pretty girl's slipper for her. "Such," he
remarks, with a pensive air, "are some of the few happy scenes that
brighten a soldier's life."

Colonel Gilmore, who has the diffidence of Major Gahagan, has also the
engaging artlessness which lends so great a charm to the personal
narrative of Mr. Barry Lyndon. He does not reserve from the reader's
knowledge such of his exploits as stealing the chaplain's whiskey, and
drinking the peach-brandy of the simple old woman who supposed she was
offering it to General Lee. "Place him where you may," says Colonel
Gilmore, "and under no matter what adverse circumstances, you can always
distinguish a gentleman." He has a great deal of fine feeling, and can
scarcely restrain his tears at the burning of Chambersburg, after
setting it on fire. Desiring a memento of a brother officer, he takes a
small piece of the dead man's skull. It has been supposed that civilized
soldiers, however brave and resolute, scarcely exulted in the
remembrance of the lives they had taken; and it is thought to be one of
the merciful features of modern warfare, that in the vast majority of
cases the slayer and the slain are unknown to each other. Colonel
Gilmore has none of the false tenderness which shrinks from a knowledge
of homicide. On the contrary, he is careful to know when he has killed a
man; and he recounts, with an exactness revolting to feebler nerves, the
ci