n, in the author's slim, neat handwriting, and began to read
therefrom with great emphasis and volubility. At pauses of the verse,
the enthusiastic reader stopped and fired off a great salvo of applause.

Esmond smiled at the enthusiasm of Addison's friend. "You are like the
German Burghers," says he, "and the Princes on the Mozelle: when our
army came to a halt, they always sent a deputation to compliment the
chief, and fired a salute with all their artillery from their walls."

"And drunk the great chiefs health afterward, did not they?" says
Captain Steele, gayly filling up a bumper;--he never was tardy at that
sort of acknowledgment of a friend's merit.

"And the Duke, since you will have me act his Grace's part," says Mr.
Addison, with a smile, and something of a blush, "pledged his friends in
return. Most Serene Elector of Covent Garden, I drink to your Highness's
health," and he filled himself a glass. Joseph required scarce more
pressing than Dick to that sort of amusement; but the wine never seemed
at all to fluster Mr. Addison's brains; it only unloosed his tongue:
whereas Captain Steele's head and speech were quite overcome by a single
bottle.

No matter what the verses were, and, to say truth, Mr. Esmond found some
of them more than indifferent, Dick's enthusiasm for his chief
never faltered, and in every line from Addison's pen, Steele found
a master-stroke. By the time Dick had come to that part of the poem,
wherein the bard describes as blandly as though he were recording
a dance at the opera, or a harmless bout of bucolic cudgelling at a
village fair, that bloody and ruthless part of our campaign, with the
remembrance whereof every soldier who bore a part in it must sicken
with shame--when we were ordered to ravage and lay waste the Elector's
country; and with fire and murder, slaughter and crime, a great part of
his dominions was overrun; when Dick came to the lines--

"In vengeance roused the soldier fills his hand
With sword and fire, and ravages the land,
In crackling flames a thousand harvests burn,
A thousand villages to ashes turn.
To the thick woods the woolly flocks retreat,
And mixed with bellowing herds confusedly bleat.
Their trembling lords the common shade partake,
And cries of infants found in every brake.
The listening soldier fixed in sorrow stands,
Loth to obey his leader's just commands.
The leader grieves, by generous pity