over again! Like Lien Chi (in
Goldsmith's _Citizen of the World_), as we 'grow older, we grow never
the better.' It would be pleasant to learn who will subscribe for us, in
or about the year 1815, and what nation will send fifty thousand men,
first to be decimated in the capital, and then decimated again (in the
Irish fashion, _nine_ out of _ten_), in the 'bed of honour;' which, as
Serjeant Kite says [in Farquhar's _Recruiting Officer_, act i. sc. 1],
is considerably larger and more commodious than 'the bed of Ware.' Then
they must have a poet to write the 'Vision of Don Perceval,'[111] and
generously bestow the profits of the well and widely printed quarto, to
rebuild the 'Backwynd' and the 'Canongate,' or furnish new kilts for the
half-roasted Highlanders. Lord Wellington, however, has enacted marvels;
and so did his Oriental brother, whom I saw charioteering over the
French flag, and heard clipping bad Spanish, after listening to the
speech of a patriotic cobler of Cadiz, on the event of his own entry
into that city, and the exit of some five thousand bold Britons out of
this 'best of all possible worlds' [Pangloss, in _Candide_]. Sorely were
we puzzled how to dispose of that same victory of Talavera; and a
victory it surely was somewhere, for everybody claimed it. The Spanish
despatch and mob called it Cuesta's, and made no great mention of the
Viscount; the French called it _theirs_[1] (to my great
discomfiture,--for a French consul stopped my mouth in Greece with a
pestilent Paris Gazette, just as I had killed Sebastiani'[112] 'in
buckram,' and King Joseph 'in Kendal green'),--and we have not yet
determined _what_ to call it, or _whose_; for, certes, it was none of
our own. Howbeit, Massena's retreat [May, 1811] is a great comfort; and
as we have not been in the habit of pursuing for some years past, no
wonder we are a little awkward at first. No doubt we shall improve; or,
if not, we have only to take to our old way of retrograding, and there
we are at home."--_Recollections of the Life of Lord Byron_, 1824, pp.
179-185.]

7.

When Cava's traitor-sire first called the band
That dyed thy mountain streams with Gothic gore.
Stanza xxxv. lines 3 and 4.

Count Julian's daughter, the Helen of Spain. Pelagius preserved his
independence in the fastnesses of the Asturias, and the descendants of
his followers, after some centuries, comple