wice over the field,
comparing it with my recollection of similar scenes. As a plain,
Waterloo seems marked out for the scene of some great action, though
this may be mere imagination: I have viewed with attention those of
Platea, Troy, Mantinea, Leuctra, Chaeronea, and Marathon; and the field
around Mount St. Jean and Hougoumont appears to want little but a better
cause, and that undefinable but impressive halo which the lapse of ages
throws around a celebrated spot, to vie in interest with any or all of
these, except, perhaps, the last mentioned.

[For particulars of the death of Major Howard, see _Personal Memoirs,
etc._, by Pryse Lockhart Gordon, 1830, ii. 322, 323.]

7.

Like to the apples on the Dead Sea's shore.
Stanza xxxiv. line 6.

The (fabled) apples on the brink of the lake Asphaltites were said to be
fair without, and, within, ashes.

[Compare Tacitus, _Histor._, lib. v. 7, "Cuncta sponte edita, aut manu
sata, sive herbae tenues, aut flores, ut solitam in speciem adolevere,
atra et inania velut in cinerem vanescunt." See, too, _Deut._ xxxii. 32,
"For their vine is of the vine of Sodom, and of the fields of Gomorrah:
their grapes are grapes of gall, their clusters are bitter."

They are a species of gall-nut, and are described by Curzon (_Visits to
Monasteries of the Levant_, 1897, p. 141), who met with the tree that
bears them, near the Dead Sea, and, mistaking the fruit for a ripe plum,
proceeded to eat one, whereupon his mouth was filled "with a dry bitter
dust."

"The apple of Sodom ... is supposed by some to refer to the fruit of
_Solanum Sodomeum_ (allied to the tomato), by others to the _Calotropis
procera_" (_N. Eng. Dict._, art. "Apple").]

8.

For sceptred Cynics Earth were far too wide a den.
Stanza xli. line 9.

The great error of Napoleon, "if we have writ our annals true," was a
continued obtrusion on mankind of his want of all community of feeling
for or with them; perhaps more offensive to human vanity than the active
cruelty of more trembling and suspicious tyranny. Such were his speeches
to public assemblies as well as individuals; and the single expression
which he is said to have used on returning to Paris after the Russian
winter had destroyed his army, rubbing his hands over a fire, "This is
pleasanter t