ted towns and villages, dreary deserts of snow, and vast
rivers to be traversed, my heart grew faint to think how many a brave
soldier would never reach that fair France for whose glory he had shed
his best blood. Disaster followed disaster; and as the news reached
England, came accounts of those great defections which weakened the
force of the "Grand Army," and deranged the places formed for its
retiring movements.

They who can recall to mind the time I speak of, will remember the
effect produced in England by the daily accounts from the seat of war;
how heavily fell the blows of that altered fortune which once rested on
the eagles of France; how each new bulletin announced another feature of
misfortune,--some shattered remnant of a great _corps d'armee_ cut off
by Cossacks,--some dreadful battle engaged against superior numbers, and
fought with desperation, not for victory, but the liberty to retreat.
Great names were mentioned among the slain, and the proudest chivalry of
Gaul left to perish on the far-off steppes of Russia.

Such were the fearful tales men read of that terrible campaign; and the
joy in England was great, to hear that the most powerful of her enemies
had at length experienced the full bitterness of defeat. While men vied
with one another in stories of the misfortunes of the Emperor,--when
each post added another to the long catalogue of disasters to the "Grand
Army,"--I sat in my lonely house, in a remote part of Ireland, brooding
over the sad reverses of him who still formed my ideal of a hero.

I thought how, amid the crumbling ruins of his splendid force, his great
soul would survive the crash that made all others despair; that each
new evil would suggest its remedy as it arose, and the mind that never
failed in expedient would shine out more brilliantly through the gloom
of darkening fortune than even it had done in the noonday splendor
of success. When all others could only see the tremendous energy of
despair, I thought I could recognize those glorious outbursts of heroism
by which a French army sought and won the favor of their Emperor. The
routed and straggling bodies which hurried along in seeming disorder, I
gloried to perceive could assume all the port and bearing of soldiers at
the approach of danger, and form their ranks at the wild "houra" of the
Cossack as steadily as in the proudest day of their prosperity.

The retreat continued: the horrible suffering of a Russian winter added
t