beds. We saw many lights moving about as
we drew near; and perhaps the most impressive scene on our route was our
reception at this place. The flashing of torches and the beautiful radiance
of blue lights (technically Bengal lights) upon the heads of our horses;
the fine effect of such a showery and ghostly illumination falling upon
flowers and glittering laurels, whilst all around the massy darkness seemed
to invest us with walls of impenetrable blackness, together with the
prodigious enthusiasm of the people, composed a picture at once scenical
and affecting. As we staid for three or four minutes, I alighted. And
immediately from a dismantled stall in the street, where perhaps she had
been presiding at some part of the evening, advanced eagerly a middle-aged
woman. The sight of my newspaper it was that had drawn her attention upon
myself. The victory which we were carrying down to the provinces on _this_
occasion was the imperfect one of Talavera. I told her the main outline of
the battle. But her agitation, though not the agitation of fear, but of
exultation rather, and enthusiasm, had been so conspicuous when listening,
and when first applying for information, that I could not but ask her if
she had not some relation in the Peninsular army. Oh! yes: her only son was
there. In what regiment? He was a trooper in the 23d Dragoons. My heart
sank within me as she made that answer. This sublime regiment, which an
Englishman should never mention without raising his hat to their memory,
had made the most memorable and effective charge recorded in military
annals. They leaped their horses--_over_ a trench where they could, _into_
it, and with the result of death or mutilation when they could _not_. What
proportion cleared the trench is nowhere stated. Those who _did_, closed up
and went down upon the enemy with such divinity of fervor--(I use the
word _divinity_ by design: the inspiration of God must have prompted this
movement to those whom even then he was calling to his presence)--that two
results followed. As regarded the enemy, this 23d Dragoons, not, I believe,
originally three hundred and fifty strong, paralyzed a French column, six
thousand strong, then ascending the hill, and fixed the gaze of the whole
French army. As regarded themselves, the 23d were supposed at first to have
been all but annihilated; but eventually, I believe, not so many as one in
four survived. And this, then, was the regiment--a regiment already