o live quietly
thenceforth; and her sorrow when she saw him eating with an
appetite, so soon before his death; and his death
itself--all these are matters of truth, which only that
astonishing creature, I think, could have told in fiction.

"Of all the beautiful and tender passages--the thinking
every day how happy and blest she was--the decorating him
for the dinner--the standing in the balcony at night and
seeing the troops melt away through the gate--and the
rejoining him on his sick-bed--I say not a word. They are
God's own, and should be sacred. But let me say again, with
an earnestness which pen and ink can no more convey than
toast and water, in thanking you heartily for the perusal of
this paper, that its impression on me can never be told;
that the ground she travelled (which I know well) is holy
ground to me from this day; and that, please Heaven, I will
tread its every foot this very next summer, to have the
softened recollection of this sad story on the very earth
where it was acted.

"You won't smile at this, I know. When my enthusiasms are
awakened by such things, they don't wear out....--Faithfully
yours,

"CHARLES DICKENS."[31]

[Footnote 31: The complete letter will be found in Appendix A of this
volume.]

Many literary and artistic masterpieces have grouped themselves round
Waterloo. One of the most striking passages in _Vanity Fair_ refers to
an imaginary incident in connection with the battle. Sir Walter Scott
once said that in the whole range of English poetry there was nothing
finer than the stanzas in _Childe Harold_, commencing with the line--

"There was a sound of revelry by night,"

and ending with the words--

"Rider and horse, friend, foe, in one red burial blent."

Tennyson's _Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington_ ranks as a
funeral dirge with _Lycidas_ and _Adonais_. Napoleon's tomb in the
Invalides may hold its own almost with the Taj. Yet, when all is said
and done, the fact remains that no hero of the battle, and indeed few
victims of war, have ever received a more touching memorial than the
one here set forth in the sight of all future generations of men by
the love and the literary genius of Lady De Lancey.

B.R. WARD.

HALIFAX, N.S.,
_April_ 1906.

[Illustration: COLONEL SIR WILLIAM HOWE DE LANCEY (_c._ 1813).]

A WEEK AT WATERLOO I