line,
celebrated in many of Burns's poems.]

[Footnote 19: See Major Gordon's _Personal Memoirs_
(1830), vol. ii. pp. 325-338.]

The following is the letter which Scott addressed to the Duke of
Buccleuch immediately after seeing the field of Waterloo; and it may
amuse the reader to compare it with Major Gordon's chapter, and with
the writer's own fuller, and, of course, "cobbled" detail, in the
pages of Paul:--

{p.049} TO HIS GRACE THE DUKE OF BUCCLEUCH, ETC.

MY DEAR LORD DUKE,--I promised to let you hear of my
wanderings, however unimportant; and have now the pleasure
of informing your Grace that I am at this present time an
inhabitant of the Premier Hotel de Cambrai, after having
been about a week upon the Continent. We landed at Helvoet,
and proceeded to Brussels, by Bergen-op-Zoom and Antwerp,
both of which are very strongly fortified. The ravages of
war are little remarked in a country so rich by nature; but
everything seems at present stationary, or rather
retrograde, where capital is required. The chateaux are
deserted, and going to decay; no new houses are built, and
those of older date are passing rapidly into the possession
of a class inferior to those for whom we must suppose them
to have been built. Even the old gentlewoman of Babylon has
lost much of her splendor, and her robes and pomp are of a
description far subordinate to the costume of her more
magnificent days. The dresses of the priests were worn and
shabby, both at Antwerp and Brussels, and reminded me of the
decayed wardrobe of a bankrupt theatre: yet, though the
gentry and priesthood have suffered, the eternal bounty of
nature has protected the lower ranks against much distress.
The unexampled fertility of the soil gives them all, and
more than they want; and could they but sell the grain which
they raise in the Netherlands, nothing else would be wanting
to render them the richest people (common people, that is to
say) in the world.

On Wednesday last, I rode over the field of Waterloo, now
forever consecrated to immortality. The more ghastly tokens
of the carnage are now removed, the bodies both of men and
horses being either burned or buried; but all the ground is
still torn with the shot and shells, and covered with
cartridges, ol