MacMillan's Reading Books Part 33

All but yon widowed, solitary thing, That feebly bends beside the plas.h.i.+ng spring: She, wretched matron, forced in age, for bread, To strip the brook with mantling cresses spread, To pick her wintry f.a.ggot from the thorn, To seek her nightly shed, and weep till mom; She only left of all the harmless train, The sad historian of the pensive plain.

Near yonder copse, where once the garden smiled, And still, where many a garden-flower grows wild; There, where a few torn shrubs the place disclose, The village preacher's modest mansion rose, A man he was to all the country dear, And pa.s.sing rich with forty pounds a year; Remote from towns he ran his G.o.dly race, Nor e'er had changed, nor wished to change his place; Unpractised he to fawn, or seek for power, By doctrines fas.h.i.+oned to the varying hour; Far other aims his heart had learned to prize, More skilled to raise the wretched than to rise.

His house was known to all the vagrant train; He chid their wanderings, but relieved their pain; The long-remember'd beggar was his guest, Whose beard descending swept his aged breast, The ruined spendthrift, now no longer proud, Claimed kindred there, and had his claims allowed; The broken soldier, kindly bade to stay, Sat by his fire, and talked the night away.

Wept o'er his wounds or tales of sorrow done, Shouldered his crutch, and showed how fields were won.

Pleased with his guests, the good man learned to glow, And quite forgot their vices in their woe; Careless their merits or their faults to scan, His pity gave ere charity began.

Thus to relieve the wretched was his pride, And e'en his failings leaned to virtue's side; But in his duty prompt at every call, He watched and wept, he prayed and felt for all; And, as a bird each fond endearment tries To tempt its new-fledged offspring to the skies, He tried each art, reproved each dull delay, Allured to brighter worlds, and led the way.

Beside the bed where parting life was laid, And sorrow, guilt, and pain, by turns dismayed, The reverend champion stood. At his control Despair and anguish fled the struggling soul; Comfort came down the trembling wretch to raise, And his last faltering accents whispered praise.

At church, with meek and unaffected grace, His looks adorned the venerable place; Truth from his lips prevailed with double sway, And fools, who came to scoff remained to pray.

The service past, around the pious man, With steady zeal, each honest rustic ran; E'en children followed with endearing wile, And plucked his gown, to share the good man's smile.

His ready smile a parent's warmth expressed; Their welfare pleased him, and their cares distressed: To them his heart, his love, his griefs were given, But all his serious thoughts had rest in heaven.

As some tall cliff that lifts its awful form, Swells from the vale, and midway leaves the storm, Though round its breast the rolling clouds are spread, Eternal suns.h.i.+ne settles on its head.

Beside yon straggling fence that skirts the way, With blossom'd furze unprofitably gay, There in his noisy mansion, skilled to rule, The village master taught his little school.

A man severe he was, and stern to view; I knew him well, and every truant knew; Well had the boding tremblers learned to trace The day's disasters in his morning face; Full well they laughed with counterfeited glee At all his jokes, for many a joke had he; Full well the busy whisper circling round Conveyed the dismal tidings when he frowned, Yet he was kind, or, if severe in aught, The love he bore to learning was in fault; The village all declared how much he knew; 'Twas certain he could write, and cypher too; Lands he could measure, terms and tides presage, And e'en, the story ran, that he could gauge: In arguing, too, the parson owned his skill; For e'en though vanquished, he could argue still; While words of learned length and thundering sound Amazed the gazing rustics ranged around; And still they gazed, and still the wonder grew, That one small head could carry all he knew.

GOLDSMITH.

THE BATTLE OF CORUNNA.

All the enc.u.mbrances being s.h.i.+pped on the morning of the 16th, it was intended to embark the fighting men in the coming night, and this difficult operation would probably have been happily effected; but a glorious event was destined to give a more graceful, though melancholy, termination to the campaign. About two o'clock a general movement of the French line gave notice of an approaching battle, and the British infantry, fourteen thousand five hundred strong, occupied their position. Baird's division on the right, and governed by the oblique direction of the ridge, approached the enemy; Hope's division, forming the centre and left, although on strong ground ab.u.t.ting on the Mero, was of necessity withheld, so that the French battery on the rocks raked the whole line of battle. One of Baird's brigades was in column behind the right, and one of Hope's behind the left; Paget's reserve posted at the village of Airis, behind the centre, looked down the valley separating the right of the position front the hills occupied by the French cavalry. A battalion detached from the reserve kept these hors.e.m.e.n in check, and was itself connected with the main body by a chain of skirmishers extended across the valley. Fraser's division held the heights immediately before the gates of Corunna, watching the coast road, but it was also ready to succour any point.

When Laborde's division arrived, the French force was not less than twenty thousand men, and the Duke of Dalmatia made no idle evolutions of display. Distributing his lighter guns along the front of his position, he opened a fire from the heavy battery on his left, and instantly descended the mountain, with three columns covered by clouds of skirmishers. The British pickets were driven back in disorder, and the village of Elvina was carried by the first French column.

The ground about that village was intersected by stone walls and hollow roads; a severe scrambling fight ensued, the French were forced back with great loss, and the fiftieth regiment entering the village with the retiring ma.s.s, drove it, after a second struggle in the street, quite beyond the houses. Seeing this, the general ordered up a battalion of the guards to fill the void in the line made by the advance of those regiments; whereupon, the forty-second, mistaking his intention, retired, with exception of the grenadiers; and at that moment, the enemy being reinforced, renewed the fight beyond the village. Major Napier, commanding the fiftieth, was wounded and taken prisoner, and Elvina then became the scene of another contest; which being observed by the Commander-in-Chief, he addressed a few animating words to the forty-second, and caused it to return to the attack. Paget had now descended into the valley, and the line of the skirmishers being thus supported, vigorously checked the advance of the enemy's troops in that quarter, while the fourth regiment galled their flank; at the same time the centre and left of the army also became engaged, Baird was severely wounded, and a furious action ensued along the line, in the valley, and on the hills.

General Sir John Moore, while earnestly watching the result of the fight about the village of Elvina, was struck on the left breast by a cannon-shot; the shock threw him from his horse with violence; yet he rose again in a sitting posture, his countenance unchanged, and his steadfast eye still fixed upon the regiments engaged in his front, no sigh betraying a sensation of pain. In a few moments, when he saw the troops were gaining ground, his countenance brightened, and he suffered himself to be taken to the rear. Then was seen the dreadful nature of his hurt. As the soldiers placed him in a blanket, his sword got entangled, and the hilt entered the wound; Captain Hardinge, a staff officer, attempted to take it off, but the dying man stopped him, saying: "It is as well as it is. I had rather it should go out of the field with me;" and in that manner, so becoming to a soldier, Moore was borne from the fight.

Notwithstanding this great disaster, the troops gained ground. The reserve overthrowing everything in the valley, forced La Houssaye's dismounted dragoons to retire, and thus turning the enemy, approached the eminence upon which the great battery was posted. In the centre, the obstinate dispute for Elvina terminated in favour of the British; and when the night set in, their line was considerably advanced beyond the original position of the morning, while the French were falling back in confusion. If Fraser's division had been brought into action along with the reserve, the enemy could hardly have escaped a signal overthrow; for the little ammunition Soult had been able to bring up was nearly exhausted, the river Mero was in full tide behind him, and the difficult communication by the bridge of El Burgo was alone open for a retreat. On the other hand, to fight in the dark was to tempt fortune; the French were still the most numerous, their ground strong, and their disorder facilitated the original plan of embarking during the night. Hope, upon whom the command had devolved, resolved therefore, to s.h.i.+p the army, and so complete were the arrangements, that no confusion or difficulty occurred; the pickets kindled fires to cover the retreat, and were themselves withdrawn at daybreak, to embark under the protection of Hill's brigade, which was in position under the ramparts of Corunna.

From the spot where he fell, the general was carried to the town by his soldiers; his blood flowed fast, and the torture of the wound was great; yet the unshaken firmness of his mind made those about him, seeing the resolution of his countenance, express a hope of his recovery. He looked steadfastly at the injury for a moment, and said, "No, I feel that to be impossible." Several times he caused his attendants to stop and turn round, that he might behold the field of battle; and when the firing indicated the advance of the British, he discovered his satisfaction and permitted the bearers to proceed. When brought to his lodgings, the surgeons examined his wound; there was no hope, the pain increased, he spoke with difficulty. At intervals, he asked if the French were beaten, and addressing his old friend, Colonel Anderson, said, "You know I always wished to die this way." Again he asked if the enemy were defeated, and being told they were, said, "It is a great satisfaction to me to know we have beaten the French." His countenance continued firm, his thoughts clear; once only when he spoke of his mother he became agitated; but he often inquired after the safety of his friends and the officers of his staff, and he did not even in this moment forget to recommend those whose merit had given them claims to promotion. When life was nearly extinct, with an unsubdued spirit, as if antic.i.p.ating the baseness of his posthumous calumniators, he exclaimed, "I hope the people of England will be satisfied! I hope my country will do me justice!" In a few minutes afterwards he died; and his corpse, wrapped in a military cloak, was interred by the officers of his staff, in the citadel of Corunna. The guns of the enemy paid his funeral honours, and Soult, with a n.o.ble feeling of respect for his valour, raised a monument to his memory on the field of battle.

NAPIER.

[Note:_Battle of Corunna_. The French army having proclaimed Joseph Buonaparte, King of Spain, the Spanish people rose as one man in protest, and sought and obtained the aid of England. The English armies were at first driven back by Napoleon; but the force under Sir John Moore saved its honour in the fight before Corunna, 16th January, 1809, which enabled it to embark in safety.]

BATTLE OF ALBUERA.

The fourth division was composed of two brigades: one of Portuguese under General Harvey; the other, under Sir William Myers, consisting of the seventh and twenty-third regiments, was called the Fusilier Brigade; Harvey's Portuguese were immediately pushed in between Lumley's dragoons and the hill, where they were charged by some French cavalry, whom they beat off, and meantime Cole led his fusiliers up the contested height.

At this time six guns were in the enemy's possession, the whole of Werle's reserves were coming forward to reinforce the front column of the French, the remnant of Houghton's brigade could no longer maintain its ground, the field was heaped with carca.s.ses, the lancers were riding furiously about the captured artillery on the upper parts of the hill, and behind all, Hamilton's Portuguese and Alten's Germans, now withdrawing from the bridge, seemed to be in full retreat. Soon, however, Cole's fusiliers, flanked by a battalion of the Lusitanian legion under Colonel Hawkshawe, mounted the hill, drove off the lancers, recovered five of the captured guns and one colour, and appeared on the right of Houghton's brigade, precisely as Abercrombie pa.s.sed it on the left.

Such a gallant line, issuing from the midst of the smoke, and rapidly separating itself from the confused and broken mult.i.tude, startled the enemy's ma.s.ses, which were increasing and pressing onwards as to an a.s.sured victory; they wavered, hesitated, and then vomiting forth a storm of fire, hastily endeavoured to enlarge their front, while a fearful discharge of grape from all their artillery whistled through the British ranks. Myers was killed, Cole and the three colonels, Ellis, Blakeney, and Hawkshawe, fell wounded, and the fusilier battalions, struck by the iron tempest, reeled and staggered like sinking s.h.i.+ps; but suddenly and sternly recovering, they closed on their terrible enemies, and then was seen with what a strength and majesty the British soldier fights. In vain did Soult with voice and gesture animate his Frenchmen; in vain did the hardiest veterans break from the crowded columns and sacrifice their lives to gain time for the ma.s.s to open out on such a fair field; in vain did the ma.s.s itself bear up, and, fiercely striving, fire indiscriminately upon friends and foes, while the hors.e.m.e.n, hovering on the flank, threatened to charge the advancing line. Nothing could stop that astonis.h.i.+ng infantry. No sudden burst of undisciplined valour, no nervous enthusiasm weakened the stability of their order, their flas.h.i.+ng eyes were bent on the dark columns in their front, their measured tread shook the ground, their dreadful volleys swept away the head of every formation, their deafening shouts overpowered the dissonant cries that broke from all parts of the tumultuous crowd, as slowly and with a horrid carnage it was pushed by the incessant vigour of the attack to the farthest edge of the hill. In vain did the French reserves mix with the struggling mult.i.tude to sustain the fight; their efforts only increased the irremediable confusion, and the mighty ma.s.s, breaking off like a loosened cliff, went headlong down the steep; the rain flowed after in streams discoloured with blood, and eighteen hundred unwounded men, the remnant of six thousand unconquerable British soldiers, stood triumphant on the fatal hill!

NAPIER.

[Note: _Battle of Albuera_, in which the English and Spanish armies won a victory over the French under Marshal Soult, on 16th May, 1811.]

CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE AT BALAKLAVA.

The whole brigade scarcely made one efficient regiment according to the number of continental armies; and yet it was more than we could spare.

As they pa.s.sed towards the front, the Russians opened on them from the guns in the redoubt on the right with volleys of musketry and rifles.

They swept proudly past, glittering in the morning sun in all the pride and splendour of war. We could scarcely believe the evidence of our senses! Surely that handful of men are not going to charge an army in position? Alas! it was but too true; their desperate valour knew no bounds, and far indeed was it removed from its so-called better part--discretion. They advanced in two lines, quickening their pace as they closed towards the enemy. A more fearful spectacle was never witnessed than by those who, without the power to aid, beheld their heroic countrymen rus.h.i.+ng to the arms of death. At the distance of twelve hundred yards the whole line of the enemy belched forth, from thirty iron mouths, a flood of smoke and flame through which hissed the deadly b.a.l.l.s. Their flight was marked by instant gaps in our ranks, by dead men and horses, by steeds flying wounded or riderless across the plain. The first line is broken, it is joined by the second; they never halt or check their speed for an instant; with diminished ranks, thinned by those thirty guns, which the Russians had laid with the most deadly accuracy, with a halo of flas.h.i.+ng steel above their heads, and with a cheer which was many a n.o.ble fellow's death-cry, they flew into the smoke of the batteries; but ere they were lost to view the plain was strewn with their bodies and with the carca.s.ses of horses. They were exposed to an oblique fire from the batteries on the hills on both sides, as well as to a direct fire of musketry. Through the clouds of smoke we could see their sabres flas.h.i.+ng as they rode up to the guns and dashed between them, cutting down the gunners as they stood. We saw them riding through the guns, as I have said: to our delight we saw them returning, after breaking through a column of Russian infantry, and scattering them like chaff, when the flank fire of the battery on the hill swept them down, scattered and broken as they were. Wounded men and dismounted troopers flying towards us told the sad tale: demiG.o.ds could not have done what we had failed to do. At the very moment when they were about to retreat, an enormous ma.s.s of lancers was hurled on their flank. Colonel Shewell, of the 8th Hussars, saw the danger, and rode his few men straight at them, cutting his way through with fearful loss.

The other regiments turned and engaged in a desperate encounter. With courage too great almost for credence, they were breaking their way through the columns which enveloped them, when there took place an act of atrocity without parallel in the modern warfare of civilised nations.

The Russian gunners, when the storm of cavalry pa.s.sed, returned to their guns. They saw their own cavalry mingled with the troopers who had just ridden over them, and, to the eternal disgrace of the Russian name, the miscreants poured a murderous volley of grape and canister on the ma.s.s of struggling men and horses, mingling friend and foe in one common ruin. It was as much as our Heavy Cavalry Brigade could do to cover the retreat of the miserable remnants of that band of heroes as they returned to the place they had so lately quitted in all the pride of life. At 11:35 not a British soldier, except the dead and dying, was left in front of the Muscovite guns.

_The "Times" Correspondent_.

THE MERCHANT OF VENICE.

SCENE.--_Venice. A Court of Justice.

Enter the_ DUKE, _the_ Magnificoes, ANTONIO, Ba.s.sANIO, GATIANO, SALARINO, SALANIO, _and others_.