“Sergeant-major Cotton says, (page 201,) ‘Facts are stubborn things;’ and with the qualifications we have noticed, he is the very man to tell us all about it. And he has told us in a very circumstantial manner, separating details from masses, and altogether afforded us a better idea of this dreadful encounter than we have gathered from any other quarter. We had, by a curious coincidence, just arrived at this conclusion on reading his book, when we had an opportunity, in common with a number of leading artists and connoisseurs, of seeing Mr. Sidney Cooper’s Battle of Waterloo, painted for the approaching exhibition in Westminster-Hall. We were at once wonderfully struck with the apparent realization of the accounts which had just made such an impression on our minds. It seemed as if the artist had been present with the writer, and transferred in the most graphic and spirited manner to the canvass what he had committed with such particular effect to the paper. The chivalrous encounters, the almost single combats, the groups of cavalry slaughterings, the flight, the rally, the rush of riderless horses, the dying and the dead scattered among the trampled corn: all told the terrible tale of the last charge and effort of the French to retrieve the discomfiture of the day. Of these Mr. Cooper has made a stirring and splendid use. It is indeed a battle-piece, and upon the largest scale, such as never has been produced before by English painter, if by the greatest foreign master, in this style of art. The artist is sublime in the mysteries of moving human columns under the canopy of smoke, through which the spectator may easily imagine he hears the cannon boom. The whole is real, yet imaginative; and inspires at the same moment feelings of intense individual interest, and general awe. With regard to the author we need not add any other comment. Though he mentions that the Duke and Blücher met at La Belle-Alliance after the battle, we think he shows that this could not have been the case; and we have reason to believe that no such meeting ever took place[114].” FOOTNOTES: [103] _See_, page 229, the proclamation of Louis XVIII to the French people, dated Cambray, the 28th June, 1815. [104] _See_ lord Bathurst’s dispatch of the 7th July, and the Duke’s answer of the 13th, GURWOOD, vol. XII, page 557. [105] _See_ the duke of Wellington’s dispatch to lord Bathurst of the 8th July. (GURWOOD, vol. XII, page 549,) detailing a conversation which took place with the duc d’Otrante at Neuilly, on the night of the 5th July; the whole of which turned upon a recommendation given by the duc d’Otrante, that the king should give a _general amnesty_. [106] “As well as the duke of Wellington recollects, there is in the war department a letter from the prince d’Eckmühl to marshal St.-Cyr on this subject, in which he urges every argument against the proclamation of the 25th July, excepting the 12th article of the convention of Paris.” [107] _Scott._