I cannot describe how I felt, on again beholding this place, so celebrated for the victory we had gloriously achieved here, under our immortal Wellington, some four or five-and-twenty years before. The very hedges became familiar to me; but when we arrived at the village on the main road where we had taken the first gun, and where I so fortunately escaped death, I could no longer suppress my emotions, but turning my pony off the road from my company into the fields, I gave vent to my feelings. Weak as this may appear, it nevertheless is true, and I stood as one—the last of the time-forgotten numbers who had consecrated the scene. I felt as it were amidst them, and, unconsciously looked about, as if under the impression that the soil would throw out some of my old comrades. But all was one bleak flat, edged in on either side by mountains, which seemed to rear their heads like tombstones o’er the glorious sleepers at their base. How many a year had passed, how many a care had done its best to wither up my heart-strings, but oh! how vain! I was still the “old soldier!” and though garbed and tilted with the appointments of Captain of a company, it had not altered my nature; and I verily believe, if the offer could have been made, that I should have given up epaulettes and all for one short hour’s converse with my old brother campaigners. In the midst of my retrospections, General Reid, together with my Colonel, rode up to ask some questions about this celebrated battle, which they were aware I had been present at, but seeing my discomposed state of mind, they most kindly declined making inquiries. Between the sorrow I felt for those brave companions, who had fallen on every side of me, and the inward pride that burnt in my bosom, as one of those who had assisted in that ever-memorable contest, I could not compose my fluttering and overwhelming feeling; but this agitated state was broken in upon by one of the men of my company, who coming up to me said: “You cannot conceive, Sir, how queer I feel at the sight of this town; for there, Sir, I was born (pointing to Vittoria): my poor father was dangerously wounded, and while my mother, who so many a time told me the tale, attended to him in the hospital, she took to her bed and brought me into the world.” I inquired to what regiment his father had belonged; he informed me the 45th. He seemed much affected as well as myself; I slipped him a trifle to drink to his father’s memory. Poor fellow! he came to keep his sire company, and to fatten the Spanish soil with his own remains, as he died in about a month after his arrival in “his birth-place.”