It would be a work of supererogation to bring events before the reader which have been so often and so well told. Suffice it to say that upon the news of the abdication of the Emperor Napoleon having reached the headquarters of the Dukes of Dalmatia and Wellington, the armies of the different nations which formed portions of those troops were so arranged as to be ready to return to their respective countries or destinations. Those of Spain returned to Spain, and those of Portugal returned to Portugal. The British infantry embarked at Bordeaux, some for America, some for England; and the cavalry, marching through France, took shipping at Boulogne. The separation of those troops from each other, after so long an intercourse, and an uninterrupted series of victories, was a trying moment. There were, no doubt, many at least about to return to their native country and to their friends; but they were also about to leave behind them, probably for ever, those countries in which they had passed the most eventful years of their lives, and to be separated from friends whose claim to the title could not be doubted—because such friendships as those I speak of were not formed by interested motives, and were consequently the more sincere and lasting. They left also behind them the bones of forty thousand of their companions who had fallen, either by disease or by the sword, in the tremendous but glorious contest they had been all engaged in—a contest which decided more than the fate of the Peninsula, for the very _existence_ of England was the stake played for, or rather fought for, in this terrible game; the loss of one single point would not only have rendered the game desperate, but lost it altogether. The players on both sides were nearly equal in skill, and if Wellington could not boast of the same evenness and perfection of some of the materials he had in hand, as compared with his opponents, he most undeniably held a few _trumps_ that always decided the game in his favour. Sixty thousand Anglo-Portuguese, under their great leader, accomplished more on the southern frontier of France than did HALF A MILLION of the allies on the side of Germany. These are heart-stirring facts, and the recollection of them, even after so long a lapse of time, causes the pulse to quicken, and the heart to beat high; for it can never be too often repeated, or too well remembered, by those of the Peninsular army who are now living, that it was the imperishable deeds of that army that saved their country. Their great leader now left them; but he did not do so without his marked expressions of what he thought of the past, and his promises for the future. His General Order contained the following words:—