Hark to the hoofs that galloping go! The Adjutants flying,-- The horsemen press hard on the panting foe, Their thunder booms in dying-- Victory! The terror has seized on the dastards all, And their colours fall. Victory! Closed is the brunt of the glorious fight. And the day, like a conqueror, bursts on the night. Trumpet and fife swelling choral along, The triumph already sweeps marching in song. _Live--brothers--live!--and when this life is o'er, In the life to come may we meet once more_! * * * * * THE LAST OF THE SHEPHERDS. CHAPTER I. I wish I had lived in France in 1672! It was the age of romances in twenty volumes, and flowing periwigs, and high-heeled shoes, and hoops, and elegance, and wit, and rouge, and literary suppers, and gallantry, and devotion. What names are those of La Calprenède, and D'Urfé, and De Scuderi, to be the idols and tutelary deities of a circulating library!--and Sevigné, to conduct the fashionable correspondence of the _Morning Post_!--and Racine, to contribute to the unacted drama!--and ladies skipping up the steepest parts of Parnassus, with petticoats well tucked up, to show the beauty of their ankles, and their hands filled with artificial flowers--almost as good as natural--to show the simplicity of their tastes! I wish I had lived in France in 1672; for in that year Madame Deshoulieres, who had already been voted the tenth muse by all the freeholders of Pieria, and whose pastorals were lisped by all the fashionable shepherdesses in Paris, left the flowery banks of the Seine to rejoin her husband. Monsieur Deshoulieres was in Guyenne; Madame Deshoulieres went into Dauphiné. Matrimony seems to be rather hurtful to geographical studies, but Madame Deshoulieres was a poetess; and in spite of the thirty-eight summers that shaded the lustre of her cheek, she was beautiful, and was still in the glow of youth by her grace and her talent, and--her heart. Wherever she moved she left crowds of Corydons and Alexises; but, luckily for M. Deshoulieres, their whole conversation was about sheep.