The night was excessively dark, but perfectly calm; and, except where the fire from the batteries marked their position, all objects beyond the ramparts were invisible. The town around me lay silent, and looking more like a vast grave than a place of human existence. Now and then the light of a lantern gliding along the ruined streets, showed me a group of wretched beings hurrying a corpse to the next churchyard, or a priest seeking his way over the broken heaps to attend some dying soldier or citizen. All was utter desolation. But a new scene--a terrible and yet a superb one--suddenly broke upon me. A discharge of rockets from various points of the allied lines, showed that a general movement was begun. The batteries opened along the whole extent of the trenches, and by their blaze I was able to discern, advancing and formed in their rear, two immense columns, which, however, in the distance and the fitfulness of the glare, looked more like huge clouds than living beings. The guns of the ramparts soon replied, and the roar was deafening; while the plunging of shot along the ramparts and roofs made our situation perilous in no slight degree. But, in the midst of this hurricane of fire, I saw a single rocket shoot up from the camp, and the whole range of the batteries ceased at the instant. The completeness of the cessation was scarcely less appalling than the roar. While every telescope was turned intently to the spot, where the columns and batteries seemed to have sunk together into the earth, a pyramid of blasting flame burst up to the very clouds, carrying with it fragments of beams and masonry. The explosion rent the air, and shook the building on which I stood as if it had been a house of sand. A crowd of engineer and staff-officers now rushed on the roof, and their alarm at the results of the concussion was undisguised. "This is what we suspected," said the chief to me; "but it was impossible to discover where the gallery of their mine was run. Our counter mine has clearly failed." He had scarcely spoken the words, before a second and still broader explosion tore up the ground to a great extent, and threw the counterscarp for several hundred yards into the ditch. The drums of the columns were now distinctly heard beating the advance; but darkness had again fallen, and all was invisible. A third explosion followed, still closer to the ramparts, which blew up the face of the grand bastion. The stormers now gave a general shout, and I saw them gallantly dashing across the ditch and covered way, tearing down the palisades, fighting hand to hand, clearing the outworks with the bayonet, and finally making a lodgement on the bastion itself. The red-coats, which now swarmed through the works, and the colours planted on the rampart, showed me that my countrymen had led the assault, and my heart throbbed with envy and admiration. "Why am I not there?" was my involuntary cry; as I