sun of Syria pouring down upon his unprotected head, with the sick, the wounded, and the dying, all around him, he saw an officer, in perfect health, riding on horseback, refusing to surrender his saddle to the sick. The indignation of Napoleon was so aroused, that by one blow from the hilt of his sword he laid the officer prostrate upon the earth, and then helped a wounded soldier into his saddle. The deed was greeted with a shout of acclamation from the ranks. The “recording angel in heaven’s chancery” will blot out the record of such violence with a tear. The historian has no right to draw the vail over the revolting horrors of war. Though he may wish to preserve his pages from the repulsive recital, justice to humanity demands that the barbarism, the crime, and the cruelty of war should be faithfully portrayed. The soldiers refused to render the slightest assistance to the sick or the wounded. They feared that every one who was not well was attacked by the plague. These poor dying sufferers were not only objects of horror, but also of derision. The soldiers burst into immoderate fits of laughter in looking upon the convulsive efforts which the dying made to rise from the sands upon which they had fallen. “He has made up his account,” said one. “He will not get on far,” said another. And when the exhausted wretch fell to rise no more, they exclaimed, with perfect indifference, “His lodging is secured.” The troops were harassed upon their march by hordes of mounted Arabs, ever prowling around them. To protect themselves from assault, and to avenge attacks, they fired villages, and burned the fields of grain, and with bestial fury pursued shrieking maids and matrons. Such deeds almost invariably attend the progress of an army, for an army is ever the resort and the congenial home of the moral dregs of creation. Napoleon must at times have been horror-stricken in contemplating the infernal instrumentality which he was using for the accomplishment of his purposes. The only excuse which can be offered for him is, that it was then as now, the prevalent conviction of the world that war, with all its inevitable abominations, is a necessary evil. The soldiers were glad to be fired upon from a house, for it furnished them with an excuse for rushing in, and perpetrating deeds of atrocious violence in its secret chambers.