Roliça was at that time a large and beautiful village, with more appearance of comfort and welfare about it than was usual in Portugueze villages. The place, with its five dependent hamlets, contained about three hundred families, the larger half of the population being in Roliça itself. Most of the houses had an inclosed garden or orchard, and the country is full of olive grounds, vineyards, and gardens, with stone inclosures. A little beyond Roliça is the hamlet of N. Senhora de Misericordia, a place of fewer houses, but of the same description: just without this village the British artillery was well placed, on a rising ground, where there stood some of those strong and well-built windmills which are common in Portugal; below were olive grounds, and an open grove of ilex or cork, under cover of which our troops were enabled to approach and deploy with little loss, though the French kept up a constant fire from the heights. Laborde had planted his eagle on the highest point of Monte S. Anna, near a wooden cross, which marked the spot of some murder or accidental death. The view from those heights is singularly beautiful, presenting just such objects as Gaspar Poussin delighted in painting, and in such combination as he would have placed them; rocks and hills rising in the valley, open groves, churches with their old galilees, and houses with all the picturesque varandas and porticos which bespeak a genial climate; Obidos with its walls and towers upon an eminence in middle distance, and its aqueduct stretching across the country as far as the eye could follow it; Monte Junto far to the east, and on the west the Atlantic. And till the iniquitous invasion of the country by France, there had been something in the condition of the people here which accorded with the loveliness of the scene wherein they were placed. Such as their lot was, they were contented with it; three and even four generations were found under the same roof: like plants, they grew, and seeded, and decayed, and returned to earth upon the spot where they had sprung up. If this state of things be not favourable to commercial prosperity and the wealth of nations, it is far more conducive to individual virtue and happiness than the stage by which it is succeeded. ♦BATTLE OF ROLIÇA.♦