_25th._--Here we are, another day’s march in advance, not only without the expected battle, but also without having either seen or heard of an enemy. Nor have we seen any traces of one, having found the peasantry everywhere as peaceably occupied as if no war existed. Nothing more have we heard of Landrecy, which, I suppose, must have surrendered, since Lord Edward sent us orders this morning to march on Sequehart, where the brigade halts to-night. Accordingly I marched immediately towards Montay in a thick drizzling rain, which made this dismal country appear ten times more dismal. The cavalry regiments marched at the same time (about five A.M.?) and we kept company as far as Montay; but there they left us, for we found the road again so choked with baggage, &c., that although we succeeded in passing the bridge, yet the deep hollow road (_encaissé_ between very high steep banks), ascending to the opposite heights, was so inextricably crammed with carriages, and the unctuous soil so slippery, that I feared we should bivouac in the churchyard again. We attempted the ascent, and being better horsed than the others, succeeded in getting ahead wherever an opening offered. Our column was broken into as many fractional parts as we had carriages. At length, after a most arduous struggle, we mustered our whole force on the plateau, and pushed forward in the old way--sometimes getting along pretty smoothly by keeping one side of the road; then a choke would stop us for a time, until, an opportunity offering, the head of our column would make a dash and break the file of waggons; but occasionally in doing this, if the rear carriages did not keep close up, the waggoners would dash in their turn, and cut them off. Then again we got foul of our Nassau friends, and the old quarrel was revived; cursing, swearing, and bayoneting followed as matter of course. The road itself was execrable, and in places a complete slough. It appears that our march has been so conducted as to avoid the main avenues, and thus turn the fortresses; consequently, with the exception of some little bits of chaussée, we have been travelling on the cross-roads--in France always execrable. On gaining the plateau we saw everywhere around us again those interminable fields of wheat--not a hedge nor a dividing wall; the only relief a few small woods here and there. A hamlet we occasionally met with, and sometimes a solitary cabaret of the meanest appearance--“Ici on loge à pied et à cheval,” scrawled on a board in black letters, on a dirty-white ground, invited the traveller to enter. Sometimes a longer inscription set forth other inducements. I pity the luckless wight who trusts to their hospitality. A remarkable feature in the cheerless scenery of these oceans of corn is the row of apple-trees so frequently seen skirting the horizon. The by-roads here are frequently bordered by apple or pear trees, which accounts for this. As we advanced on