Journals of Dorothy Wordsworth, Vol. 2 (of 2)Wordsworth, Dorothy
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Journals of Dorothy Wordsworth, Vol. 2 (of 2)
Wordsworth, Dorothy
Authors, English -- 19th century -- Diaries; Wordsworth, Dorothy, 1771-1855 -- Diaries; Wordsworth, William, 1770-1850 -- Family
_Waterloo._--Waterloo is a mean village; straggling on each side of the
broad highway, children and poor people of all ages stood on the watch
to conduct us to the church. Within the circle of its interior are found
several mural monuments of our brave soldiers--long lists of naked names
inscribed on marble slabs--not less moving than laboured epitaphs
displaying the sorrow of surviving friends.... Here we took up the very
man who was Southey's guide (Lacoste), whose name will make a figure in
history. He bowed to us with French ceremony and liveliness, seeming
proud withal to show himself as a sharer in the terrors of that time
when Buonaparte's confusion and overthrow released him from unwilling
service. He had been tied upon a horse as Buonaparte's guide through the
country previous to the battle, and was compelled to stay by his side
till the moment of flight....
_Monday, July 17th._--_Brussels._--The sky had been overshadowed by
clouds during most of our journey, and now a storm threatened us, which
helped our own melancholy thoughts to cast a gloom over the open
country, where few trees were to be seen except forests on the distant
heights. The ruins of the severely contested chateau of Hougomont had
been ridded away since the battle, and the injuries done to the
farm-house repaired. Even these circumstances, natural and trivial as
they were, suggested melancholy thoughts, by furnishing grounds for a
charge of ingratitude against the course of things, that was thus
hastily removing from the spot all vestiges of so momentous an event.
Feeble barriers against this tendency are the few frail memorials
erected in different parts of the field of battle! and we could not but
anticipate the time, when through the flux and reflux of war, to which
this part of the Continent has always been subject, or through some turn
of popular passion, _these_ also should fall; and "Nature's universal
robe of green, humanity's appointed shroud," enwrap them:--and the very
names of those whose valour they record be cast into shade, if not
obliterated even in their own country, by the exploits of recent
favourites in future ages.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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