"BRUSSELS, 2d July, 1815. "This country, the finest in the world, has been of late quite out of our minds. I did not, in any degree, anticipate the pleasure I should enjoy, the admiration forced from me, on coming into one of these antique towns, or in journeying through the rich garden. Can you recollect the time when there were gentlemen meeting at the Cross of Edinburgh, or those whom we thought such? They are all collected here. {p.041} You see the very men, with their scraggy necks sticking out of the collars of their old-fashioned square-skirted coats--their canes--their cocked-hats; and, when they meet, the formal bow, the hat off to the ground, and the powder flying in the wind. I could divert you with the odd resemblances of the Scottish faces among the peasants, too--but I noted _them_ at the time with my pencil, and I write to you only of things that you won't find in my pocket-book. "I have just returned from seeing the French wounded received in their hospital; and could you see them laid out naked, or almost so--100 in a row of low beds on the ground--though wounded, exhausted, beaten, you would still conclude with me that these were men capable of marching unopposed from the west of Europe to the east of Asia. Strong, thickset, hardy veterans, brave spirits and unsubdued, as they cast their wild glance upon you,--their black eyes and brown cheeks finely contrasted with the fresh sheets,--you would much admire their capacity of adaptation. These fellows are brought from the field after lying many days on the ground; many dying--many in the agony--many miserably racked with pain and spasms; and the next mimics his fellow, and gives it a tune,--_Aha, vous chantez bien!_ How they are wounded you will see in my notes. But I must not have you to lose the present impression on me of the formidable nature of these fellows as exemplars of the breed in France. It is a forced praise; for from all I have seen, and all I have heard of their fierceness, cruelty, and bloodthirstiness, I cannot convey to you my detestation of this race of trained banditti. By what means they are to be kept in subjection until other habits come upon them, I know not; but I am convinced that these men cannot be left to the bent of their propensities.