"This superb city is now ornamented with the finest groups of armed men that the most romantic fancy could dream of. I was struck with the words of a friend--E. 'I saw,' said he, '_that_ man returning from the field on the 16th.' (This was a Brunswicker, of the Black or Death Hussars.) 'He was wounded, and had had his arm amputated on the field. He was among the first that came in. He rode straight and stark upon his horse--the bloody clouts about his stump--pale as death, but upright, with a stern, fixed expression of {p.042} feature, as if loath to lose his revenge.' These troops are very remarkable in their fine military appearance; their dark and ominous dress sets off to advantage their strong, manly, northern features and white mustachios; and there is something more than commonly impressive about the whole effect. "This is the second Sunday after the battle, and many are not yet dressed. There are 20,000 wounded in this town, besides those in the hospitals, and the many in the other towns;--only 3000 prisoners; 80,000, they say, killed and wounded on both sides." I think it not wonderful that this extract should have set Scott's imagination effectually on fire; that he should have grasped at the idea of seeing probably the last shadows of real warfare that his own age would afford; or that some parts of the great surgeon's simple phraseology are reproduced, almost verbatim, in the first of Paul's Letters to his Kinsfolk. No sooner was Scott's purpose known, than some of his young neighbors in the country proposed to join his excursion; and, in company with three of them, namely, his kinsman, John Scott of Gala, Alexander Pringle, the younger, of Whytbank (now M. P. for Selkirkshire), and Robert Bruce, advocate (now Sheriff of Argyle), he left Edinburgh for the south, at 5. A. M. on the 27th of July. They travelled by the stage-coach, and took the route of Hull and Lincoln to Cambridge; for Gala and Whytbank, being both members of that university, were anxious to seize this opportunity of revisiting it themselves, and showing its beautiful architecture to their friend. After this wish had been gratified, they proceeded to Harwich, and thence, on the 3d of August, took ship for Helvoetsluys.