gestures of leopards? What stir!--what sea-like ferment!--what a thundering of wheels, what a trampling of horses!--what farewell cheers--what redoubling peals of brotherly congratulation, connecting the name of the particular mail--"Liverpool for ever!"--with the name of the particular victory--"Badajoz for ever!" or "Salamanca for ever!" The half-slumbering consciousness that, all night long and all the next day--perhaps for even a longer period--many of these mails, like fire racing along a train of gunpowder, will be kindling at every instant new successions of burning joy, has an obscure effect of multiplying the victory itself, by multiplying to the imagination into infinity the stages of its progressive diffusion. A fiery arrow seems to be let loose, which from that moment is destined to travel, almost without intermission, westwards for three hundred[10] miles--northwards for six hundred; and the sympathy of our Lombard Street friends at parting is exalted a hundred fold by a sort of visionary sympathy with the approaching sympathies, yet unborn, which we are going to evoke. Liberated from the embarrassments of the city, and issuing into the broad uncrowded avenues of the northern suburbs, we begin to enter upon our natural pace of ten miles an hour. In the broad light of the summer evening, the sun, perhaps, only just at the point of setting, we are seen from every story of every house. Heads of every age crowd to the windows--young and old understand the language of our victorious symbols--and rolling volleys of sympathizing cheers run along behind and before our course. The beggar, rearing himself against the wall, forgets his lameness--real or assumed--thinks not of his whining trade, but stands erect, with bold exulting smiles, as we pass him. The victory has healed him, and says--Be thou whole! Women and children, from garrets alike and cellars, look down or look up with loving eyes upon our gay ribbons and our martial laurels--sometimes kiss their hands, sometimes hang out, as signals of affection, pocket handkerchiefs, aprons, dusters, anything that lies ready to their hands. On the London side of Barnet, to which we draw near within a few minutes after nine, observe that private carriage which is approaching us. The weather being so warm, the glasses are all down; and one may read, as on the stage of a theatre, everything that goes on within the carriage. It contains three ladies, one likely to be "mama," and two of seventeen or eighteen, who are probably her daughters. What lovely animation, what beautiful unpremeditated pantomime, explaining to us every syllable that passes, in these ingenuous girls! By the sudden start and raising of the hands, on first discovering our laurelled equipage--by the sudden movement and appeal to the elder lady from both of them--and by the heightened color on their animated countenances, we can almost hear them saying--"See, see! Look at their laurels. Oh, mama! there has been a great