For some pages, my grandfather's note-book is filled with memoranda of singular casualties from the enemy's shot, wonderful escapes, and hasty moments of quietude and attempted comfort snatched "even in the cannon's mouth." The fire from the Spanish batteries shortly reduced the town to ruins, and the gunboats at night precluded all hope of peace and oblivion after the horrors of the day. Dreams, in which these horrors were reproduced, were interrupted by still more frightful nocturnal realities. One of the curious minor evils that my grandfather notices, as resulting from an incessant cannonade, to those not engaged in it actively enough to withdraw their attention from the noise, is the extreme irritation produced by its long continuance, amounting, in persons of nervous and excitable temperament, to positive exasperation. Some of the numerous incidents he chronicles are also recorded by Drinkwater, especially that of a man who recovered after being almost knocked to pieces by the bursting of a shell. "His head was terribly fractured, his left arm broken in two places, one of his legs shattered, the skin and muscles torn off his right hand, the middle finger broken to pieces, and his whole body most severely bruised and marked with gunpowder. He presented so horrid an object to the surgeons, that they had not the smallest hopes of saving his life, and were at a loss what part to attend to first. He was that evening trepanned; a few days afterwards his leg was amputated, and other wounds and fractures dressed. Being possessed of a most excellent constitution, nature performed wonders in his favour, and in eleven weeks the cure was completely effected. His name," continues Mr. Drinkwater, with what might be deemed irony--if the worthy historian ever indulged in that figure of rhetoric--"is Donald Ross, and he" (_i.e._ the remaining fragment of the said Donald Ross) "now enjoys his sovereign's bounty in a pension of ninepence a-day for life." One might almost suppose that Mr Hume had some hand in affixing the gratuity; but in those days there was a king who knew not Joseph.