How little can the home-keeping public realise the feelings which must have been predominant in the bosoms of the men during that melancholy bivouac! Soldiers are, perhaps, less sensitive to hardships and exposure than civilians; and probably comparatively callous to the finer sentiments. But it is scarcely possible to conceive that, out of 60,000 men, lying on the bare earth in an enemy’s country, there would be many who would not be keenly alive to the emotions their situations would naturally suggest. Physically depressed by a day of extreme toil, poorly fed, and drenched by the descending torrent, the past would be inevitably present to their imaginations, and with the past the probable future. Many men will march dauntlessly to the cannon’s mouth, and show no signs of fear, but with cheerful voice, and light step, dash through the enemy’s fire, and over the bodies of the dead. But in the stillness of the night, when no excitement warms his blood, the bravest will be despondent, and the strong man be moved with emotions as keen as those which agitate the breasts of the tender woman or the sympathetic child. Oceans rolled between them and all they had learned to love and value. No hand so rough but had been pressed by some other hand on the day of departure; no nature so fierce and ungentle but had softened into a better manhood as the cliffs of England receded from the view. And now they lay through the long hours of that miserable night, striving vainly enough to drown their remembrances in sleep, and gain renewed strength and courage for the morrow--the morrow that might bring death, and certainly imminent dangers. Before them lay an unknown land--a future of deadly uncertainty. Battles were to be fought, shot and steel to be encountered; and who could tell who were destined to lie in the obscurity of death on that foreign soil, and who to bear the tidings back to thousands of melancholy homes? Thus was passed the night of the 14th of September, the anniversary of the death of the great Duke of Wellington, who, two years before, ended his career amid the universally expressed sorrow of a great people. He was, we had fondly hoped, the last great representative of the military glory of this country. A new era had been, we believed, initiated, in which the arts of peace supersede the operations of war. And now, but two years after the conqueror of Waterloo had looked for the last time upon the world, an English army had landed upon the shores of a hostile territory, and was commencing a warfare of which no man could see the termination, and which bade fair to involve every nation of Europe. The chosen champion of England’s military glory was quiet in his tomb; but his companions, pupils, and successors were prepared to emulate his deeds, and strike as vigorously for the honor of their country, and the maintenance of the freedom of Europe.”