He rose in command, but he rose slowly, and it was not till late in the campaign of Italy that he attained the rank of colonel. Italy was a land which had long been the theme of his thoughts. He was now there, amongst the ruins of that stupendous fabric, the record of whose ancient glory had been his admiration and delight. He was on the spot where Romans had dwelt, and he fought where Romans had bled; and if any thing like ardour ever entered into his nature, it was then. The habits, too, of his boyish days seemed here to resume their empire. He would wander, as he had done in youth, among the wreck of ages past, and indulge in long and deep meditations in the midst of empty palaces and neglected fanes. He would re-people them with the generations gone, and conjure up the great and wise of other days. The first and second Brutus seemed to rise before him--the men who had expelled a Tarquin, and had slain a Cæsar--he that had sacrificed his children, and he that had sacrificed his friend to his country. Virginius, too, and his daughter; and Manlius, and, in short, all the train of those whose deeds gave a splendour to the times in which they lived, and whose names history has for ever consecrated. Italy teems with recollections of every kind: for courage, and wisdom, and power, and arts and sciences, and beauty, and music, and desolation, have all in turn made it their favourite dwelling-place; and though the train of thought which Villars followed was but of one description, there was matter enough for that; and he might have indulged it for ever, but that the more busy and Warlike occupation of the present gave him but little time to ponder over the past. Another fate too awaited him--a fate which he little dreamt of. In a skirmish, which took place near Bologna, he was severely wounded, and carried to the house of an old Bolognese lady, whose rank was rather at variance with her fortune. For though she prized illustrious birth, as the purest and most permanent species of wealth, and perhaps valued it the more, inasmuch as it was the only sort of riches that remained to her, she nevertheless found it very difficult to make this refined treasure supply the place of that coarser material, gold; at least in the opinion of others, who obstinately continued to think, that rank must have fortune to support its pretensions, or else it is worse than nothing. It is supposed, that sometimes their pertinacity almost persuaded her of this also: but as the old countess had not the one, she endeavoured to make the other do: and like a poor man, ostentatious of his last guinea, she contrived to render every one well aware of her rank and family. However, she was a kind-hearted woman, and though she would talk of her cousin the prince, and her nephew the duke, the poor and the sick would always share of what little she had, and when she had nothing else she would give them a tear.