We were rowed ashore, and landed in the dark, at past eleven o'clock at night, upon the slippery and weed-covered rocks of Margate, exactly six weeks after we had landed in the same manner, at the same hour, and the same day of the week, on the deep and deserted sands of Ostend. In that six weeks what a change had taken place! When I left England, Buonaparte was the terror of the world--Europe was arming against him, and his threatening hosts were ready to overwhelm it again with ruin. When I returned, these tremendous armies were defeated and scattered--the victorious troops of England were in the capital of France; and Buonaparte himself, fallen from the highest imperial throne of the universe to the lowest abyss of fortune, was a prisoner on board a British ship of war, and a suppliant to the mercy of my country! Events so extraordinary and improbable, and changes so sudden and so wonderful, seemed to outrun the rapidity of imagination itself, and to exceed the limits of possibility. The past seemed like a dream. Scarcely, on retrospection, could we believe it to be real, or be convinced that the scenes we had witnessed, since our departure from England, had not been the illusions of fancy, or the "baseless fabric of a vision." They bore more resemblance to the shifting and imaginary scenes represented on the stage, than to events which had actually happened on the great theatre of the world. It had indeed been a great and a bloody tragedy, and it had been our lot to witness it from the first to the last scene. It began at our entrance, it finished at our departure from Brussels. The news of Buonaparte having attacked the Prussians reached Brussels at the very moment of our arrival--the news of his surrender to the British was received the night before we left it. In that six weeks the work of an age had been accomplished; an usurper had been dethroned; a monarch had been restored; a kingdom had been lost and won; a war had begun and ended; peace had revisited the world; and justice--strict, impartial justice--had descended upon the head of the guilty. And all this was the work of England! Yet it has been asked--and I have often heard the question slightingly repeated by my own countrymen--"And what, after all, has England gained for years of war and bloodshed but glory?" I might answer that she has gained security, peace, and prosperity for the world, and for herself, besides, the highest place among nations: but granting that she had only gained glory--what, I ask in return, could she gain that is equivalent to it? What is there on earth to be compared to it? "Is aught on earth so precious and so dear As Fame or Honour? or is aught so bright And beautiful as Glory's beams appear, Whose goodly light than Phoebus' lamp doth shine more clear?" _Faerie Queen._