trymen within call, and not more than three hundred yards from their own regiment, they were unable to interest any one in their behalf, and were literally starving. It is unnecessary to say that we instantly galloped back to the camp and had them removed to the hospital. On the morning of the 7th, when some of our officers were performing the last duties to their fallen comrades, one of them had collected the bodies of four of our young officers, who had been slain. He was in the act of digging a grave for them, when an officer of the guards, arrived on the spot, from a distant division of the army, and demanded tidings of his brother, who was at that moment lying a naked lifeless corpse, under his very eyes. The officer had the presence of mind to see that the corpse was not recognized, and, wishing to spare the other's feelings, told him that his brother was dangerously wounded, but that he would hear more of him by going out to the camp; and thither the other immediately bent his steps, with a seeming presentiment of the sad intelligence that awaited him. April 9th.-As I had not seen my domestic since the storming of the town, I concluded that he had been killed; but he turned up this morning, with a tremendous gash on his head, and mounted on the top of a horse nearly twenty feet high, carrying under his arm one of those glass cases which usually stand on the counters of jewellers' shops, filled with all manner of trinkets. He looked exactly like the ghost of a horse pedler. April 10th.-The devil take the man who stole my donkey last night. April 11th.-Marched again for the neighbourhood of Ciudad Rodrigo, with the longaccustomed sounds of cannon and musketry ringing in my fanciful ears as merrily as if the instruments themselves were still playing. Sir Sidney Beckwith, one of the fathers of the rifles, was, at this time, obliged to proceed to England for the recovery of health, and did not again return to the Peninsula. In his depar ture, that lost one of the ablest of its outpost generals. Few officers knew so well how to make the most of a small force. His courage, coupled with his thorough knowledge of the soldier's character, was of that cool intrepid kind, that would, at any time, convert a routed rabble into an orderly effective force. A better officer, probably, never led a brigade into the field! CHAP X. A Farewell Address to Portalegré. History of a Night in Castello Branco. Regimental Colours lost, with Directions where to find them. Cases in which a Victory is sometimes won by those who lost it. Advance to Salamanca. The City. The British Position on St. Christoval. Affair in Position. Marmont's Change of Position and Retreat. A Case of Bad Luck. Advance to Rueda, and Customs there. Retire to Castrejon. Affairs on the 18th and 19th of July. Battle of Salamanca, and Defeat of the Enemy. April 13th, 1812.-Quartered at Portalegré. I CANNOT quit thee, for the fourth and last time, without a parting tribute to the remembrance of thy wild romantic scenery, and to the kindness and hospitality of thy worthy citizens! May thy gates continue shut to thine enemies as heretofore, and, as heretofore, may they ever prove those of happiness to thy friends! Dear nuns of Santa Clara! I thank thee for the enjoyment of many an hour of nothingness; and thine, Santa Barbara, for many of a more intellectual cast! May the voice of thy chapel-organ continue unrivalled but by the voices of thy lovely choristers! and may the piano in thy refectory be replaced by a better, in which the harmony of strings may supersede the clattering of ivories! May the sweets which thou hast lavished on us be showered upon thee ten thousand fold! And may those accursed iron bars divide thee as effectually from death as they did from us!!! April 15th.-Quartered at Castello Branco. This town had been so often visited by the French and us, alternately, that the inhabitants, at length, confounded their friends with their foes; and by treating both sides as enemies, they succeeded in making them so. When I went this evening to present my billet |