Without noting Rotterdam, Holland’s lowest town, and Antwerp, an old Flemish town, I am at the carpet city of Belgium, Brussels, on my way to Waterloo. I have a little old lacquey I just hired and he is as cute as a mink. “All ready, sir,” said he, “shall I drive you to the Palace or the Museum?” “No sir, on to Waterloo!” Here the hackman remonstrated—he was not engaged for twelve miles and only engaged inside the city walls, and would not go to Waterloo this cold wet day for less than twenty francs. “Go on, sir,” said I, and he traversed the whole of the Brussels Boulevard before he passed the gates. Here we are at the battle-field where Wellington rose and Napoleon fell. Wellington conquered the master of the world. Byron says, in his Ode on Napoleon,—
“’Tis done! but yesterday a king,
And armed with kings to strive;
And now thou art a nameless thing—
So abject, yet alive”

He continues:—
“Is this the man with thousand thrones
Who strewed our earth with hostile bones,
And can he yet survive?
Since he miscalled the morning star,
Nor man nor fiend hath fallen so far.”

My guide was an old revolutionary soldier who was opposed to the Bourbons before the days of Charles the 10th. He fought in this bloody fray, and pleads up fool play on the part of Grouchy.

Mr. Cotton’s clerk sold me a copy of a book giving the details of this battle, which it took ten years to accumulate the matter for. Mr. Cotton was in the battle or close to it. In the centre of this field is now an immense mound, made with the bones of slain warriors. Small steps run up to its top, and Wellington is a monumental emblem seated on a horse moving over the field, apparently as natural as life, pinnacling this mound.

Having rested my body by leaning on the leg of the horse, I listened to the harangue of this old man, whose jaws had crept into his mouth, which was void of teeth. He first pointed out the position of Grouchy, who was not in the battle, but was Napoleon’s climaxing reserve, off miles in the distance. He now evidently felt some of the animating spirit of that great day, as, pointing in the same direction, he showed me the hill over which Blucher came, and made Napoleon believe that it was his own Grouchy. The old man quieted his feelings before proceeding farther. He assured me that Napoleon’s heartstrings must have burst at this perfidious conduct of Grouchy. He believed that Grouchy was so angry with Napoleon for refusing to let him lead on the battle in the morning instead of French Generals and Marshals, that he sold himself to the allies. Grouchy was one of Napoleon’s German Generals, and wanted the glory of a battle which, if lost, would bankrupt the French nation, as they had drained their coffers to support the ambition of its chief, which, no doubt, was the greatest general of modern times. The old soldier pointed off to the right of Blucher’s march over the hill, to the French position of Belle Alliance, and referred to those hours of anxiety from the first evening Napoleon arrived there and saw the English in the distance, when he craved the power of Joshua to stop the sun that he might attack them that day, to the close of the battle, when he mounted his white steed and started to the carnage, that he might fall among the slain, and how he was checked by Marshal Soult, which Marshal is yet living, who said to Napoleon, “They will not slay you but take you prisoner,” upon which he fled from ............