dimmed eyes, and dropped his nether lipFather, Mother!' She was in my arms, and his were widely expanded to receive his long absent, but not forgotten boy, as he still continued to call the son who had already numbered one and thirty years.

Seated between the dear old pair, I forgot for a time, that in my former visits other looks and other hands had greeted me—that many another lip had pronounced my welcome, and younger and brighter eyes sparkled round our social hearth. Dinner ended, I drew my chair again to the fire, and thus glanced retrospectively at the domestic information I had acquired while it was passing: 'So Anna has now six children, and Charles four, and dear Emily two, and little Sophy has married young Lumley, the boy I taught to ride our old grey pony when I first got leave of absence. Well, how time passes!'

'Yes, they have all left me to myself,' said my father they are all settled in the world Well, God be with them.'

'Amen!' I fervently ejaculated, for I felt the wish, though a common one, comprised in it all the good I could desire for my friends.

My dear mother put her hand on mine, and looked at me with her tearful eyes, as if her heart flew off to each of the several objects for whom the prayer was breathed, and felt again a mother's solicitude, and a mother's love. Still my own affectionate boy,' she

said, and smiling as I kissed the withered cheek to which I had often been pressed when it was fresher and fairer, went out of the room.

My father continued to tell me, how well he had performed his duty to his children; but as he spoke, he reclined still more and more in his comfortable chair, as if the remembrance of his past activity afforded an additional reason for patiently submitting to the weaknesses and enjoying the repose of age. Not even the presence of a long absent son was sufficient to make him forego the indulgence of his usual nap, his head gradually sunk lower and lower over the arm of his chair-and after looking at him a few minutes with that blended feeling of respect and pity, with which we generally regard extreme old age, and that emotion of filial affection and regret, which the remembrance of what he had been, and the view of what he was, awakened I found the image of other days. was recurring, awakening some saddening ideas, and opening up to my eye scenes that had passed away forever; so I rose, and leaving the room as quietly as I could, though I believe there was little fear of arousing my poor father, I took my hat and went out to the shrubbery adjoining the house.

I walked on some way, too much engaged in thought to observe the alterations that had been made in

'Scenes remembered well, and dear,'

till stiking my foot against a tree that had fallen across the path, I stopped and looked around. Well, I was changed myself-why did a change in everything else give me that uneasy and saddening sensation that urged me to pursue my walk with double speed, in the hope of diverting the melancholy of my feelings; so I went on as heedlessly as I could, till I was again arrested by—will the toil-worn soldier smile?-a ruined bower!— Yet so it was- a bower I had made in other days; and there it lay in its forlornness; the long tangled clymatis sweeping the ground, or clinging still here and there by its slight withered stems to the support of some stout neighbour that had sprung from the sapling I had left there to a well-grown tree; and amidst all the desolations, alone, alive, while

'Its mates of the garden lay scentless and dead,'

grew one poor faded, cold looking rose, surviving the wreck of kindred, the loss of companionship, looking on like some poor child of sorrow, faded and pale at the ruin that was strewn around, on the scene where all its pleasant things were laid waste.' And then, too, while I looked on it, came thoughts of those I had seen seated in that bower, as fair, as fresh as the sweet blossoms that clung around it, and where were they?-Oh! that ruined bower-how apt a picture did it seem of my heart when I murmured -gone

gone-gone; are these feminine sensibilities, what some would say, were unbefitting a man and a soldier?-be it so I at least felt them, and many of my brave companions have felt them too.

But there is sometimes a pang in such reminiscences as mine that many would not like to feel and so they hurry from what excites it, and teach their faces to smile, and whisper to themselves that they are happy; time was, when I would have done so, when I would have flown from thoughts so saddening to anything that offered a Lethe to remembrance -though a monitor I could not silence, warned me there was poison in the draught: but now I sought not the revel, the wild roar of senseless merriment, the circle of gaiety, the stirring exercise, the bustle of active life; I sought the repository of the dead-the tomb of my friends-through the now unshaded walk, and over the leaf-strewn path I trod hastily; I crossed the green field and stepped over the well-known stile, and got within the precincts of our church-yard; through its weedy enclosure I passed, neglected and wild as it was, till I came to a large white stone, and there I stopped.

Reader, there you must leave me―let us, if you will, pursue a soldier's retrospections to that spot, but there you shall not see him -the moonlight beam shone on him, and if he had a witness it was one on high.

CHAPTER II.

Ir was a bright and lovely morning when, with the troops destined to reinforce the British army in the Peninsula, I set sail for the shores of Portugal. For this day I had longed, and my heart had beaten high at the prospect of its coming; it came-and though all was bustle, excitement, interest, and hope, I was sad and silent: I blamed myself for this want of animation; but I turned and looked upon a small piece of crape on my left arm, and felt that not even the prospect of military glory, not the apparent realization of all my boyish day-dreams, could afford a counterpoise to the deadening weight of real sorrow.

But as the English shores lessened, and at last receded from sight, my spirits lightened, I listened to the conversation around me, my sullen apathy began to disappear, and when the vessel cast anchor in the Lisbon harbour, I felt once more alive to the feelings that inspire the youthful soldier's breast.

What a new and busy scene was before me! every thing was foreign and was newin harbour, on shore, and in the prospects that lay around us; and on the deck of our