On the way we passed, all looked smilingly, all was peaceful and calm-all but man: beautiful prospects, sweet, fair scenes, quiet cottages lay around us; and there were we, an armed and bannered host about to join in the shock of war, presenting a strange contrast to scenes so lovely and so soft.

How distinctly can I now picture to myself our array on the first night I bivouacked on foreign ground; how plainly does memory present the forms that then lay scattered round me, indulging in repose on their cold earthen bed, after a fatiguing march; the spreading cork tree, and the youth who sat with me beneath its shade, are now, methinks, before me figures that have long since mingled with the dust of a foreign land, are prominent in fancy's picture, and voices that are silenced forever, seem now to address me again.

A small, beautiful valley was covered with our warlike host, and its stillness was broken by sounds most unseemly. I chose my lodging ground beneath a fine tree at the foot, or rather on the declivity of one of the rugged eminences that hemmed in this peaceful little spot it was one that a hermit might have chosen; a small, gurgling stream flowed down the rock beside me, and fell softly into its narrow bed below. Here I spread my cloak, and then looked round on the scene before me; and such a scene, revealed as it was by the bright, but flickering fires that were just burst

ing out through the glen, would be no bad subject for the painter's pencil; the broken, unequal light, gleaming on the shining blades, and piled arms, the glen crowed with armed and tired men, their indistinct forms sometimes rendered more discernible by the sudden blaze of the fitful light that fell in fantastic reflections on the dark rocks, and over the brown hills-it was a scene both new and pleasing to me, and while I lay watching it in all its variations, that still varied almost momentarily, as one fire sunk and another sprung up, casting new lights and shadows on the scenery, as the tired soldier stretched himself to repose on the ground after his meal, and one group of dust-covered men dispersed while another assembled, my own reflections gradually assumed as varied a complexion as the scene I was gazing on.

I was at last in the seat of war, in daily expectation of meeting the enemy; the life I had long looked forward to was commenced. Yet I was not happy one excited and animated and hopeful feeling, seemed to pervade my comrades' breasts: and though when with them I appeared like them-when I was thus alone 1 often felt sad, restless, and dispirited. So it often happens, that the very thing for which we long, after which we pant, finds us on its arrival dissatisfied, dull, incapable of enjoying it as we expected.

I looked over the diversified groups before

me, and it was impossible that the reflection, that soon their numbers would be thinned, should not arise. I did not ask, what individual of that congregated body should fall first, but I sighed, for I was not then inured to compaigning, as I recollected, that probably many of those men, many of those active, thinking beings would find one common grave, would sink like the grass before the scythe of the mower, undistinguished, unknown-and, except perchance by some fond heart at home, unmourned, unwept. And—for who will not at such a time bestow a thought upon himself? I too, methought, might be of the number; many whose hopes, whose spirits were higher than mine then were, fell in the first shock of battle, and their hopes and desires and self-promised honours were untimely quenched in their life-blood. The chance of war is always acknowledged to be doubtful, and numbers who were gay and happy, daily expressed in the language of soldier-like indifference the probability of their own death -why could not I feel as others seemed to feel? I raised my eye to the clear vault above my head as the questionings of my dark mind was going on, and the action might have afforded an answer to the demand. I could not feel indifferent to my state after death. From my earliest youth I had been acquainted with the doctrines of the Gospel, and the Scriptural testimony of man's state

and character with regard to his Maker; I could not disbelieve revelation, and I could not silence conscience. I saw numbers it is true, many of them men whom I esteemed and liked, who did not deny the existence of a future state, and who acknowledged their accountability hereafter, living quite at ease in the prospect of being perhaps suddenly called to render up that account and enter on that everlasting state and if the ground for that contentedness were asked, there was generally some vague expression of trust in the mercy of God, some hope that they were not worse than others, that they had done their duty as they could, and then again all would be summed up in that favourite expression, God is merciful.' But such vague and undefined hopes as these could never satisfy one who really felt an anxiety concerning his state during the countless, never ending ages of eternity. Let men say if they I will that such reflections are not for the brave

-there never has been, there never will be, the man so brave as to contemplate unmoved an eternity, of hopeless, helpless misery; and those who pretend to do so, do not believe in its existence. I could not as I before said be equally careless, for I had learned from the sweet and lovely example of one whose liberated spirit was then among the blessed, that the value of the immortal soul was not to be weighed against the varied blessings and

Revelation

accumulated treasures of time. depicted man as a fallen creature, incapable of reinstating himself in the favour of his Maker from which he had fallen, both by Adam's transgression and his own daily, hourly transgression of the law delivered to him, and declared that to raise him from this fallen state, and to deliver him from the double curse under which he lay, God became manifest in the flesh. It was in the full belief of this stupendous truth that I had often been told by those who anxiously sought my good, lay the very essence of Christian hope. It was, I had been told, impossible to believe this fact and be uninfluenced by the faith that could apprehend its best results: what more was there for man to do; his salvation was finished for him, he dare not attempt the smallest effort to effect it for himself-yet the giving up of body and soul, of the powers of his mind, and the affections of his heart, were only his reasonable, his delightful service, for the law of love held his soul in stronger chains to the service of his God than that which proclaimed, this do, and thou shalt live.'

These truths I knew; they had often been sounded in my ears, and sweetly and mildly pressed on my attention by those who now exulted in their realization: but still they had no effect on me, I perverted the doctrine of Scripture, I refused to obey its precepts: it is there on record, the divine command and

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