I will not attempt to detail the particulars of such a meeting, where joy and sorrow were so completely blended. Still he was alive! he was come home! he might yet live to comfort and cherish her old age! Nature, however, was exhausted in him; and if anything had been wanting to finish the work of fate, the desolation of his native cottage would have been sufficient.1 He stretched himself on the pallet, on which his widowed mother had passed many a sleepless night, and he never rose from it again.

The villagers, when they heard that George Somers had returned,3 crowded to see him, offering every comfort and assistance that their humble means afforded.4 He was too weak, however, to talk; he could only look his thanks.5 His mother was his constant attendant; and he seemed unwilling to be helped by any other hand.

There is something in sickness that breaks down the pride of manhood, that softens the heart, and brings it back to the feelings of infancy. Who that has languished, even in advanced life, in sickness and despondency, who that has pined on a weary bed in the neglect and loneliness of a foreign land, but has thought on the mother "that looked on his childhood," that smoothed his pillow, 8 and administered to his helplessness? Oh! there is an enduring tenderness in the love of a mother to a9 son that transcends all other affections of the heart. It is neither to be 10 chilled by selfishness, nor daunted by danger, nor weakened by worthlessness, nor stifled by ingratitude. She will sacrifice every comfort to his convenience; she will surrender every pleasure to his enjoyment; she will glory in his fame and exult in his prosperity: and if misfortune overtake him, he will be the dearer to her from

1 aurait suffi pour l'anéantir.

40, note 18.-'to break down,'

2 When the villagers had abaisser.-'manhood,' here, l'homheard.' See page 28, note 5.

3 était de retour; and use 'they' before crowded.'

4 allowed them to give him.' 5 See page 6, note 13

6 See page 10, rote 3, and page

me.

7 lit de douleur.

misfortune; and if disgrace settle upon2 his name, sho will still love and cherish him in spite of his disgrace, and if all the world beside cast him off, she will be all the world to him.4

7

Poor George Somers had known what it was to be in sickness, and none to soothe ; lonely and in prison, and none to visit him.6 He could not endure his mother from his sight; if she moved away, his eye would follow her. She would sit for hours by his bed, watching him as he slept. Sometimes he would start from a feverish dream and look anxiously up until he saw her bending over him, when 10 he would take her hand, lay it on his bosom, and fall asleep with the tranquillity of a child. In this way 11 he died.

My first impulse, on hearing this humble tale of affliction,12 was to visit the cottage of the mourner, and administer pecuniary assistance, and, if possible, comfort. I found, however, on inquiry, that the good feelings of the villagers had prompted them to do everything that the case admitted, and as the poor know best how 13 to console each other's sorrows, I did not venture to intrude.

The next Sunday I was at the village church, when, to my surprise, I saw the poor old woman tottering down the aisle to her accustomed seat on the steps of the altar.

She had made an effort to put on something like14 mourning for her son; and nothing could be more touching than this struggle between pious affection and utter

1 par ses infortunes mêmes; and leave out 'the,' before 'dearer.' 2 une tache flétrit.

3 Leave out these last five words.

4 elle lui tiendra lieu de l'univers. This expression, tenir lieu de, means, 'to be as much as,' 'to be equivalent to:' as in this well-known line of Racine,"Un bienfait reproché tint toujours lieu d'offense."

6 See page 90, note 7.

7 Il ne laissait pas sa mère s'éloigner de lui.

8 See page 45, note 4. 9to start (from sleep), se réveiller en sursaut. 10 alors; see page 18, note 23. 11 It is thus that.'

12 histoire simple, mais déchirante.

13 In such a case, 'how' is not expressed in French, and no preposition is used between savoir and

See the LA FONTAINE, page 86, the next verb. note 8.

5 See page 117, note 13.

14 to take a kind of;' and leave out for her son.'

4

poverty:1 a black riband or so,2 a faded black handkerchief, and one or two more such humble attempts to express by outward signs that grief which passes show." When I looked round upon the storied monuments, the stately hatchments, the cold marble pomp, with which grandeur mourned magnificently over departed pride,5 and turned to this poor widow, bowed down by age and sorrow at the altar of her God, and offering up the prayers and praises of a pious, though a broken heart, I felt that this living monument of real grief was worth them all.8

7

I related her story to some of the wealthy members of the congregation, and they were moved by it. They exerted themselves to render her situation more comfortable and to lighten her afflictions. It was, however, but smoothing a few steps to the grave. In the course of a Sunday or two after she was missed from her usual seat at church,10 and before I left 11 the neighbourhood I heard, with a feeling 12 of satisfaction, that she had quietly breathed her last,13 and had gone to rejoin those she loved in that world where sorrow is never known and friends are never parted. (WASHINGTON IRVING, Sketch-Book.)

AN EPISODE OF THE LATE WAR.

(Armistice-March, 1855.)

ON Saturday, during the armistice, I came out upon the advanced French1 trench, within a few hundred yards of the Mamelon. The sight was strange beyond description. French, English, and Russian officers were walking about saluting each other courteously as they passed, and occasionally entering into conversation, and a constant interchange of little civilities, such as offering and receiving cigar lights, was going on in each little group. Some of the Russian officers were evidently men of high rank and breeding.5 Their polished manners contrasted remarkably with their plain, and rather coarse clothing. They wore, with few exceptions, the invariable long grey coat over their uniforms.7 The French officers

6

were all en grande tenue, and offered a striking contrast to many of our own officers, who were dressed à la Balaklava, and wore uncouth head-dresses, catskin coats, and nondescript9 paletots.

Many of the Russians looked remarkably like English gentlemen in "style" of face and bearing.10 One tall, finelooking old man, with a long grey beard and strangely shaped cap, was pointed out to us as Hetman of the Cossacks in the Crimea, but it did not appear as if there were many men of very high military rank present.1 The Russians were rather grave and reserved, but they seemed to fraternize with the French better 12 than with ourselves, and the men certainly got on better 13 with our

allies than with the few privates of our own regiments who were down towards the front.1

6

While all this civility was going on,2 we were walking among the dead, over blood-stained ground, covered with evidences of recent fight. Broken muskets, bayonets, cartouch-boxes, caps,5 fragments of clothing, straps and belts, pieces of shell, little pools of clotted blood, shotround and grape-shattered gabions and sandbags, were visible around us on every side, and through the midst of the crowd stalked a solemn procession of soldiers bearing their departed comrades to their long home.9

I counted seventy-seven litters borne past me in fifteen minutes each filled with 10 a dead enemy. The contortions of the slain were horrible, and recalled the memories 11 of the fields of Alma and Inkermann. Some few French were lying far in advance towards 12 the Mamelon and Round Tower among the gabions belonging to the French advanced trenches, which the Russians had broken down.13 They had evidently been slain in pursuit of the enemy. The Russians appeared to treat their dead with great respect. The soldiers I saw were white-faced 14 and seemed ill-fed, though many of them had powerful frames, square shoulders, and broad chests.15 All their dead who fell within and near our lines were stripped of boots and stockings. 16 The cleanliness of their feet and, in most cases, of their coarse linen 17 shirts, was remarkable.

1 les quelques soldats que nous avions sur ce point; 'a common soldier,' 'a private,' is, in French, un simple soldat; but soldat alone will do here, as there is no contradistinction made.

2 While they exchanged these civilities.'

3 reddened with (de) blood.' 4 et qui portait les traces.

5 des schakos, here, not des casquettes, nor, still less, des bonnets. 6 des ceinturons, des baudriers. 7 des boulets et de la mitraille (i. e., mitraille en grappe de raisin). 8 des sacs de terre.

9 des files de soldats qui portaient en terre les cadavres de leurs ca