ber 14, he had but 40,000 men capable of bearing arms, and these had dwindled down to 12,000 when he effected a junction about ten days later, on the banks of the Beresina, with Victor and Oudinot, who had a reserve force of about 50,000 men under their command. Of the combined force of 62,000 men, about 32,000 perished in the disastrous passage of the Beresina on the 26th, 27th, and 28th of November, during which the Russian artillery kept up a constant fire on the doomed army. It is said that 12,000 dead bodies were taken out of the river in the spring, and as many more in the adjoining marshes. On December 5 Napoleon left the wreck of his shattered army, and made the best of his way to Paris, leaving Murat, Ney, Berthier, and others of his generals to keep together and bring home such of the miserable remnant as they might be able.

Never was the overthrow of an army more complete. The destruction of the troops of Sennacherib, the Assyrian, before Jerusalem, is only more terrible in its suddenness. Few of the "grand army of Russia" saw their homes again. Of the 4,200,000 men-French, Germans, Italians, Poles, and Prussians who entered on the campaign in June, it is calculated that at its close in December, scarcely 1000 remained to tell the tale. Whom the Cossacks spared the rigour of the winter destroyed; and most of those who escaped death at the hands of the Russians and the hostile elements, perished miserably of want and hunger. Surely, as against Sisera, the stars in their courses fought against Napoleon.

Such is the brief history of one of the most terrible campaigns on record-of one of the most eventful years in the history of France, of Russia, and of Europe. Yet even this and the victories of the English in Spain were not sufficient to induce Napoleon to renounce his indomitable ambition, the fire of which burnt as fiercely as ever, until it was quenched at last by his final overthrow at Waterloo.]

MAGNIFICENCE of ruin! what has time,
In all it ever gazed upon of war,

Of the wild rage of storm, or deadly clime,
Seen, with that battle's vengeance to compare?
How glorious shone the invader's pomp afar!
Like pampered lions from the spoй they came;
The land before them silence and despair,
The land behind them massacre and flame.
Blood will have tenfold blood. What are they now? A

name!

N

Homeward by hundred thousands, column deep, Broad square, loose squadron, rolling like the flood When mighty torrents from their channels leap, Rushed through the land the haughty multitude, Billow on endless billow; on through wood, O'er rugged hill, down sunless, marshy vale, The death-devoted moved, to clangour rude Of drum and horn, and dissonant clash of mail Glancing disastrous light before that sunbeam pale.

Again they reached thee, Borodino!' still
Upon the loaded soil the carnage lay,
The human harvest, now stark, stiff, and chill,
Friend, foe, stretched thick together, clay to clay;
In vain the startled legions burst away;
The land was all one naked sepulchre;

The shrinking eye still gazed on grim decay,
Still did the hoof and wheel their passage tear
Through cloven helms and arms, and corpses mouldering
drear.

The field was as they left it; fosse and fort
Steaming with slaughter still, but desolate ;
The cannon flung dismantled by its port;

Each knew the mound, the black ravine whose strait
Was won and lost, and thronged with dead, till fate
Had fixed upon the victor-half undone.
There was the hill from which their eyes elate
Had seen the burst of Moscow's golden zone;

But death was at their heels; they shuddered and rushed on.

The battle of Borodino, sometimes called the battle of the Moskowa, or Moskwa, was fought between the French and Russians on September 7, 1812. The Russians were commanded by Count Kutusoff. Both sides remained on the field of battle and claimed the victory; but as the Russians withdrew in the night, it is considered that the French were the victors.

2 Moscow, the old capital of Russia until 1703, when Peter the Great transferred the seat of empire to St. Petersburg, is situated on the Moskwa in lat. 55° 45′ N., long. 37° 40′ E. The Kremlin, or citadel in which is the palace of the Czars, with numerous cathedrals and churches, presents a magnificent appearance from a distance on account of the domes of the various buildings being gilded. The damage done by the mines sprung by Napoleon before he commenced his retreat was repaired in 1817.

The hour of vengeance strikes. Hark to the gale!
As it bursts hollow through the rolling clouds,
That from the north in sullen grandeur sail
Like floating Alps. Advancing darkness broods
Upon the wild horizon, and the woods,

Now sinking into brambles, echo shrill

As the gust sweeps them, and those upper floods Shoot on their leafless boughs the sleet-drops chill, That on the hurrying clouds in freezing showers distil.

They reach the wilderness! The majesty
Of solitude is spread before their gaze,

Stern nakedness—dark earth and wrathful sky.
If ruins were there, they long had ceased to blaze;
If blood was shed, the ground no more betrays,
Even by a skeleton, the crime of man;

Behind them rolls the deep and drenching haze, Wrapping their rear in night; before their van The struggling daylight shows the unmeasured desert

wan.

Still on they sweep, as if their hurrying march
Could bear them from the rushing of His wheel
Whose chariot is the whirlwind. Heaven's clear arch
At once is covered with a livid veil;

In mixed and fighting heaps the deep clouds reel ;
Upon the dense horizon hangs the sun,

In sanguine light, an orb of burning steel;

The snows wheel down through twilight thick and dun; Now tremble, men of blood, the judgment has begun!

The trumpet of the northern winds has blown,
And it is answered by the dying roar

Of armies on that boundless field o'erthrown:
Now in the awful gusts the desert hoar
Is tempested, a sea without a shore,
Lifting its feathery waves. The legions fly;
Volley on volley down the hailstones pour;
Blind, famished, frozen, mad, the wanderers die,
And dying, hear the storm but wilder thunder by.

Such is the hand of Heaven! A human blow
Had crushed them in the fight, or flung the chain
Round them where Moscow's stately towers were low
And all bestilled. But Thou, thy battle-plain
Was a whole empire; that devoted train

Must war from day to day with storm and gloom—
Man following, like the wolves, to rend the slain—
Must lie from night to night as in a tomb,

Must fly, toil, bleed for home; yet never see that home.3

THE SOLDIER'S HOME.

ROBERT BLOOMFIELD,

An observant and accurate delineator of rural life, in all its varied forms, has been justly styled "one of the most characteristic and faithful of our national poets." He was the son of a village tailor, and was born in 1766, at Honington, near Bury St. Edmunds, in Suffolk. He was brought up, after his father's death, by his uncle, a farmer; but was ultimately apprenticed to a shoemaker, being unfit to endure the toil and exposure of a labourer's life. His "Farmer's Boy" brought him into notice; and, by the influence of the Duke of Grafton, one of his patrons, he obtained a situation under government. In addition to the "Farmer's Boy," he wrote "Rural Tales," "Wild Flowers," "Mayday with the Muses," and a village drama, entitled, "Hazlewood Hall." He resigned his post in the Seal Office through ill health, and went into business as a bookseller. In this, however, he was unsuccessful; and after a few years passed in ill health and poor circumstances, he died at Shefford, in Bedfordshire, August 19, 1823.

[Among the pictures of rural life that Bloomfield describes so naturally and effectively in his poems on country life, there is none, perhaps, so truthful in detail and touching in sentiment as the following, in which is placed before us, in a few simple lines, the return of a soldier to the home of his boyhood, after long years of absence, and a life chequered by the vicissitudes that fall to the lot of all who follow the drum. There is much left for the imagination of the reader to fill up for himself, and

3 No table of chronology is added purposely to this extract, that the pupil may practise himself in preparing one similar to those given in other parts of the book from the introduction prefixed to the stanzas, and any ol history he may be in the habit of using.

each may picture the early years of the returned soldier for himself, according to his fancy. We are not told whether he was a good well-disposed lad when young, or a village "ne'er-doweel." If he were the former, he might have become a soldier as a substitute for another, who had been drawn to serve king and country in the wars, thereby earning some £20 or £30 as the price of his life, perchance-a small sum in itself, but one which would lighten for many a month the cares of his struggling parents; sorry enough to part with one they loved so well, though proud of the boy who was unselfish enough to think everything of his parents and nothing of himself. Again, if he had been the latter, conceit, drunkenness, poaching, fear of the consequences of some mischievous act, or one of a score of similar causes, might have led him to listen to the hopes held out by the recruiting sergeant, and take the shilling as the earnest-money that bound him to the service of King George. Of this we are told nothing; but thus much we do know, that a hearty affectionate welcome awaited him at home, and was bestowed on him with all the warmth of a parent's love when he returned, -a welcome that would not have differed a jot, whether he had been good or bad; a dutiful son who had ever done his father's will; or a prodigal who had come to himself, and resolved to seek the forgiveness which a good earthly father, or our Father in heaven, will never refuse to true repentance.]

I

My untried Muse shall no high tone assume,
Nor strut in arms-farewell my cap and plume!
Brief be my verse, a task within my power;
I tell my feelings in one happy hour:

But what an hour was that! when from the main
I reached this lovely valley once again!
A glorious harvest filled my eager sight,
Half shocked,' half waving in a flood of light;
On that poor cottage roof where I was born,
The sun looked down as in life's early morn.
I gazed around, but not a soul appeared;

I listened on the threshold, nothing heard;

Shocked, arranged in shocks or clusters of sheaves placed against one another. From the German schock, a heap. The noun schock, a shake mental or bodily, comes from the Dutch shocken, to shake.

2 Thresh'-old, a piece of wood or stone placed between the side-posts or joints of an entrance-door. The actual meaning of the word is a piece of