THE NIGHT AFTER THE BATTLE.

THE battle was lost and won! The living vaunted and the dead reposed! The victors quaffed wine while the earth drank blood! Sin for this day had reigned triumphant! And death by sin! Men had appealed from God's tribunal of Divine justice to the human tribunal of a battle-field for their rights! Had justice attended the decision? The few had fallen before the many. Courage and enthusiasm had been overcome by discipline and science. Rashness fell before calculation, and the amateur of war had yielded the palm to the professor. If there is any justice in a decision thus produced, there was sublime justice in this victory; for the rebels had fallen to a man, and their cause in losing them was crushed and broken. Still, the sun set on that evening with the same glory on the battle-field as on the peaceful farm or hamlet! It is only wonderful that outraged nature does not so signally manifest its indignation at the crimes of battles as to engulf the armies in some vast and terrible destruction. Yet what destruction of nature could be more vast and terrible than that they deal upon themselves? Soldiers beware! your deeds shall be judged.

Joe was one of the panic-stricken body who eventually changed the fate of the day. He had fought

as a courageous man will fight to save himself from death. He had fallen covered with wounds and glory. It must be an immense source of satisfaction to a good-hearted soldier to die upon the field of battle, with the reflection that he has done his duty to his country-to feel that he has ravaged the ranks of his country's enemies-to know that he has butchered his share of his fellow-creatures. Joe, however, had not fallen to die. He already showed a deep sabre-cut in the head, when by joining the corps for the rescue of the cuirassiers, under the leadership of Captain Gilling, he received a terrible handling from the maddened foes. One arm nearly severed from his body, and then a leg dislocated by the violent swinging of a musket, soon laid poor Joe fainting and stiff upon the ground, where for a long time he was unconscious of the world to which he still belonged. The trampling feet of the combatants upon his body hurt him not-the thought of his anxious and watching wife troubled him not -till the fray was over and the field was won.

Evening deepened into night. The moon gave forth sickly and humid rays, as though she tried to hide from her sight the ghastly spectacle she was obliged to witness. Silence reigned over that field, so lately hot with the fire of contending passions, and noisy with the clash of arms. An occasional groan of pain, the wolf's baying, or the vulture's shriek, were the only signs of the life remaining amongst those heaps of dead!

A woman had been weeping that live-long day. She had been praying. She had sorrowfully seen the columns move forward in the morning to the fight. She looked in the faces of those who returned with a thrill of horrible anxiety. She looked amongst the blood-stained victors for a face she knew, and found it not! What could have happened? Was he dead? Impossible! She had no enemies,-no one could be so cruel to her as to kill that dear husband whom she loved. He could not be dead. What had he done, or she, that he should die? Perhaps by accident he had been wounded; at all events he did not return in the ranks of the conquerors. Her impulse was to seek him on the field, and away she sped, on, on, through heaps of dead, slipping in pools of blood, stumbling over guns or broken carriages, wildly calling upon Joe, thinking not of the horrors of the place, seeking but Joe-her dear love Joe! This woman was Lizzy. She prosecuted her long search with the ardour of a despairing woman, and at last she found the object of her care. That moon, which seemed weeping and in mourning, shone for a few moments steadily upon the ground, and the woman stopped to gaze around her. She marked a spot

whereon the mortal harvest seemed to have fallen thicker beneath the scythe of death than elsewhere. Instinct guided her to this spot, and there she searched. She looked intently upon each dead face, and thus engaged, she heard a piteous mourning voice, "Oh Lizzy! Lizzy!" She turned to trace that wel

come sound. "God bless you, Lizzy, and protect you, and be merciful to you for my sufferings;" then sobs began to mingle with the further prayer-which with a scream of terrible energy, Lizzy (for it was her) rushed in a moment to interrupt, by caressing the sad petitioner, and weeping such tears as the father did whose son being dead was alive again, who being lost was again found. The scream was one of thanksgiving, and the tears were those of joy; but Lizzy soon began to look into the actual condition of her wounded husband, and then the tears ceased, activity was needed to retain poor Joe's fast fleeting spirit. Her dress was torn into bandages, and these soon covered the bleeding gashes. The sufferer recovered his fainting senses. He was very weak, but he thought with his wife's support he might be able to reach the tents of the army. The experiment was tried, and manfully did Joe take three steps, in what he thought prime marching order. At the fourth step he could feel no footing-he reeled and felldead, Lizzy thought at first, but no that never could be her Joe could never die. His sufferings might be worse to bear than death, but in all his sufferings he lived to give her all the happiness she knew; in his death she would have lost everything she lived for, and he could not die. She rubbed his face, she chafed his hands, she called him by his name, she told him his Lizzy was by his side-asked him for her sake, their child's sake, for his own sake, to look into her face and live.

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Whilst Lizzy was thus engaged, entreating the life back to the inanimate body of her husband, there were other women on that dreary field come upon like errands as herself-errands of love and mercy. There were men there too, who came on errands far less holy those horrible beings who follow an army for its plunder who fatten upon death, and gain their luxuries from the spoils of a carcass; these are of all men the worst-the outcasts of every society, without laws, without fear of man or God before them. They are fit companions for the beasts, whose fellows they are. They have nothing by which to claim the name of man but the form, and this is often by the vices of their life, and the depravity of their calling, shorn of the nobility of aspect and deportment so generally inherent in the figure of man.

One of these marauders, or camp-followers as they are more politely termed, when we first became acquainted with him belonged to a class of men about whom society is beginning to ask itself serious questions. It becomes very doubtful if there would be poachers under a system comprising more universal education, with a fairer division of labour and riches. If this man had received his due from the society to which he belonged, he would doubtless have grown up a good citizen. He was naturally intelligent, but intelligence uncultivated becomes cunning and knavery. This man, originally neglected by his parents from hard necessity, neglected by society from carelessness, had grown up in ignorance