The British Press; or, Morning Literary Advertiser.
London, England, 1818-05-12 00:00:00

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PRICE SEVER-PENCE.

She told me (Aid i t being questioned) in broken
English, flout 1 would hod tieble liCCOPlllllollfilm
IMO 111 au old convect ilhst stood at tome tbstaticie
among a grove of cook-t eeo; µuniting, to them
at the same time with her long shrive lied hand
and s.rne, and giving a curt of his sierical laugh.
Yuu will hod, said she, nobody there to disturb
3 ou. •
1 followed I:er advice with a kind of superstitions
acquiestraite. There was no reatiqiii to anticipate
any adventure or danger in the coovefit ; ye' the
'gild eyes, and the wilder voice of the ~i,l "„„,
powerfully affected me ; and though oft, r all, ale
was only such un old woman us our may owe one
where, I malty began to invest her still many iiii.
posing qualities, till 1 found that, in a.rot of reveik,
I bud r walked up a pretty long flight of sit ps„ at d
war standing at the entrance to the cloisters of the
convent. 1 then saw something that made me live( di.
ly forget the old woman, though what it was I diti
see, 1 could not, in the first innintiiits of my atuu.zi.
talent and hot ror, very distinctly comprehend.
Above a hundred dead bodies lay and sat before
my eyes, all of them apparently its the very attitude
ur posture in which they had died. I loekett at theist
fur at least a minute, before I knew that they were
all corpses. Something in the mortal silence of the
place told me that I alone was alive in this dread-
ful company-. A desperate courage enabled ate
then to look steadfastly at the scene before sne.—
The bodies were mostly clothed in mats, sod rugs,
and tattered great coats; some of them mere),
wrapped round about with girdles of straw, and two
or three perfectly tusked. Every face had a differ-
euit expression, but all painful, horrid, agonised,
bloodless: many glazed eyes were w.de (sprit; awl
perhaps this was the most shocking thing in the
whole spectacle. So flimsy eyes that saw not, ail
seemingly fixed upon different objects ; souse cast
up to 1-leaven, some looking straight forward, and
some with the white orbs turned round, and drip
sunk in the sockets.

It aas a suet of hospital. These wretched beings
were mocly all desperately or mortally wounded ;
and after having been stripped by their coinrades,
they had been left there dead and to die. Suet,
were they, who, as the old hag said, would out tiou.
ble sae. 4
I had begun to view this ghastly sight with some
composure, when I saw, at the remotest past al' the
hospital, a gigantic figure sitting, cover.il alio
blood and almost naked, upon a rude bedstes, ,
with his back leaning against the wall, and Ins el.
fixed directly on mine. I thought he was ally. ,
and shuddered ; but he was stone ad. In
last agonies he had bitten his wider lilt I cu.-
tirely off, and his long black beard was dreliciacii
in clotted gore, that likewise lay ir. large blots
his shaggy bosom. One of his hand« had consist-
sively grasped the wood-work of the bedstead. %
had been crushed in the grasp. 1 recogoised
corpse : he was a seijeaut in a gren sitter regiiiieii•.
and, during the retreat, distinguished Ihr sets of
savage valour. One day he killed, with his own halal,
Harry Warburton, the right-hand man of my IM
company, perhaps the finest made and most power-
ful man in the British army. My briliErre hail
nicknamed him with a very coarse appellation, and
I really felt as it' lie and I were seqiiaintances.—
There he sat, as if frozen to death. I wrist up to the
body, and raising up the giant!' muscular arm, it
fell (1-)wii again with a hollow souu.l against the
bloody side of the corpse.
My eyes iinconscitassly wandered along the wall-.
They were covered with grotesque figures and ca -
ricaturts of the English, absolutely drawn io
blood. Horrid blasphemies, and the most «hock-
ing obscenities in the shape of songs, acre in like
manner written there; and you may guess what aim
effect they had upon me, a hen the wretch. a wit.
had conceived them lay all dead corpses around my
feet. I saw two books lying on the Hoor ; I !if:, it
them up. One seemed to be full of the ttio.t
hideous obscenity ; the other was the ! Ir r.
impossible to tell you the horror reduce
by this circumstance. The books fell fr
hand; they fell upon the breast of one of the tie-
dies ; it was a woman's breast. A women hail
lived and died in such a place us this ! ‘l'l.at had
been in that heart, now still, perhaps only a few
hours before. I knew not. It is possible, lose
strong as death—love, guilty, abandoned, de-
praved, and linked by vice unto miseiy—but still
love, that perished but with the lag throb, aii.l
yearned in the last couvolsion towards some clue
these grim dead bodies. I think some such idea
as this came across me at the time; or has it. now
only arisen ?

Near this corpse lay that of a pellet t but•, cer-
tainly not more titan 17 years of age. There way a
little copper figure of the Virgin Mary round
hi.
tie •k, suspended by a chain of hair. It was of
little value, else it hail not been suffered to reittatit
there. In his hand was a letter; I s.iw enuttrh to
know that it was from his mother—Mon eherPs.
&c. It was a terrible place to think of mother--
of home—of any social homy.' ties. Dave the-e
ghastly things paresith, brothers, mist••-., losers ?
Were they once all happy in petit., ful ! •-• tes ? 1)1.1
theme convulsed, and bloody, and matigted hotti•
once lie in undisturbed beds? Did those clutch-
cif hands once press in infancy a mother's Irrrast ?
Now all was loathsome, terrible, ghost-like.
Ila-
ntan nature itself seemed here to be deluied, 1.1141
brutitied. Will such creatures, Iti gill, veer
lice again ? Why should they ? Robber-, ravtim...
era, incendiaries, murderers, bumbles, (for a des.
goon lay with a pistol in his hand, and his skii,l
shattered to pieces), he►oes! The may two powel,
that reigned here, were Agony and Des.h. What-
ever might have beet, their diameters when ultse,
all faces were now alike. I could nut, tii (Ito.*
fixed contortions, tell what was pain Irina what
mot anger—misery from wiekritior.e.

It war nu* almost dark, and Or slight woos prttirt,c
it. stortnirr than thr tt4y. A strolig ti ,bh of ligh t.
11i.% suddenly illuminated this Imht nt tlesttli, «114
fur is issoutelot showed isle mete tltstinctly the trim.,
ble army. A loud +quail of wind ‘:,tuso mood olio;.:

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