The Sun.
London, England, 1847-09-06 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

MURRAY'S HOME AND COLONIAL Ll-
BRAI?Y. Nos. XLVI. and XLVII. Story of the
Battle of Waterloo. By the Rev. G. R. Gleig.
The author of the " Subaltern" being no tyro as a
military historian, but being, on the contrary, as
practised a writer on matters appertaining to the life
of a soldier as Charles Lever or W. H. Maxwell, we
naturally look with some curiosity to a work bearing
the above name and the above authorship upon the
title-page. But that we are tolerably well
accustomed to find the incongruous Reverend
prefixed to pages on war and battle-fields, we
should have been startled by that circumstance ;
the Rev. G. R. Gleig's name is, however,
familiar to us, and therefore the novelty has worn
away. Every person who has emerged from boyhood
or girlhood, and has received any sort of education,
has read some narrative or other of the battle of
Waterloo : the majority of them have read scores of
accounts. Nor is this surprising, when we remember
that that battle was the prelude to the peace we have
now been enjoying for upwards of thirty years. The
mind of this generation naturally reverts, and the
minds of all future generations will naturally revert,
to that most momentous crisis in the history of
modern times. The lovers of legitimacy will exult
when they recal its slaughter to their recollection,
while others will lament in the famous couplet of
Lord Byron :

" We do not curse thee, Waterloo,
Though freedom's blood thy plains bedew."

Mr. Gleig is of the former class, and he not only
exults over the battle-field, but with the true gusto
of a military writer, he appears to see in the butchery
merely a beautiful result of adroit manoeuvring, or a
capital proof of the toughness of his fellow-country-
men. The coolness with which a military historian
enumerates the killed or wounded, and the self pos-
session with which he recounts a little incident of
murder in the midst of the more general cannonading
is so extraordinary, that we conceive it to be the very
worst class—the most inappropriate class of author-
ship for a clergyman. There is something mar-
vellously indelicate to our thinking in the calm nar-
rative of the destruction of human bodies penned by
a person ordained for the more charitable office of
saving human souls, Hence the account of the
Battle of Waterloo—detestable to us at all times
—is absolutely repulsive as written by the Rev.
G. R. Gleig. And Mr. Gleig seems to have
inspired an atmosphere kindred to that inhaled
by Colonel Mitchell. The whole book is a piece
cif consummate braggadacio ; and if the French
Emperor was really such a blundering, obtuse,
thick-headed general, as he is described to be
by Mr. Gleig, there is very little credit indeed to the
Duke of Wellington, or, rather, to Prince Blucher, in
routing his forces. As a proof that the work is
cleverly written, we give the following picturesque
account of the Highland regiments at the Duchess
of Richmond's ball:—

" The Duchess of Richmond, of whose ball so much
notice has been taken, was the sister of the late and last
Duke of Gordon. The Duke was Colonel of the 92d
Regiment, which, because it had been raised upon his
estates, was called the Gordon Highlanders; and the
Duchess of Richmond, being proud of her brother and
s
e
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of
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carefully attended to. Preceded by their
pipers,ng
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e stillt o performancespeak rememberedo f i
int
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like, andt he
ladies who beheld them and admired, were little aware
of the brief interval which should elapse ere the
instruments which then stirred them in the game would
cheer them to the battle. Indeed there were but few in
that bright assembly who guessed that danger was near;
and they who know it best, including the Duke and the
officers of his personal staff, were in their manner the
most entirely unembarrassed.
' It
should take their leave. Orders likewise had been issued
to the troops in and around Brussels to hold themselves
brigade, that,
been
ono hinhteyd to
one, thea s generalsthe nhtgofdr divisionewon,
thany
ed
in readiness to march at a moment's notice; and the
consequence was, that without exactly anticipating the
andßya actual uaa(
)nliud coursee
ebre agreronafehrge
events,
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withdrew
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e their
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Duchess's party—some on the plea that their commands
were far away—others, because duty or private business
called them. The Duke remained till a late hour, and
gg g
returned thanks after supper for the het Llth of the Prince
Regent, which was proposed by the P rinse of Orange.
lie soon afterwards retired, and the car upany broke up.
" There might have been one IP: .ur's quiet in the
streets of Brussels. The rattle of c turriages was over.
Light after light had been extinguish ed in chamber and
in hall, and sleep seemed to hav e established his
dominion over the city, when a bugle- call, heard first in
the Place d'Armes, on the summit of /he Montagne du