The Sun.
London, England, 1827-07-26 00:00:00

ems :

Officers of troops, are all your men sober ?
No, I have one drunk with old October,
What is his name? quickly tell to me,
'flis name is Rane,
By the time the detachment reached Brussels,
the action had already commenced, the horror,
sublimity, and reckless desperation of which, are
thus splendidly described.
Bang ! hang ! went the great gons
P. ! pop ! smalt arms sent souls a soaring,
a circumstance which indisputably proves the
angelic nature of the combatants. Their souls—
observes our poet—were all " sent a soaring"_
Ergo, they must have been cherubic. Unfor-
tunately, however, poor Rane, who as we have
already seen, was appropriately enough, rather
intoxicated with heavy wet, met with a serious

accident.
We had scarcely arrived on that fatal spot,
Before Rane and his horse went smack to pot;
A cannon ball, the last that was sent,
Knocked Rene dean off—to Heav'n he went.
From this last line, we derive the important
information that drunkards stand the best chance
of celestial promotion, a fact which, if true, will
confine the candidates for Paradise, almost
exclusively, to Oxonians and Cantabs. On
quitting the field of battle for the night, our
poet naturally enough inquires who is killed, and
learning that Lord James Hay is one of these
unfortunates, his benevolent disposition betrays
itself in the following pensive apostrophe—
God bless my soul, is Lord Hay killed so soon ?
Early the next morning the troops were again
set in motion, on which occasion his Grace of
Wellington was delivered of a very Tyrtwan
harrangue, exenipli gratia—
The brave Duke said, General Vivian, I leave them to you,
They are now advancing on the right of yonder yew ;
I will assist the Marquis to stop them a little while ;
You go threes about, when they come opposite the style.
The authenticity of this speech we have not
the slightest reason to doubt, as its dignified
colloquial elegance strongly reminds us of his
Grace's late senatorial orations in the Upper
House. Its energy, of course, had a corre-
sponding effect on the soldiers, who fought
with
‘" fierce savageness," when suddenly
" Colonel Quintin was mounded in his ankle,
which, says our. Poet,
" Is bad news, and may make his leg dangle."
Most likely. In addition to this accident, a
promising young corporal who was fighting in
the front ranks was " cut in two," an event which
seemed to have occasioned him no little sur-
prise ; for he instantly remarked to a hye-stander,
Oh ! look at my poor bowels on the ground;
After which,
. this sensible soldier lived minutes twenty-five,
When gave up the ghost like a bee out of its hive.
From this touching couplet we deduce two,
very important inferences ; first, that sensible
soldiers can live five-and-twenty minutes with-
out their bowels ; secondly, that all bees which go
out of their hives give up the ghost. The
passage therefore is valuable, both as a physio-
, logical and entomological curiosity. Towards
the close of the engagement—
Lieutenant Gunning was shot dead, .
So never moved band nor foot, nor stirred his head.
He must have been a surprising genius if he
had. We remember 'a passage in Xenophon's
Anabasis of a similar character, where he ob-
serves that three Persian soldiers, in conse-
quence of having their heads cut off, died. We
acquit Captain Hardman, however, of any inten-
tional plagiarism : great minds will clash. To
resume, our poet soon got over the death of
" poor Gunning ; and on hearing shortly after-.
wards that " Boney," as he calls him, was re
' - 1

We think it not unlikely, that, influenced by the well]
known sagacity of Lord Chief Justice Best, "on the subject
of the Law of Libel, the Blacksmith will•enter an action
against Captain Hardman for impeaching his Yeracit7,