impressed with the grandeurs of savage and forest life.] of the roe-
deer; the deer and their fawns retire into the dewy thickets; the
thickets are rich with roses; once again the roses call up the sweet
countenance of Fanny; and she, being the granddaughter of a crocodile,
awakens a dreadful host of semi-legendary animals--griffins, dragons,
basilisks, sphinxes--till at length the whole vision of fighting images
crowds into one towering armorial shield, a vast emblazonry of human
charities and human loveliness that have perished, but quartered
heraldically with unutterable and demoniac natures, whilst over all
rises, as a surmounting crest, one fair female hand, with the
forefinger pointing, in sweet, sorrowful admonition, upwards to heaven,
where is sculptured the eternal writing which proclaims the frailty of
earth and her children.


GOING DOWN WITH VICTORY


But the grandest chapter of our experience within the whole mail-coach
service was on those occasions when we went down from London with the
news of victory. A period of about ten years stretched from Trafalgar
to Waterloo; the second and third years of which period (1806 and 1807)
were comparatively sterile; but the other nine (from 1805 to 1815
inclusively) furnished a long succession of victories, the least of
which, in such a contest of Titans, had an inappreciable value of
position: partly for its absolute interference with the plans of our
enemy, but still more from its keeping alive through central Europe the
sense of a deep-seated vulnerability in France. Even to tease the
coasts of our enemy, to mortify them by continual blockades, to insult
them by capturing if it were but a baubling schooner under the eyes of