black stock tightened round the throat, the shoulders thrown back in the
disciplined habit of a life, though the head bent forward in the
despondency of an eventful crisis,--all spoke the decayed but not
ignoble hero of a hundred fields.

There was something foreign, too, about the veteran's air. Mr. Chapman
had looked so thoroughly English: that tragical and meagre personage
looked so unequivocally French.

Not a word had the Comedian yet said; and yet all this had the first
sight of him conveyed to the audience. There was an amazed murmur, then
breathless stillness; the story rapidly unfolded itself, partly by words,
much more by look and ac tion. There sat a soldier who had fought under
Napoleon at Marengo and Austerlitz, gone through the snows of Muscovy,
escaped the fires of Waterloo,--the soldier of the Empire! Wondrous
ideal of a wondrous time! and nowhere winning more respect and awe than
in that land of the old English foe, in which with slight knowledge of
the Beautiful in Art, there is so reverent a sympathy for all that is
grand in Man! There sat the soldier, penniless and friendless, there,
scarcely seen, reclined his grandchild, weak and slowly dying for the
want of food; and all that the soldier possesses wherewith to buy bread
for the day, is his cross of the Legion of Honour. It was given to him
by the hand of the Emperor: must he pawn or sell it? Out on the pomp of
decoration which we have substituted for the voice of passionate nature
on our fallen stage! Scenes so faithful to the shaft of a column,--
dresses by which an antiquary can define a date to a year! Is delusion
there? Is it thus we are snatched from Thebes to Athens? No; place a
really fine actor on a deal board, and for Thebes and Athens you may hang
up a blanket! Why, that very cross which the old soldier holds--away
from his sight--in that tremulous hand, is but patched up from the foil