breeze, over a castle in the wilderness, with frowning ramparts and a
hundred cannon. There stood a French chevalier, commandant of the
fortress, paying court to a copper-colored lady, the princess of the
land, and winning her wild love by the arts which had been successful
with Parisian dames. A war-party of French and Indians were issuing from
the gate to lay waste some village of New England. Near the fortress
there was a group of dancers. The merry soldiers footing it with the
swart savage maids; deeper in the wood, some red men were growing frantic
around a keg of the fire-water; and elsewhere a Jesuit preached the faith
of high cathedrals beneath a canopy of forest boughs, and distributed
crucifixes to be worn beside English scalps.

I tried to make a series of pictures from the old French war, when fleets
were on the lake and armies in the woods, and especially of Abercrombie's
disastrous repulse, where thousands of lives were utterly thrown away;
but, being at a loss how to order the battle, I chose an evening scene in
the barracks, after the fortress had surrendered to Sir Jeffrey Amherst.
What an immense fire blazes on that hearth, gleaming on swords, bayonets,
and musket-barrels, and blending with the hue of the scarlet coats till
the whole barrack-room is quivering with ruddy light! One soldier has
thrown himself down to rest, after a deer-hunt, or perhaps a long run
through the woods with Indians on his trail. Two stand up to wrestle,
and are on the point of coming to blows. A fifer plays a shrill
accompaniment to a drummer's song,--a strain of light love and bloody
war, with a chorus thundered forth by twenty voices. Meantime, a veteran
in the corner is prosing about Dettingen and Fontenoy, and relates camp-
traditions of Marlborough's battles, till his pipe, having been roguishly
charged with gunpowder, makes a terrible explosion under his nose. And
now they all vanish in a puff of smoke from the chimney.