sible for the French defeat-is not wholly effaced, even along the centre of Wellington's position. The northern bank, down which the Life Guards rode, can still be traced. Further to the west, along the ridge above Hougoumont, the sunken road is exactly as it was on that June Sunday in 1815. It is easy to understand that it formed a very useful feature in the British defence.

The slope in front of Wellington's right centre, up which swirled Ney's thirteen cavalry charges, and up which, in the dusk of the evening, the echelons of the Old Guard came, though it is ten feet lower than in 1815, is a little more difficult than is generally supposed, or than the French cavalry leaders could have imagined, as they looked at it across the valley. A heavy horse, with a heavy man in armour on its back, galloping-or even trotting-up that long slope, thick with the tall rye and sodden and made heavy with rain, would reach the actual fighting point sadly blown, if not exhausted.

Hougoumont of course is, for the ordinary visitor, the most interesting feature in the whole battle landscape, if only because it is the one least changed. The ancient château, with its red brick walls and tiny chapel, has been preserved for show purposes for nearly a century, and the visitor sees it, in its main features, almost exactly as Macdonnell and his Coldstreams held it. The little chapel-it is only thirteen feet by seventeen feet-into which the British carried their wounded still stands, with the crucifix above the door which escaped the fire kindled by the French guns. To-day its walls are scrawled over with ignoble names, and the walls have to be periodically whitewashed to efface the scribbled signatures of the unending stream of visitors. Victor Hugo found on the walls French names ' with notes of exclamations, signs of anger.' The inner orchard has an area of perhaps two hundred by one hundred yards; the outer orchard is almost twice its size. The loop-holes in the walls through which the Guards fired are plainly older than the battle; many of them carry little stone architraves. The château, it must be remembered, was built originally to resist attack. But here and there, scattered at irregular distances, are tiny loopholes torn roughly through the original bricks. They were plainly made in haste, and at points where they commanded weak places in the outer defence. These are the loopholes made by the Guards that stern Sabbath morning nearly

a century ago. They are still black with the musketry smoke of Waterloo.

Upon those weather-beaten walls what a flame and fury of battle broke! The visitor to-day wonders how such a position could have been held successfully against the numbers flung upon it. The French left wing shut round the south-west angle of the château, and at a distance of not more than 500 to 750 yards. Reille's whole artillery-say, eighty guns-might have been concentrated on those slender brick walls and that broad, sloping roof. The French batteries were, later in the day, turned on the château and set fire to it; but, in the main, the French tried to carry Hougoumont by infantry attack. It was stupid tactics; and, against Macdonnell and his Coldstreams, no wonder it failed.

The Prussian monument stands on rising ground some 250 yards north of the little village of Planchenoit. It is an imposing mass of iron and granite, surmounted by a cross. The inscription runs The King and Country gratefully honour their fallen heroes. May they rest in peace. Belle Alliance June 18th, 1815.' But the monument should have stood in the village itself, for its narrow streets and old stone church witnessed the fiercest fighting on the part of the Prussians during the whole campaign. The French had in Planchenoit a stronger post, by far, than Hougoumont. The stone church itself is a citadel. On one side it could only be attacked through narrow crooked streets, opening on to a square swept by the French musketry fire. On the other side the churchyard is, practically, a deep pit, with a solid stone wall along its edge. Beyond is a wide space which the French, lying under the shelter of the wall, covered with their fire. On the further edge of this space stood, on the day of the fight, a line of low stone-gabled cottages, with passages not more than six feet wide betwixt cottage and cottage. These buildings stood end on' to the churchyard; and the Prussian attack had to trickle through the narrow intervals betwixt the cottages, and could never gain sufficient weight to be effective in face of the deadly fire of the French muskets. One of these cottages still stands, and helps the visitor to realise the whole scene. On neither front could the Prussians bring guns to bear on the church; the French had to be driven out with the bayonet, and at a tremendous cost. Not even on the slopes of the British position did the dead lie thicker after the

fight, than round the little stone church at Planchenoit. The stubborn Prussians well deserve the monument which to-day stands to their memory.

According to tradition the French troops which under Marshal Gerard marched during the troubles of 1832, into Belgium, broke the iron cross from the Prussian monument, and twisted the tail off the Belgian lion perched on the great mound at Waterloo. The wrong done to the tail of the lion may easily be forgiven, but the insult to the Prussian monument-if it really happened—was unpardonable.

Wellington had his headquarters on the night before Waterloo at the post-house in the village, a little distance behind the field of battle. The building stands, practically, as it did in 1815, though it is now used as a café, and wears a somewhat neglected aspect. There is still preserved the armchair in which, weary from Waterloo, Wellington sat, and the table at which he wrote his Waterloo dispatch. The bed-or rather its wooden frame on which he slept the night before, and the night after, the battle is preserved. What dreams may have crept into the cells of his brain as he lay on that prosaic-looking bed! To its side Dr. Hume came the morning after Waterloo and woke Wellington-his face still black with the smoke of the battle and read the list of the fallen, while tears-iron tearsrolled down the great soldier's face. Victory itself at that moment was bitter to him. The room to which Gordon was carried is next to Wellington's bedroom, the actual bed on which he died now stands beside Wellington's bed. These relics might well find some more fitting shelter than the roof of a Belgian café.

Opposite Wellington's headquarters stands the church, with its monuments to the British slain. The memorial which can be least forgiven is that to Wellington himself. It consists of a marble bust, the face wearing a simpering, inexpressive smile, not in the least suggesting the face of the captain who rode among his shot-tormented squares at Waterloo. Not the least touching of the monuments is that to Norman Ramsay, the most gallant, and the worst-rewarded, of all of all Wellington's soldiers. One monument bears the inscription, To the memory of all English officers, non-commissioned officers and soldiers who died at the battles of 16, 17, 18 June, 1815. This stone is erected by some brother soldiers and countrymen.'

Sometimes the attempted pathos of a monumental record dissolves into unconscious humour. Amongst the memorials at Waterloo is one to the leg of Lord Uxbridge. We read, carved in marble, Here lies buried the leg of the illustrious brave and valiant count of Uxbridge . . . who by his heroism helped the triumph of the cause of mankind, gloriously decided by the splendid victory of the same day.' On either side are other inscriptions: This stone was visited on 21 October, 1821, by George 4, King of England.' And further, This stone was visited on September 20, 1825, by the King of Prussia, Frederick 3, accompanied by his three sons.' When before in history was so much honour paid to a solitary human leg?

THE LEAVES OF THE TREE.

BY ARTHUR C. BENSON.

XII.-MATTHEW ARNOLD.

IT is the hardest thing in the world to recover what one really thought or felt, or even knew, about great men or great books, when one was young. Subsequent knowledge and feeling have gone on trickling down, like stalactites from the roof of a cave, blending with and penetrating the original tiny core of experience. It is so impossible to shut off all the new light, which has since intervened, from the old picture! I cannot now disentangle what the essence of my genuine admiration for Matthew Arnold, in my schooldays, was. I did not know many of his poems. The 'Forsaken Merman,' which I learnt by heart as a child, seemed to me rather silly and trivial, I am ashamed to say. I certainly had not read any of his prose works. But he was the son of Dr. Arnold, who was one of my father's heroes, and whose life I had read. In any case, I was prepared to see a great man when he came down to Eton to give his lecture on εὐτραπελία 'happy flexibility.' It was going to be an event, and an event it was. I can remember the dignified suavity with which he took his place, the dark head, with its rippling glossy hair, sinuously and graciously inclined, the big side-whiskers, the large expressive mouth, the grave ecclesiastical smile. The opening sentence about the philosopher Epictetus, and his complaint of the quality of the water in the bath, arrested me by its urbanity, its elaborateness; and by the sense that our instructor recognised himself to be, like the wise householder in the Gospel, bringing out of his treasury things new and old! I did not know what culture was in those days. I liked the books which amused me; I had no scheme of selfimprovement, and not the smallest touch of ambition. But the whole discourse had the charm of a mysterious secret, of which our kindly and kingly lecturer had the dispensing. Something stirred and fluttered in my soul. This was not the hard and dull knowledge, like brickbats, which fell from many of our 1 Copyright, 1911, by Arthur C. Benson, in the United States of America.