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the noise: — The answer was a shrug and look of dreadful recollection. They seemed to be finding very little worth taking up. We were ourselves, at the moment, more fortunate, for among some straw, and plainly marked with blood, we found a French bayonet, which we brought away with us.
If the unknown dead called forth these feelings, much more did the consciousness of standing on the spot, where some one, known to us, had “nobly fought and nobly died.” We stood where then interesting Sir William de Lancey met his death, when rallying, with great spirit and effect, a battalion of Hanoverians, which had got into confusion. He nobly refused to occupy the time of the surgeons with his wound, which he had heard them pronounce mortal, when they thought him insensible. He was removed to the village of Waterloo, where he died. That gallant young man’s early name, and just favour with his great commander, excited general and deep regret for his fate; and no where more than in Edinburgh, where he had been married only a few weeks before.
Indeed the instances of heroic death were as numerous as they were affecting. Colonel Miller of the first Guards requested a last sight of the colours under which he had fought. He kissed them fervently, and begged they might be waved over him till he expired.
The lamented Captain Curson, Lord Scarsdale’s son, met his fate with almost “military glee.” In falling from his horse, he called out gaily to Lord March, who was riding with him at a gallop — "Good b’ye, dear March.” And by one effort more, when his friend had left him for the urgent duty of animating a foreign corps, in very critical circumstances, he looked up, and cried, “Well done, dear March.”
