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The afflicting idea strongly occurred, of the next day’s horrors of such a field as Waterloo. Numbers of the desperately wounded and dying, in the midst of the dead, raised their heads, when visitors to the scene passed them, to implore water, or to beg at their hands to end their agonies. Many of the wounded were not removed till Wednesday, the third day after the battle.
The 12th light dragoons was posted near the Prince of Orange. Their charges were of the most spirited kind; and nothing but the cuirasses enabled the French dragoons to resist them. In the account of so much pure valour without trick or cover, against so much iron, it is not difficult to decide where honour would award the balance. Many brave men were sacrificed to the iron cases, and taffeta flags which frightened their horses. A gallant young friend of mine own, Mr Elliot Lockhart, eldest son of the member for Selkirkshire, lay near the spot we had now reached. He had just joined the 12th dragoons, and in the first charge of his regiment, in which he bore a very distinguished part, received a wound which was instantly fatal. There was a melancholy satisfaction in beholding the spot of his honorable grave; a prouder sepulchre the turf on which the soldier falls, than the proudest mausoleum on consecrated ground.
No part of the field was more fertile in impressive associations, than the ground of the 30th and 73d regiments, brigaded under our gallant countryman, severely wounded in the battle, Sir Colin Halket. I had already heard much of the firmness of these brave troops; and was to hear still more. To no square did the artillery, and particularly the cuirassiers, pay more frequent and tremendous visits; and never was it shaken for a moment. The almost intimacy of the soldiers with these death-
