"Would you like to visit Waterloo to-morrow, sir? Coach leaves at nine in the morning—English coach and six—spanking team—six horses."
We looked at this individual with some surprise, which he dissipated as follows:—
"Beg pardon, sir—agent of the English coach company—always wait upon strangers, sir."
We took outside tickets for the field of Waterloo on the English coach.
The next morning dawned brightly, and at the appointed time a splendid English mail coach, with a spanking team of six grays,—just such a one as we have seen in English pictures, with a driver handling the whip and ribbons in the most approved style,—dashed into the Place Royale, and, halting before a hotel at one end, the guard played "The Campbells are Comin'" upon a bugle, with a gusto that brought all the new arrivals to the windows; three or four ladies and gentlemen mounted to the coach-roof; the driver cracked his whip, and whirled his team up to our hotel, while the uniformed guard played "The Bowld Soger Boy" under the very nose of old Godfrey de Bouillon; and we clambered up to the outside seats, of which there were twelve, to the inspiring notes of the bugle, which made the quiet old square echo with its martial strains. Away we rolled, the bugle playing its merriest of strains; but when just clear of the city, our gay performer descended, packed his instrument into a green baize bag, deserted, and trudged back, leaving us only the music of the rattling hoofs and wheels, and the more agreeable strains of laughter of half a dozen lively English and American ladies.
The field of Waterloo is about twelve miles from Brussels; the ride, of a pleasant day, behind a good team, a delightful one: we pass through the wood of Soignies, over a broad, smooth road, in excellent order, shaded by tall trees on either side—this was Byron's Ardennes.
"Ardennes waves above them her green leaves."
We soon reached the field, which has been so often described by historians, novelists, and letter-writers, that we will spare the reader the infliction.
We are met by guides who speak French, German, and English, who have bullets, buttons, and other relics said to have been picked up on the field, but which a waggish Englishman informed us were manufactured at a factory near by to supply the demand. The guides, old and young, adapt their sympathies to those of customers; thus, if they be English, it is,—
"Here is where the brave Wellington stood; there is where we beat back the Old Guard."