As soon as the river was crossed, Richard formed his little army into three columns, and then commenced a rapid march towards Villabella, which he knew to be well affected in favour of the Constitutional cause.
But while he was leading a gallant band over the fertile plains of Castelcicala, incidents deserving notice occurred in his native land far away.
CHAPTER CLXXXV.
ANOTHER NEW YEAR'S DAY.
It was the 1st of January, 1841.
If there be any hour in the life of man when he ought to commune with his own heart, that proper interval of serious reflection is to be found on New Year's Day.
Then, to the rightly constituted mind, the regrets for the past will serve as finger-posts and guides to the hopes of the future.
The heathen mythology depicted Janus with two faces, looking different ways:—so let the human heart, when on the first day of January, it stands between two years, retrospect carefully over the one that has gone, and combine all its solemn warnings for use and example in the new one which has just commenced.
This also is the day that recalls, with additional impressiveness, the memory of those dear relatives and friends whose mortal forms have been swept away by the viewless and voiceless stream of Time.
Nor less do fond parents think, amidst tears and prayers, of their sons who are absent in the far-off places of the earth,—fighting the battles of their country on the burning plains of India, or steering their way across the pathless solitudes of the ocean.
But, alas! little reck the wealthy and great for those whose arms defend them, or whose enterprise procures them all the bounties of the earth.