A sudden harmony of trumpets, from various points of the vast encampment, pierced the ear, and in another moment the whole line of the hills was crowned with flame. The signal for lighting the fires of the Austrian and Prussian outposts had been given, and the effect was almost magical. In this army all things were done with a regularity almost perfect. The trumpet spoke, and the answer was instantaneous. All comparisons are feeble to realities of this order--seen, too, while the heart of man is quickened to enjoy and wonder, and feels scarcely less than a new existence in the stirring events every where round him. The first comparison that struck me was the vague one of a shower of stars. The mountain pinnacles were in a blaze. The general fires of the bivouacs soon spread through the forest, and down the slopes of the hills, all round to the horizon.
The night was fine, the air flowed refreshingly from the verdure of the immense woods, and the scent of the thyme and flowers of the heath, pressed by my foot, rose "wooingly on the air." All was calm and odorous. The flourish of the evening trumpets still continued to swell in the rich harmonies which German skill alone can breathe, and thoughts of the past and the future began to steal over my mind. I was once more in England, gazing on the splendid beauty of Clotilde; and imagining the thousand forms in which my weary fortunes must be shaped, before I dared offer her a share in my hopes of happiness. I saw Mariamne once more, with her smile reminding me of Shakspeare's exquisite picture--
"Oh, what a deal of scorn looks beautiful, In the contempt and anger of that lip!"
Then came a vision of my early home. The halls of Mortimer castle--the feebly surviving parent there, whom I still loved--the heartless and haughty brother--the pomp and pageantry to which he was born; while I was flung out into the wilderness, like the son of the handmaid, to perish, or, like him, escape only by a miracle. At that hour, perhaps, there were revels in the house of my fathers, while their descendant was wandering on a hill-side, in the midst of hostile armies, exposed to the chances of the conflict, and possibly only measuring with his pace the extent of his grave. But while I was thus sinking in heart, my hand, in making some unconscious gesture, struck the badge of Frederic's order on my bosom. What trifles change the current of human thoughts! That star threw more light over my darkness than the thousand constellations that studded the vault above my head. Success, honours, and public name, filled my mind. I saw all things, events, and persons through a brilliant haze of hope; and determining to follow fortune wherever she might lead me, abjured all thoughts of calamity in my unfriended, yet resolute career. Is it to consider the matter too curiously, to conceive that the laws of nature affect the mind? or that the spirit of man resembles an instrument, after all--an Aeolian harp, which owes all its pulses to the gusts that pass across its strings, and in which it simply depends upon the stronger or the feebler breeze, whether it shall smile with joyous and triumphant chords, or sink into throbs and sounds of sorrow?