"You would know, sir," he exclaimed, eyeing fiercely the hero of the British capital, "what is gouging? Go, sir, to Basil Hall--your literary countryman: when ascending the Mississippi, _he_ was put on shore by the captain of a steamboat for ungentlemanly deportment--and on the banks of that river, sir, _he was gouged!_" As the last emphatic words exploded, a gentleman, who had been viewing the paintings, abruptly left the room. The Londoner looked wonders, his compatriot tittered, the Cupid-limner wiped his brow. "Who was that?" inquired the Virginian. "That, sir, was Captain Hall!"
"The moan of mortal agony which arose from the despairing multitude became at this crisis for a moment so universal, that it rose shrilly audible over the voice of the elements and the thunders of war, above the wild whistling of the tempest and the sustained and redoubled hourras of the Cossacks. The witness from whom we have this information, declares that the sound was in his ears for many weeks. This dreadful scene continued till dark, many being forced into the icy river, some throwing themselves in, betwixt absolute despair and the faint hope of gaining the opposite bank by swimming, some getting across only to die of cold and exhaustion."--_Scott's Napoleon, Vol. II. Page 385_.
What scene is here? The dying moan, the wailing cry Come on the gusty blast that speeds so swiftly by; The river rolls heavy as it struggles with dead, Who writhe in their blood ere the spirit hath fled-- And chafed by the winds in the wrath of the storm, Its red clotted waters flow tortured and warm. Thousands lie here; kindred and aliens in race, They are rigid and fixed in death's cold embrace; They clench and they cling in the last dying grasp, And the living, the dead, reluctantly clasp: Or, fearing a friend in his last cold embrace, They spurn him beneath to his dark dreary place. A many-voiced moan now saddens the air, Whose tones are all blent with wild curses and prayer; And the deep hollow moan that wails o'er the flood, As spirits pass away in storm and in blood. In the sad welkin tremble heart-rending shrieks, So piercing, that startled, the deep echo speaks. There's mirth that's of madness, one laughs in his fear, And prayer thrills in tones of the wildest despair; And the deep solemn curse from the blasphemer stern, Who weeps not, who wails not, tho' his dying soul burn. Oh spirits pass away so sad in their strife, That the living still cling more closely to life: With unearthliest cries, grim phantasied shapes Brood o'er the senses ere the spirit escapes; On the wings of the wind how swift speeds the blast, With pinions all viewless it fleets as the past;-- Oh say, does it bear the spirits that have fled, In the last bitter strife, ere the dying be dead? To the last dying sense comes a vision more dread, For Death flaps his wings o'er the fields of the dead: His deep hollow tones called away and away Spirits immortal, disengaged from their clay; And rearing aloft his deep sable plume, On wings of the wind rose in shadow and gloom, Still bearing them on with invisible trace, As he swept the broad fields of infinite space-- Whilst Terror, all wild in his deep, horrid lair, Made sad with his moans the invisible air.