Page:Life's little ironies (1894).pdf/143

Here stretch the downs, high and breezy and green, absolutely unchanged since those eventful days. A plough has never disturbed the turf, and the sod that was uppermost then is uppermost now. Here stood the camp; here are distinct traces of the banks thrown up for the horses of the cavalry, and spots where the midden-heaps lay are still to be observed. At night, when I walk across the lonely place, it is impossible to avoid hearing, amid the scourings of the wind over the grass-bents and thistles, the old trampet and bugle calls, the rattle of the haltera; to help seeing rows of spectral tents and the impedimenta of the soldiery ; from within the canvases come guttural syllables of foreign tongues, and broken songs of the fatherland ; for they were mainly regimente of the King’s German Legion that slept round the tent-poles hereabout at that time,

It was nearly ninety years ago. The British uniform of the period, with its immense epaulettes, queercocked - hat, breeches, gaiters, ponderous cartridge-box, buckled shoes, and what not, would look strange and barbarous now. Ideas have changed; invention