Constable's Miscellany contains, under the title of " Memorials of
the late War," several narratives and memoirs of soldiers who have served in the Peninsula. The first set of these Memorials we have just perused, with an interest scarcely inferior to any ever before excited in our breasts by a narrative chiefly of personal adventure. The Journal of the Soldier of the Seventy-first regiment leads the van. This most affecting, instructive, and entert iiining work, is the composition of a private, who returned to Scotland after a long apprenticeship to war, and received the gratitude of his country in the shape of neglect, poverty, and distress. We could have wept (we are hardly ashamed to say we did do so) when the " introductory notice" informed us that the last time this man was heard of, he was breaking stones upon the Calton Hill. It is supposed that he found means to transport himself to South America, there to cultivate a friendship which he had made in one of his campaigns, and by the aid of which he hoped to be pre- served from starvation. Is it thus that Scotland treats her sons ? Is this the patronage which the Athens of the North extends to poor but exceeding merit ? What payment is this for the yearn- ing of her distant sons towards their native land ? The song of his own country, when heard by the nameless soldier on a foreign shore, would at any lime throw him into a paroxysm of sad de- light. Wretched is the return for these sweet remembrances : if any thing could extinguish a Scotsman's passion for home, it would be the recollection of the welcome which the veteran of the Seventy-first received from his adored Caledonia. We should be glad to learn that another soldier of another regiment, the author
of the Recollections of a Soldier's Life, another excellent but far inferior work, has experienced a better fate. The only two com- mon men who have had the education and the talent to commu- nicate their military experience, during a series of most interest- ing events, arc Scotsmen: the fact does their country honour— glad should we be to have found that it had been grateful.
The soldier of the Seventy-first was educated by partial parents above their condition in life: he repaid their kindness with dis- obedience. Attempting, sorely against their will, and whilst in- deed the parental denunciation was ringing in his ears, to perform on the stage, he utterly failed, and was driven from the theatre. A prey to shame, and now that his pride was humbled, to re- morse, he joined the first recruiting party he met, and solemnly vowed to devote himself, without repining, to seven years of hard- ship, suffering, and danger, as an expiatory punishment for his ingratitude to his parents. Many are the unhappy hours in which the recollection of his parents' sad prediction of the con- sequences of his disobedience upon the duration of their aged lives increases the bitterness of his suffering : often, too, does he derive a stern satisfaction, amidst calamity and privation, from reflecting that lie is working out the punishment of one of the basest of crimes. This spirit in the narrator gives a stern moral interest to his tales of carnage, hunger, and all the miseries and mischances of war ; while the actual circumstances which his experience enables him to unfold, would alone entitle his story to the strictest attention. He tells simply what he saw before him ; he takes nothing on re- port : so that a whole day's battle sinks into the hard fighting of a few individuals in the centre of a smoke, terminated by a sound sleep on the earth till the next morning's dawn—or the last trumpet. This very circumstance gives a value to the narrative: we learn how far a person concerned is competent to sneak of !;elieral eegage- ments. '1 he story of a soldier is a wholly different thing from the history of the army in which he fights, starves, and marches ; and the feelings of the indi,iitual are so apt to be utterly forgotten in the movements of the mass, that, in our opinion, nothing can be more salutary than the creating a sympathy for each unit of winch a corps d'armi'm is composed. Were men always alive to it, how i many wanton wars would be crushed in their birth, and how many sacrifices of blood and pain and treasure would be spared!
Besides the Journal of a Soldier, the volume contains a sketch of the Spanish Campaign, by Dr. NH ALE, who was present ; and, also, Reminiscences of a Campaign in the Pyrenees and South of France, by Mr. JOHN Mamooapa, who served in the Forty-second Regiment, Dr. NEALLS sketch of Sir John Moore's movements supports the view taken of that general's military character by Lord Londonderry : while the Doctor entertains the same opinion of Moore's nobility of soul and true bravery, he charges him with distrusting his troops unduly, and taking the gloomy view of affairs which deadens enterprise and extinguishes energy.
Mr. MALCOLM'S Campaign is a highly-wrought sketch of his first years of service. He describes with great spirit, and colours his pictures with the imagination of the poet. But, though his descriptions have the warmth and brilliancy of poetry, we would by no means insinuate that he sins against good taste, or that he adds the slightest touches of fiction to his interesting narratives. We would select, as an admirable specimen of description, his account of the attack upon Sault before Toulouse : it is most luminous where he deals with general events, and most interesting where he stops to dwell upon particular incidents.
The second volume of the Memorials of the late War is to con- tain a translation of the Memoirs of Rocca, and a popular account of the battle of Waterloo. The Editor neglects to inform us in his preface whether Dr. Neale's Spanish Campaign of 1808, and Mr. Malcohn's Reminiscences, have been previously printed : we believe that the latter has been expressly written for the Miscellany, while the former is republished or compiled.
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