quarters in the Citadel.  There I barricaded myself into my own room, directing my servant to proceed to the target for my scattered property.  I had still a month’s leave of absence before me, availing myself of which, I started next morning for New York, subsequently obtained an extension of leave, sailed for England, and there negotiating an exchange from a regiment whose facings no longer suited my taste for colors, I soon found myself gazetted into a less objectionable one lying at Corfu.

I have never seen Tankerville’s famous picture of my triumphal entry into Quebec.

I.—­NOVEMBER.

The dead leaves their rich mosaics,
  Of olive and gold and brown,
Had laid on the rain-wet pavements,
  Through all the embowered town.

They were washed by the Autumn tempest,
  They were trod by hurrying feet,
And the maids came out with their besoms
  And swept them into the street,

To be crushed and lost forever
  ’Neath the wheels, in the black mire lost,—­
The Summer’s precious darlings,
  She nurtured at such cost!

O words that have fallen from me! 
  O golden thoughts and true! 
Must I see in the leaves a symbol
  Of the fate which awaiteth you?

II.—­APRIL.

Again has come the Spring-time,
  With the crocus’s golden bloom,
With the smell of the fresh-turned earth-mould,
  And the violet’s perfume.

O gardener! tell me the secret
  Of thy flowers so rare and sweet!—­
—­“I have only enriched my garden
  With the black mire from the street.”

THE GAUCHO.

What is a Gaucho?

That is precisely what I am going to tell you.

Take my hand, if you please.  Shod with the shoes of swiftness, we have annihilated space and time.  We are standing in the centre of a boundless plain.  Look north and south and east and west:  for five hundred miles beyond the limit of your vision, the scarcely undulating level stretches on either hand.  Miles, leagues, away from us, the green of the torrid grass is melting into a misty dun; still further miles, and the misty dun has faded to a shadowy blue; more miles, it rounds at last away into the sky.  A hundred miles behind us lies the nearest village; two hundred in another direction will bring you to the nearest town.  The swiftest horse may gallop for a day and night unswervingly, and still not reach a dwelling-place of man.  We are placed in the midst of a vast, unpeopled circle, whose radii measure a thousand miles.

But see! a cloud arises in the South.  Swiftly it rolls towards us; behind it there is tumult and alarm.  The ground trembles at its approach; the air is shaken by the bellowing that it covers.  Quick! let us stand aside! for, as the haze is lifted, we can see the hurrying forms of a thousand cattle, speeding with lowered horns and fiery eyes across the plain.  Fortunately, they do not observe our presence; were it otherwise, we should be trampled or gored to death in the twinkling of an eye.  Onward they rush; at last the hindmost animals have passed; and see, behind them all there scours a man!