Page 234 - The model orator, or, Young folks' speaker : containing the choicest recitations and readings from the best authors for schools, public entertainments, social gatherings, Sunday schools, etc. : including recitals in prose and verse ...

s t :r e d to s:iik into the earth. Rank alter rank went down, yet Lliey
neithe: stopped nor faltered. Dissolving squadrons, and whole bat­
tailous disappearing one after another in the destructive fire, affected
not their steady courage. The ranks closed up as before, and each
trending over his fallen comrade, pressed firmly oil. The 3ior.se that
INey rode fell niicer him, and he had scarcely mourned another before
it also sunk to the earth Again und again did that unflinching man
feel his steed sink down, till five had been shot under him.
Then, wiih his unlfbi m riddled with bullets, and his face singed and
blackened with ponder, he marched 011 foot with drawn sabre, at the
liead of his in on. In vain did the artillery hurl its storm of fire and
lead into the iivinp' mass. Up to die very muzzles they pressed and
driving the artillerymen from their own pieces, pushed on through the
Knglish line*. B-it at that moment a file of soldiers who had lain fh"t
on the ground, behind a low ridge of earth, suddenly rose and poured
a volley ■ n 1 bei r ve:y faces. Another and another fo 11 owed tiLL one
broad sheer of flame yoked oil their bosoms and in such a fierce and
unexpected flow, that human courage could not withstand it. They
reded, shook, staggered back, ihe;i turned and Lied. Key was borne
back in the refluent tide, and hurried over the fiekh But for the crowd
of fugitives that forced him on, he would have stood id one, and fallen
in his :o cl step s. As i: was, disdaining to by, though the whole army
was fiying. be formed iiis men into Uvo immense squares. and
endenv'ved to stem the Lerrihc current and would Jutve dorse so, had
iL not been for tli-^ thirLy thousand fresh Prussians that pressed on his
exhausted ranks, h’or a long bme these squares stood and let the
artillery ph'V.gh through dien';.
Hut the fate of hdirjuieon was writ, and though Ney doubtless did
what no other man in the army corlrl have done, the decree could not
be reversed. The sb;r I hat had olazed so brightly over the world
went down ir blood, raid the ora vest of the brave" had fought his
last battle. It was worthy of his great name, and the charge of the
Old C'.iard at Waterloo, with him at their head, wi-l be pointed to by
remotest generations with a shudder.— j, T. H eadley.