them to advance, began to draw upon | the Duke of Wellington, and we took themselves the attention of a part of possession of the town on the seventh the enemy's force. of July. Buonaparte, now seeing a prospect of the unpropitious termination of the attle, determined upon making one more desperate effort upon our position, with a view, if possible, to carry it before any considerable force of the Prussians should come upon the ground. He consequently advanced at the head of the Vieille Garde, and a desperate conflict ensued, which at length terminated in their complete overthrow. Lord Wellington, anxiously watching the result of this gigantic effort, and with his wonted quickness perceiving a certain degree of confusion in their rear, which indicated a general retreat, ordered the immediate advance of the whole army without any attention to formation, and we continued pressing the enemy till ten o'clock, when, falling in with the Prussian columns at a few straggling houses called Maison du Roi, we abandoned the pursuit to them, and the duke returned to Waterloo between eleven and twelve o'clock at night. From The Contemporary Review. THE LAST OF THE VAMPIRES. Do you remember the discovery of the "man-lizard" bones in a cave on the Amazon some time in the forties ? Perhaps not. But it created a great stir at the time in the scientific world and, in a lazy sort of way, interested men and women of fashion. For a day or two it was quite the correct thing for Belgravia to talk of "connecting links,' of "the evolution of man from the reptile," and "the reasonableness of the ancient myths" that spoke of Centaurs and Mermaids as actual existences. The fact was that a German Jew, an india-rubber merchant, working his way with the usual mob of natives through a cahucho forest along the Marañon, came upon some bones on the riverbank where he had pitched his camp. Idle curiosity made him try to put them together, when he found, to his surprise, that he had before him the skeleton of a creature with human legs and feet, a dog-like head, and immense, batlike wings. Being a shrewd man, he saw the possibility of money being made out of such a curiosity; so he put all the bones he could find into a sack and, on the back of a llama, they were in due course conveyed to Chachapoyas, and thence to Germany. During the battle and pursuit, as you will have seen, above one hundred and twenty pieces of cannon, the whole personal baggage of Buonaparte, and the greater part of the matériel of the army fell into our hands; in short, the annals of history afford no example of a more complete and decisive victory, inasmuch as our subsequent march to Paris was Unfortunately, his name happened. in no way impeded, and with the excep- be the same as that of another German tion of the taking of Peronne and Cam- Jew who had just then been trying to bray, which were necessary for the hoax the scientific world with some security of our communications, not a papyrus rolls of a date anterior to the shot was fired by us during the whole Flood, and who had been found out of the advance to Paris. The Prus- and put to shame. So when his namesians had a trifling affair in the neigh-sake appeared with the bones of a borhood of Compiègne in which they winged man, he was treated with very took six pieces of cannon, and some scant ceremony. others at St. Germain and Meudon, which, however, were of no material importance, and on the third of July a convention was made for the military occupation of Paris, in which I was charged with full power by his Grace However, he sold his india-rubber very satisfactorily, and as for the bones, he left them with a young medical student of the ancient University of Bierundwurst, and went back to his cahucho trees and his natives and the banks of the Amazon. And there was an end of him. The young student one day put his fragments together, and, do what he would, could only make one thing of them a winged man with a dog's head. There were a few ribs too many, and some odds and ends of backbone which were superfluous; but what else could be expected of the anatomy of so extraordinary a creature? From one student to another the facts got about, and at last the professors came to hear of it; and, to cut a long story short, the student's skeleton was taken to pieces by the learned heads of the college, and put together again by their own learned hands. But do what they would, they would only make one thing of it - a winged man with a dog's head. The matter now became serious; the professors were at first puzzled, and then got quarrelsome; and the result of their squabbling was that pamphlets and counterblasts were published; and so all the world got to hear of the bitter controversy about the "man-lizard of the Amazon." So victory remained with them, but not, alas! the bones of contention. For the Imposturists, by bribery and burglary, got access to the precious skeleton, and lo! one morning the glory of the museum had disappeared. The man half of it was left, but the head and wings were gone, and from that day to this no one has ever seen them again. And which of the two factions was right? As a matter of fact, neither; as the following fragments of narrative will go to prove. Once upon a time, so say the Zaporo Indians, who inhabit the district between the Amazon and the Marañon, there came across to Pampas de Sacramendo a company of gold-seekers, white men, who drove the natives from their workings and took possession of them. They were the first white men who had ever been seen there, and the Indians were afraid of their guns; but eventually treachery did the work of courage, for, pretending to be friendly, the natives sent their women among the strangers, and they taught them how to make tucupi out of the breadroot, but did not tell them how to distinguish between the ripe and the unripe. So the wretched white men (which brings on fits like epilepsy) and when they were lying about the camp, helpless, the Indians attacked them and killed them all. All except three. These three they gave to the Vampire. One side declared, of course, that such a creature was an impossibility, and that the bones were a remarkably made tucupi out of the unripe fruit clever hoax. The other side retorted by challenging the sceptics to manufacture a duplicate, and publishing the promise of such large rewards to any one who would succeed in doing so, that the museum was beset for months by competitors. But no one could manufacture another man-lizard. The man part was simple enough, provided they could get a human skeleton. But at the angles of the wings were set huge claws, black, polished, and curved, and nothing that ingenuity could suggest would imitate them. And then the "Genuinists," as those who believed in the monster called themselves, set the "Imposturists" another poser; for they publicly challenged them to say what So far the legend; and that it had animal either the head or the wings some foundation in fact is proved by had belonged to, if not to the man- the records of the district, which tell of lizard? And the answer was never more than one massacre of white goldgiven. seekers on the Marañon by Indians But what was the Vampire? The Zaporos did not know. "Very long ago," said they, "there were many vampires in Peru, but they were all swallowed up in the year of the Great Earthquake when the Andes were lifted up, and there was left behind only one 'Arinchi,' who lived where the Amazon joins the Marañon, and he would not eat dead bodies-only live ones, from which the blood would flow." flapping. And at last, one day, this professor went into the cave himself. whom they had attempted to oust from the echoes of the noise of great wings the washings; but of the Ariuchi, the Vampire, there is no official mention. Here, however, other local superstitions help us to the reading of the riddle of the man-lizard of the University at Bierundwurst. "I took," he wrote, 66 a large canoe, and from the bows I built out a brazier of stout cask-hoops, and behind it set a When sacrifice was made to "the gold-washing tin dish for a reflector, Vampire," the victim was bound in a and loaded the canoe with roots of the canoe, and taken down the river to a resin-tree, and oil-wood, and yams, and point where there was a kind of wind-dried meats; and I took spears with ing back-water, which had shelving me, some tipped with the woorali banks of slimy mud, and at the end poison, that numbs but does not kill. there was a rock with a cave in it. And so I drifted inside the cave; and I And here the canoe was left. A very lit my fire, and with my pole I guided slow current flowed through the tortu- the canoe very cautiously through the ous creek, and anything thrown into tunnel, and before long it widened out, the water ultimately reached the cave. and creeping along one wall I suddenly Some of the Indians had watched the became aware of a moving of somecanoes drifting along, a few yards only thing on the opposite side. in an hour, and turning round and round as they drifted, and had seen them reach the cave and disappear within. And it had been a wonder to them, generation after generation, that the cave was never filled up, for all day long the current was flowing into it, carrying with it the sluggish flotsam of the river. So they said that the cave was the entrance to Hell, and bottomless. And one day a white man, a professor of that same University of Bierundwurst, and a mighty hunter of beetles before the Lord, who lived with the Indians in friendship, went up the backwater, right up to the entrance, and set afloat inside the cave a little raft, heaped up with touchwood and knots of the oil-tree, which he set fire to, and he saw the raft go creeping along, all ablaze, for an hour and more, lighting up the wet walls of the cave as it went on either side; and then it was put out. It did not "go" out suddenly, as if it had upset, or had floated over the edge of a waterfall, but just as if it had been beaten out. For the burning fragments were flung to one side and the other, and the pieces, still alight, glowed for a long time on the ledges and points of rock where they fell, and the cave was filled with the sound of a sudden wind and "So I turned the light fair upon it, and there, upon a kind of ledge, sate a beast with a head like a large grey dog. Its eyes were as large as a cow's. "What its shape was I could not see. But as I looked I began gradually to make out two huge bat-like wings, and these were spread out to their utmost as if the beast were on tiptoe and ready to fly. And so it was. For just as I had realized that I beheld before me some great bat-reptile of a kind unknown to science, except as prediluvian, and the shock had thrilled through me at the thought that I was actually in the presence of a living specimen of the so-called extinct flying lizards of the Flood, the thing launched itself upon the air, and the next instant it was upon me. "Clutching on to the canoe, it beat with its wings at the flame so furiously that it was all I could do to keep the canoe from capsizing, and, taken by surprise, I was nearly stunned by the strength and rapidity of its blows before I attempted to defend myself. no "By that time scarcely half a minute had elapsed the brazier had been nearly emptied by the powerful brute; and the vampire, mistaking me doubt for a victim of sacrifice, had already taken hold of me. instant I had driven a spear clean through its body, and with a prodigious The next i tumult of wings, the thing loosed its | open air! It was noon, and as we claws from my clothes and dropped off passed out from under the entrance of into the stream. "As quickly as possible I rekindled my light, and now saw the Arinchi, with wings outstretched upon the water, drifting down on the current. I followed it. "Hour after hour, with my reflector turned full upon that grey dog's head with cow-like eyes, I passed along down the dark and silent waterway. I ate and drank as I went along, but did not dare to sleep. A day must have passed, and two nights; and then, as of course I had all along expected, I saw right ahead a pale eye-shaped glimmer, and knew that I was coming out into daylight again. The opening came nearer and nearer, and it was with intense eagerness that I gazed upon my trophy, the floating Arinchi, the last of the winged reptiles. Already in imagination I saw myself the foremost of travellers in European fame -the hero of my day. What were Banks's kangaroos or De Chaillu's gorilla to my discovery of the last survivor of the pterodactyles, of the creatures of Flood the flying Saurian of the pre-Noachian epoch of catastrophe and mud? "Full of these thoughts, I had not noticed that the vampire was no longer moving, and suddenly the bow of the canoe bumped against it. In an instant it had climbed up on to the boat. Its great bat-like wings once more beat me and scattered the flaming brands, and the thing made a desperate effort to get past me back into the gloom. It had seen the daylight approaching and rather than face the sun, preferred to fight. "Its ferocity was that of a maddened dog, but I kept it off with my pole, and seeing my opportunity as it clung, flapping its wings, upon the bow, gave it such a thrust as made it drop off. It began to swim (I then for the first time noticed its long neck), but with my pole I struck it on the head and stunned it, and once more saw it go drifting on the current into daylight. "What a relief it was to be out in the the cave, the river blazed so in the sunlight that after the two days of almost total darkness I was blinded for a time. I turned my canoe to the shore, to the shade of trees, and throwing a noose over the floating body, let it tow behind. "Once more on firm land-and in possession of the Vampire! "I dragged it out of the water. What a hideous beast it looked, this winged kangaroo with a python's neck! It was not dead; so I made a muzzle with a strip of skin, and then I firmly bound its wings together round its body. I lay down and slept. When I awoke, the next day was breaking; so, having breakfasted, I dragged my captive into the canoe and went on down the river. Where I was I had no idea; but I knew that I was going to the sea; going to Germany; and that was enough. "For two months I have been drifting with the current down this neverending river. Of my adventures, of hostile natives, of rapids, of alligators, and jaguars, I need say nothing. They are the common property of all travellers. But my vampire! It is alive. And now I am devoured by only one ambition. to keep it alive, to let Europe actually gaze upon the living, breathing survivor of the great reptiles known to the human race before the days of Noah -the missing link between the reptile and the bird. To this end I denied myself food; denied myself even precious medicine. In spite of itself I gave it all my quinine, and when the miasma crept up the river at night, I covered it with my rug and lay exposed myself. If the black fever should seize me! "Three months, and still upon this hateful river! Will it never end? I have been ill-so ill, that for two days I could not feed it. I had not the strength to go ashore to find food, and I fear that it will die-die before I can get it home. "Been ill again the black fever! But it is alive. I caught a vicuna swimming in the river, and it sucked it dry - gallons of blood. It had been unfed three days. In its hungry haste it broke its muzzle. I was almost too feeble to put it on again. A horrible thought possesses me. Suppose it breaks its muzzle again when I am lying ill, delirious, and it is ravenous ? Oh! the horror of it! To see it eating is terrible. It links the claws of its wings together, and cowers over the body; its head is under the wings, out of sight. But the victim never moves. As soon as the vampire touches it there seems to be a paralysis. Once those wings are linked there is absolute quiet. Only the grating of teeth upon bone. Horrible! horrible! But in Germany I shall be famous. In Germany with my Vampire? ONE of the last of William Hogarth's works was a medley entitled "Credulity, Superstition, and Fanaticism." Among others, it attacked the Methodists; and was, perhaps naturally, welcomed by the contemporary opponents of Wesley and Whitefield as an entirely justifiable satire. But by the critics of our day, as well as by the more judicious admirers of the artist, it has come to be considered as a mistake; and it has also been held that in rebuking pictorially what he, no doubt with perfect sincerity, regarded as profane enthusiasm, Hogarth has himself come perilously close to the irreverence he condemned. In one of his designs of earlier date, there is, nevertheless, an unsolicited tribute to Methodism which goes some way to condone the effect of his later and weaker effort. "Am very feeble. It broke its muz- It occurs in the penultimate plate of zle again. But it was in the daylight the series called "Industry and Idle- when it is blind. Its great eyes are ness," where is delineated the tragic blind in sunlight. It was a long strug-ending to the graceless career of gle. This black fever! and the horror Thomas Idle. Of the wonderful crowd of this thing! I am too weak now to kill it, if I would. I must get it home alive. Soon surely soon-the river will end. Oh God! does it never reach the sea, reach white men, reach home? But if it attacks me I will throttle it. If I am dying I will throttle it. If we cannot go back to Germany alive, we will go together dead. I will throttle it with my two hands, and fix my teeth in its horrible neck, and our bones shall lie together on the bank this accursed river." of This is nearly all that was recovered of the professor's diary. But it is enough to tell us of the final tragedy. of debased and brutalized spectators 66 But of topsman," or hangman, standing out against the outline of the Highgate Hills, and unconcernedly smoking a short pipe on the summit of the triple tree itself. Another is the smug Ordinary of Newgate, who, with the " gay, red-lettered face" that tells "more of The two skeletons were found to-good living than of grace," comfortably gether on the very edge of the river- surveys the crowd as he rolls slowly in bank. Half of each, in the lapse of his official coach to his perfunctory minyears, had been washed away at suc-istrations. Next, in the cart, escorted cessive flood-tides. The rest, when put by the sheriff's officers mounted, and together, made up the man-reptile that, to use a Rabelaisian phrase, "metagrobolized all to nothing" the University of Bierundwurst. PHIL ROBINSON. lying back against his coffin in an agony of abject terror, is the miserable convict, holding mechanically before his face an open book which his eyes do not perceive. Beside him in the vehi |