"From the time of General Hepburn's arrival at Hougomont, until the termination of the battle, no event of importance in reality took place. The battle on the spot had been fought and won. Its violence had ceased, and all that Colonel Hepburn had to do after his arrival, was to defend the same point, with an increase of force, against a distant fire, which had been kept up during the early part of the day against a close and heavy fire, with little more than half the number of troops."

our flanks, and not in our front. During this time I knew nothing of what was passing elsewhere.

"In about an hour or more after the last resumption of our post, a staff officer came from the left at full gallop, with orders for an immediate advance, stating that the whole Army were moving on to the charge. We passed the hedge, and moved upon the troops in the cornfield, who retired in no order, and almost without firing. The 3rd Regiment of Guards joined in the general pursuit, till perceiving that the men were exhausted after their hard day's work, I halted, and took them back to a field in rear of the house of Hougomont, where we bivouacked for the night."

It is very far from my wish or purpose to offer any comment upon the above. As regards Colonel Mercer, he is, happily, still alive, and able to answer for himself; but I have good reason to believe that if W. should think fit to consult him upon the subject, he will find that the gallant Colonel was as little concerned in the defence of Hougomont "on the right" of that post as the late Major-General Hepburn.

I trust that I am justified on this occasion in thus making an exception to my general rule, not to publish any portion of statements made to me by Waterloo officers with a view to promote the accuracy of the model which I am constructing of the battle; and it will afford me sincere pleasure if this communication be considered by the friends of the deceased in the light of some little acknowledgment of the favour he conferred upon me in the manner already stated.

Dublin, August 9, 1836.

W. SIBORN, Lieut., Assist. Milit. Sec.

MR. EDITOR,-Your Number for June, containing a paper signed U., entitled "The Defence of Hougomont," in reply to a memoir of the late Major-General Hepburn published in November last, did not fall into the hands of the relatives of that officer till too late a period of the month to enable them to reply to it in the subsequent one. In consequence of an unexpected delay in the transmission of documents from Scotland, and the time occupied in references thither, the answer has been unavoidably delayed till next month. I beg to assure your readers, however, that a complete and authentic refutation of T.'s assertions, in respect to the share my brother had in the defence of that Post, shall appear in your publication for next month.

I am, Sir, &c.,

24th August, 1836.

J. HEPBURN.

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVAN-KENTUCKY RIFLE.

MY DEAR MR. EDITOR,-As it is the fashion to have a considerable some of biography, auto-ditto, lives, and memoirs, I do not see why I should not let you into my short history, particularly as I have made some noise in the world, and done quite a mint of mischief.

There is much dispute about my parentage,-whether I originally sprang from Sweden with a cross of Manchester, or an holus bolus, a genuine Pennsylvanian. I am indifferent as to my daddy; but this I know, that I first saw the light at Pittsburg on the Ohio, where, like young bears, I was licked into shape, and afterwards put to nurse, and raised by Gilbert of Rochester, State of New York. I was an uncommon sharp chap from the first, when put into the hands of Silas Cornstalk, by the Old Mill, just above the Genesee Falls.

I shan't talk much of myself, but of my masters, even up to this day; yet I won't leave you in the dark as to my person and disposition. I am just quite thirty inches long in my barrel or body, with one leg, one eye, and one mouth, which is so small that I only take a ball of SO to the pound. Though I have been wormed like any young puppy, yet I only got a turn and a half. Being thus so small in the bore and of immense weight, I always "go the whole hog," as they say in my country, and can pitch into a dollar at two hundred yards without straining or hurting my feelings, or any one's feelings, in the least;but it an't often I am sent into a dollar, owing to the clumsiness of most of my many masters, who won't let me follow my own inclinations, which are straightforward and peaceable enough; so that when I have hurt the feelings of man or beast, I was forced to it. This fact will speak much for my natural disposition, when I'm not over-loaded or made too hot to keep my tongue still; but then I will allow, some of the men I have served have made me play the very devil—and, I may say, in such moments I'm a pretty severe colt.

As to my outward looks,-I have many dresses, mostly a rich fall-o'the-leaf brown, with gold garters and red belt; my one leg on which I stand (when I'm not carried) is of curled maple, with an audacious suit of filigree silver inlaid round my trouser-pocket, where I always carry my tooth-pick and cork-screw, and square bits of oiled-linen to coax my balls down with, as they are a very tight fit: but I have various suits of leggings in gold, silver, and brass, according to the means of my employers; my grandest dress of all is a silver spread-eagle, and twentytwo stars radiating round the head; but since I have come to England I'm done up in a sad negligée of mere brass; not that I care much for my outward trappings. It is the trunk, Sir, the body of me, that is of the right sort, though for some years past I have been shut up in a vile case in the dark, utterly idle-I have not seen a red man, nor a red oak, nor a blue mountain deer, nor smelt the aromatic breath of the Virginian pine woods, where I have so often whistled as I went-no, not for many a long year.

But it's of no use growling-I was talking of my first master, young Silas. I was young and giddy like himself-I was always on his U. S. JOURN. No. 94, SEPT. 1836.

G

shoulder-old Silas was for putting me in a corner of his corn storeover much-and often d- -d me (though he was a Quaker) as the cause of his son's absence from behind the counter. Now the young 'un cared no more for the old 'un than he did for the buffalo hide hung at the door-no true republican does (in the back woods in particular, it's quite against the grain and unnatural);-so when the wheat, and rye, and Indian corn, and grey squirrel skins were brought to our store by the farmers, to be swapped for our dry goods-that is, whisky, cloth, rum, sugar, tobacco, and the like-old Silas had to work double tides, and was worse puzzled than seven fools with a philosopher!while the young 'un and I cut down the river below the falls, squirrelhunting, or beside the mill-race, on the left bank, with a parcel of other chaps of his own age, all putting in balls, out of sport (at only a hundred yards' distance), into the trunks of the old hemlocks that still hang over and shade the centre of the Genesee Falls. This was long before Sam Patch jumped his last-and I may say those were our innocent days. I never then hurt the feelings of any thing, but black and grey squirrels and the bark and outer circles of the maple or hickory tree. Yes, I once kicked old Silas, who crammed me with a double load, in a hurry to do the business of a Yankee who had stuck it into him for a matter of 500 dollars-but he mizzled round the corner before I whistled after him—(I always whistle for fun when I go after anything).

As for young Silas, he was in the same state of primitive innocence, and did nothing from sun-rise to sun-down (when he hadn't me in the woods), but dangle his legs at the door of his dad's store, seated on a bale of dry goods, which we always kept on the pavement, right in the way of the passers-by-being independent. There he would loll on one elbow and chew good two ounces of Virginia shag, and smoke seven or eight cigars. I was in a corner and saw how he looked after the store this way, when the old man had mounted the roan mare (lame of the near fore-leg) to collect what hard cash he could about; but I will say, we saw very few hard dollars coming in, and we never allowed one to go out. Our plan was this,-dry goods-dry goods, I say, Sir, was our cash, and paid for corn, and skins, and linsey woolsey (good stuff, spun by farmers' wives and daughters, by big hiccory fires, on long winter nights)-aye, and apple-butter, and cow's butter, and hog's flesh,-do not think me more tedious, Mister, than I can be-were I twice as tedious in my circumstance I could "bestow it on you,"-for, without your circumstance, what is my life?-what is adventure ?-my adventures are all chock-full of circumstance. Now about our store, where I stood a good deal in the corner, I say I saw much and said nothing I only spoke out of doors in the fields and woods, as I have said, and whistled.

Well, young Silas was as innocent as myself in those days, except in the matter of Patience Patchwork, a farmer's daughter, at the ThreeMile-Run, a branch of Muddy Creek, two miles out of our town. Many's the time I've stood in a corner there, when the old people have been in bed, by moon-light, one, two, three in the morning, before Silas took hold of me to foot it home. Then I saw a thing or two in the big kitchen-it was at an apple-butter stirring, in the fall in the

year, but no matter, it was moon-light and bitter cold-I forget where they got acquainted, if not at at a husking frolic at Asa Pumpkin's, this side of Possum-hollow. Near Rochester they didn't bundle quite so slick as in Pennsylvania and Vermont; no harm comes of itonly now and then. That night, I mind, I lay down in the sleigh (sledge), under a shed near the pig-pen. The snow lay on the ground four feet thick, and ten feet in the drifts, about the worm-fences. I saw nothing, and shall say nothing, against young Silas nor Patience-a likely girl, Sir-very comely to look at. The old people jawed a good deal, backward and forward: but young Silas was forced to marry the young lady-though he wanted to back out, because old Patchwork wouldn't give her more than what she stood up in and the muly cow-but she was a good milker, or else Silas, it's my belief, would'a bolted, This match was no good to me anyhow; for he swapped me away to Captain Cody, of the "Walk-on-the-Water" canal passage-boat,the primest shot (except Swan) in all those parts,-he traffic'd me away, I say, for a half bale of prime bandanas-the old man had set him up in a store.

There came a great change now on me, as I set out on my travels the same day; and I may say, though I began to do no good, still I shook off the dirt and obscurity of this nor-west country village-though it is a place of all-mighty trade, and 15,000 souls, and thriving withal. I had been used in my young days to use flint, but now Cody claps me on percussion, and I had to hammer at copper caps. I was a great pet with Cody, and only for the mischief I did, I should have liked my time well enough. We were going along among the stumps on the long-level-it was a handsome day, and we had an elegant band of prime musicians, with handsome music-delighting no less than 100 ladies, travellers from Detroit, York, Buffalo, and down by our lakeswhen Swan, who was a clever, elegant, young store-keeper of Athens, lay Cody three hard dollars and a half, that he'd hit a potato first, on top of a boat-hook at the stern of the boat-a matter of 35 yards. I'm not positive it wasn't a small onion, no matter-Swan took his longsnake (36-incher) out, he carried a ball of 125 to the pound, and was a 'tarnal cross of the alligator and wild-cat, that counted six white scalps, and six Britishers in the war of '14, made to bite the ginsing root.

I feared my rival in hard hitting in the hands of such a genius. Yes, Sir, Swan was a genius-'cute as a copper-head; he had been down the mighty Hudson three times-to that paradise of stars and stores in our western hemisphere, New York. Sir, he primed with mustard-seed detonators, fabricated only on Lake Ontario, and good for the eyes, as copper-caps fly occasionally; but my master, the magnanimous Cody, disdained the tinypill, and put me a span new cap on from Brummigem. They tossed for the first crack-the boat was winding about like any sea-serpent--Swan had it; a killing crack, that made the epidermis of the onion fly like chaff before the fan; but the bulb held on-Cody brought me to his unerring eye, and the root flew into immortal smash, -my ball passed right through its equator; but, as Satan would have it, a log-shanty was now right on, two fields off,-an old woman was milking her cow at the door,-the missile whistled the parabola of 800 yards and buried itself, not, as would have been well-advised, in ground,

and be hanged,-no, Sir, right in the round of the cow,-an old brindle, destined for beef that fall. The old woman swore in good Irish, and, dropping her pail, chased us a matter of two miles. But the skipper Cody commanded the Walk-on-the Water-it was no go; but it was awkward, unlucky; the cow didn't like it, nor the old woman; but I have been told the beef, after considerable salt, was none the

worse.

This, Sir, was my first mistake, in hurting the feelings of the poor beast; but what I'm going to tell you I did was no mistake; so it's no use looking after the old woman, who, I do assure you, had as good a Milesian brogue as you'd wish to hear on our virgin soil. Before we got to Utica I clipped the wing of a bald eagle on a scorched pitch pine, by computation 250 yards; and I'd have had him down, but skipper Cody's mouth was full of egg and toast, being at that instant at the head of his long breakfast table, when informed that the eagle was watching our movements, so snatching me up in a hurry-I did no more damage-two hairs diameter too high.

Well, Sir, I must progress. I was not sorry when that elegant genius in the store line, Mr. Samuel Swan, cut his stick at Utica, and took his long snake with him. 'Tis always best for two geniuses to keep asunder, though he was of my own breed, and our masters' particular friends; but he (the black snake hair-trigger) was old and vicious. In those days I did not like the story of the Britishers and the six real citizen scalps; little thinking it would be my lot soon to finish up any man well to do in the world.

On board our boat there was a small sample of a Cockney going down to Albany; he was always handling of me, and trying my pa tience in whistling through the woods as we went along. I was uneasy, for I knew I was likely to do no sort of good in this way; but the skipper, my master, had grown gentlemanly and fantastical with his all-mighty fame, and swore that it was my fault that he had not the bald eagle nailed against the after-part of the boat's" gentleman's wash-house;" he never missed, he said, a wooden nutmeg at 200 yards' flying. I was indignant-I knew it was his fault, not mine-but said nothing, and was less hurt than concerned to find myself made over on such false pretence to the under-sized Londoner. The fact was, Sir (why should I spare citizen Cody ?), he could not resist 20 golden sov'reigns the stranger counted out for me, and put right under the skipper's nose, on the Spanish mahogany table, after the seventh glass of brandy sling.

But, Sir, when the citizen took up the gold and put me down, he lost no independence nor compromised no principle. It was a fair bargain, I value myself at three-times the 20 pieces of precious metal; though, to be sure, I only cost 25 dollars' worth of handkerchiefs; but "the intrinsic value of any thing is,"-you understand, Sir: Cody was, and is, a man that scorns to undervalue anything, and though he swore (his oath was long and engrafted particular) I was not good enough for him, yet was I much too good for a mere ignorant Cockney Liver pooler, travelling with tea-tray patterns;-besides, Sir, I will do the Captain the justice to observe that gold is scarce on this canal-track, it fascinates the unaccustomed eye, and dazzles the senses. I do