Then, I wrote when the struggle for the birthright independence of
Poland was no more; when she lay in her ashes, and her heroes in
their wounds; when the pall of death spread over the whole country,
and her widows and orphans travelled afar.
In the days of my almost childhood,--that is, eight years before I
dipped my pen in their tears,--I remember seeing many of those
hapless refugees wandering about St. James's Park. They had sad
companions in the like miseries, though from different enemies, in
the emigrants from France; and memory can never forget the variety of
wretched yet noble-looking visages I then contemplated in the daily
walks which my mother's own little family group were accustomed to
take there. One person, a gaunt figure, with melancholy and bravery
stamped on his emaciated features, is often present to the
recollection of us all. He was clad in a threadbare blue uniform
great coat, with a black stock, a rusty old hat, pulled rather over
his eyes; his hands without gloves; but his aspect was that of a
perfect gentleman, and his step that of a military man. We saw him
constantly at one hour, in the middle walk of the Mall, and always
alone; never looking to the right nor to the left, but straight on;
with an unmoving countenance, and a pace which told that his thoughts
were those of a homeless and hopeless man--hopeless, at least, of all
that life might bring him.
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