DUTY AND INCLINATION.
CHAPTER I.
"Now they reach thee in their anger!
Fire and smoke and hellish clangour
Are around thee!"
Byron.
It was about the end of April, when the wind at early dawn blows fresh and chill; the moon had shone full in the hemisphere of its rest, serene and solemn, an undying lamp, shedding its unsullied beams upon a world of sin and woe, and equally illumining the path of the wicked as that of the virtuous; cold and pale she was now retiring to the far west, giving place to the rising of a morn, eventful, and involving the fate of many.
The General and his attendants were mounting the eminence before them, undulating in ascent, and more than a mile in length; scarcely had
