183 



HORiE POLONICiE. 



Confound Polish duplicity, said I to my friend Dr. E**, as we left the 

 War Office, where for the last three months we had been most assiduous 

 in attendance, and I should think had given some of the chivalrous heroes 

 of pen and paper notoriety nearly as much annoyance as the whole 

 Russio Persico Barbaricam army, for we had heard of battles, and we 

 longed to see, if not to participate, in some of the glorious deeds about, 

 as we fondly hoped, to revive again the days of the brave Sobieski, and 

 to re-establish for the admiration of Europe, the saviours of Christendom, 

 in their ancient liberty more glorious than before. We were daily amused 

 with promises to be allowed to exchange our Hospital Commissions for 

 appointments as Surgeon Majors in some of the regiments then in actual 

 service ; we had solicited the interest of as many Counts with long jaw- 

 breaking names as might have sufficed, after the manner recommended 

 by Capt. ***, to annihilate the autocrat^s legion, including the Peters- 

 burgh Guards. Promises proverbially cost nothing ; but I think, from 

 the profuse manner they were lavished upon us, that a promise must be 

 cheaper in Poland than elsewhere. Having performed almost every 

 operation in surgery, we were wishful to witness operations of a military 

 nature, after having been cooped up in Warsaw for five months, devoting 

 eight hours per day to dressing the wounded of previous battles, in the 

 poisonous and almost suffocating atmosphere of hospitals, each containing 

 from eight to fifteen hundred soldiers, many of whom were suffering 

 from gangrenous wounds, and all from want of ventilation, proper food, 

 and remedial applications ; and then our ears tantalised with contradictory 

 and conflicting rumours of daily engagements, victories, &c. &c., with 

 accounts of which one of our acquaintances gulled the **** ****. We 

 who had travelled from London to the seat of war with all the romantic 

 enthusiasm of martyrs for the cause of Polish liberty, in the midst of all 

 these soul-stirring events were left to pine in solitude, except when the 

 dull monotony of our laborious hospital duties was pleasantly alleviated 

 by attending to their silent graves the mortal remains of some of our 

 friends, who were daily paying the debt of nature through the medium 

 of cholera morbus and typhus fever. Hardened as I had become, I 

 could not view without emotion the number of ready-made graves which 

 at each funeral greeted our view, and which seemed to gape and yawn 

 for their prey. Our friend whose obsequies we attended in the morning, 

 had assisted at an amputation the previous night, and perhaps ere the day 

 closed, some of us might be stretched stiff and frigid with spasm, and suf- 

 ering agonies so indescribably horrible, that to those empty graves which 

 we passed with a shudder in the morning, we might look forward as the 

 much desired haven of peace. The attention of the great Linnaeus was 

 abstracted from the dangers of the devouring element or destruction from 

 the fall of a lofty tree whilst travelling in the burning forests of Lapland, 

 by reflecting that Flora, instead of appearing in her gay and verdant 

 attire, was in deep sable — a spectacle more abhorrent to his feelings than 

 to see her clad in the white livery of winter. Now with all due 

 deference to the opinion of those who think that no sense of personal 

 danger could have drawn the attention of the immortal gentleman 

 entirely from considerations of his favourite studies, I can only say I 

 often wished Linnaeus, or any other personage desirous of putting on 

 immortality, had been in my place, standing at the grave-side, gazing at 



