The pictures are left all ready packed up in Portland Place, and shall
come down with me, whenever that desirable event takes place. In the
mean while here I am as before: but having received a long and
interesting letter from Carlyle asking information about this Battle
field, I have trotted about rather more to ascertain names of places,
positions, etc. After all he will make a mad book. I have just seen
some of the bones of a dragoon and his horse who were found foundered in
a morass in the field--poor dragoon, much dismembered by time: his less
worthy members having been left in the owner's summer-house for the last
twenty years have disappeared one by one: but his skull is kept safe in
the hall: not a bad skull neither: and in it some teeth yet holding, and
_a bit of the iron heel of his boot_, put into the skull by way of
convenience. This is what Sir Thomas Browne calls 'making a man act his
Antipodes.' {135} I have got a fellow to dig at one of the great general
graves in the field: and he tells me to-night that he has come to bones:
to-morrow I will select a neat specimen or two. In the mean time let the
full harvest moon wonder at them as they lie turned up after lying hid
2400 revolutions of hers. Think of that warm 14th of June when the
Battle was fought, and they fell pell-mell: and then the country people
came and buried them so shallow that the stench was terrible, and the
putrid matter oozed over the ground for several yards: so that the cattle
were observed to eat those places very close for some years after. Every
one to his taste, as one might well say to any woman who kissed the cow
that pastured there.
Friday, 23rd. We have dug at a place, as I said, and made such a trench
as would hold a dozen fellows: whose remains positively make up the
mould. The bones nearly all rotted away, except the teeth which are
quite good. At the bottom lay the _form_ of a perfect skeleton: most of
the bones gone, but the pressure distinct in the clay: the thigh and leg
bones yet extant: the skull a little pushed forward, as if there were
scanty room. We also tried some other reputed graves, but found nothing:
indeed it is not easy to distinguish what are graves from old marl-pits,
etc. I don't care for all this bone-rummaging myself: but the
identification of the graves identifies also where the greatest heat of
the battle was. Do you wish for a tooth?
As I began this antiquarian account in a letter to you, so I have
finished it, that you may mention it to my Papa, who perhaps will be
amused at it. Two farmers insisted on going out exploring with me all
day: one a very solid fellow, who talks like the justices in Shakespeare:
but who certainly was inspired in finding out this grave: the other a
Scotchman full of intelligence, who proposed the flesh-soil for manure
for turnips. The old Vicar, whose age reaches halfway back to the day of
the Battle, stood tottering over the verge of the trench. Carlyle has
shewn great sagacity in guessing at the localities from the vague
descriptions of contemporaries: and his short _pasticcio_ of the battle
is the best I have seen. {137} But he will spoil all by making a demi-
god of Cromwell, who certainly was so far from wise that he brought about
the very thing he fought to prevent--the restoration of an unrestricted
monarchy.
_To S. Laurence_.
NASEBY, _Septr_. 28/42.