well enough, though spiritless; but "breathes there on earth a man with soul so dead," that on such an occasion he could have avoided saying so? Had he concluded his account without saying so, he would not have been a man at all. He then mentions several instances in which he has spoken of the British army "without censure," and several instances in which he has absolutely spoken of them, or of individual officers, with praise. We hope the army will not be want ing in proper gratitude. But he cannot shew, what Major Pringle is sorry for the want of, "a page allotted to their praise;" and the Major was correct to the letter in saying that "censure alone FINDS AMPLE ROOM." The praise is bit-by-bit praise-and confined to small single sentences, in which it runs great risk of catching cold. Some instances he quotes are very ludicrous. As for example -he prides himself on having said "the canal agent spoke in terms of great respect of Sir Isaac Brock as the best commander the British had ever sent to Canada-equally regretted on both sides of the St Laurence." His sins of omission are perhaps greater and more numerous than his sins of commission-and to us more offensive. He defends himself on the ground of not wishing to go many miles out of his way; and by some the plea may be admitted, but not by ardent admirers, like us, of the British army. Had he felt as he ought to have done towards them, he would have rejoiced to speak of them on many occasions where he is silentnor would he have had far to seek for exploits of theirs in America worthy of all his eloquence. Is it praise or censure-it is certainly not truth-to say that the American campaigns "have done what the Czar Peter predicted Charles the Twelfth would do for the Russians-I know that the Swedes will beat us for a long time, but at last they will teach us to beat them?" Have the British, indeed, taught the Americans to beat them? But allowing Mr Stuart to pride himself as he pleases on his enthusiastic laudations of the British army-will he just take the trouble, at a leisure hour, to explain what he meant by writing the two follow ing sentences? "The inhabitants of Baltimore have not yet forgot our incursion under General Ross in the

late war. All the inhabitants between the ages of eighteen and fortyfive were called to fight at a day's notice, and were only a single day in the field, when a successful action on their part deprived the city of some of the principal inhabitants, and sent back many of them wounded. A monument commemorating the engagement, on which are inscribed the names of the sufferers, has been erected in one of the conspicuous streets close to the entrance of the great hotel." This is the monument which a Baltimore lady asked Mr Hamilton if he had seen, and then apologized to him for having alluded to an edifice which could not be thought of by him, much less looked at, without painful emotions being awakened in his breast, by the remembrance of what Mr Stuart would call "a signal discomfiture of the British army." In the action, which Mr Stuart calls "a successful action, on their parts," the Americans, strongly posted, were most expeditiously driven from their position, and put to the routGeneral Ross having been killed by a rifle on the advance. Mr Stuart cannot have heard of this action but from some lying Americans—and no doubt, for the first time, his eyes will fall on the following passage from Colonel Brook's despatch." In this order, the signal being given, the whole of the troops advanced rapidly to the charge. In less than fifteen minutes, the enemy's force, being utterly broken and dispersed, fled in all directions over the country, leaving on the field two pieces of cannon, with a considerable number of killed, wounded, and pri soners. The enemy lost in this short but brilliant affair, from 500 to 600 men in killed and wounded; while, at the most moderate computation, he is at least one thousand hors de combat. The 5th regiment of militia in particular are represented as nearly annihilated." Admiral Cochrane in his despatch calls it "a most decisive victory over the flower of the enemy's troops." Next morning the British army advanced to within a mile and a half of Baltimore, it having been arranged that the fleet was to co-operate in an attack on the town; but the Admiral found the "entrance by sea, within which the town is retired nearly three miles, was entirely obscured by a

barrier of vessels sunk at the mouth of the harbour, defended inside by gun-boats, flanked on the right by a strong and regular fortification, and on the left by a battery of several heavy guns." The army, therefore, was reimbarked.

Were we to take the trouble of retravelling through Mr Stuart's dull dull narratives of military affairs during the great war for American Independence, we could, we believe, collect plenty of proofs of his unfairness towards the British army, and his readiness to look at every thing of a questionable kind in the worst possible light. An instance or two of this may suffice. "The British troops, when they arrived at Lexington, about ten miles on their way, fired on some American militia on parade, and killed eight of them." Now it never has been satisfactorily ascertained whether the British troops or the American militia fired first. In the London Gazette, it was positive ly stated that the militia did so; and John Horne was convicted of a seditious libel, amerced, and immured, for having published that our American brethren had been murdered. Mr Stuart's words imply, or rather assert, that the British "fired first;" and yet in his "Refutation" he says, in reference to the chapter in which they occur," there is not an expression in the slightest degree derogatory to the honour of the British troops in any part of the chapter." Perhaps he will say the same of what follows. "The inhabitants of Kingston were amongst the first opposers of the British dominion in North America, and the village (Esopus) fell into the hands of the British general, Vaughan, who was on his way to meet General Burgoyne, at the time he heard of the disastrous situation of Burgoyne's army. He very wantonly burnt this village to the ground." We dare say Vaughan burnt the village to the ground; but that he did so very wantonly, we do not believe, merely on the assertion of Mr Stuart. He adds, "We searched in vain for an inscription which, we were told, was upon the end of the village church, recording the particulars of this very unjustifiable act." Can you imagine any thing more ludicrous than "the great American traveller" staring with all

his eyes on the end of a village church, "searching in vain for an inscription recording the particulars of this very unjustifiable act," committed by his countrymen some half-a-century ago! Except it be indeed the same great American traveller sitting at a table in the act of recording that vain search-alas! like many other searches-after a nonentity-a pleasing, no doubt, but a delusive dream. Compare his accounts of the execution of Colonel Hayne and of Major André, and you will see how his leanings all lie away from his own country. He tries all he can, and in the silliest way, to palliate Hayne's conduct, which was as bad as could be, and deserved death, and paints what he no doubt thinks a pathetic picture of the traitorous rebel's death-in order to heighten indignation against "Lord Rawdon's cruelty," which he says is "a theme of conversation even at the present day." Of André he speaks with much less feeling; and concludes with quoting some doggerel verses said to have been written by him, at a time when he could laugh at the thought of such an event, about the probability of the poet being hanged. Mr Stuart, we venture to say, would not have made such quotation, had Hayne been the luckless versifier. As to Lord Rawdon's "ordering Hayne to be executed without even the formality of a trial," all we need say is this-that the Duke of Richmond having, in the speech with which he introduced his motion for an enquiry into that affair, said something which Lord Rawdon thought cast a reflection on his ho nour, his Lordship demanded that his Grace should make an ample apology in his place in the House of Peers. This the Duke for a while declined to do; but on receiving his Lordship's ultimatum from Lord. Ligonier, he rose to declare, in hearing of the Peers, the following excuse,-"I find that my motion for the enquiry into the execution of Isaac Hayne, has been considered as provoking a suspicion against Lord Rawdon's justice and humanity. I solemnly protest that I did not conceive that it could throw the most distant insinuation upon his Lordship's conduct; nor did I ever mean

the

to say any thing that could have that tendency. Since I learn that matter is thought liable to bear a false construction, I declare that I am sorry to have introduced it upon authority to which, at the time of making my motion, I said I could affix no degree of credit." In his "Refutation," we perceive that Mr Stuart says, "I am bound to mention that the facts relative to Colonel Hayne's execution, as stated in my book, are to be found in the British journals of the period alluded to; and were the subject of a motion in the House of Peers, when the Duke of Richmond called the attention of the House to the inhuman execution of Colonel Hayne, the particulars of which had been forwarded by Mr John Bowman."" Now we say that Mr Stuart was also bound to mention (which he, however, did not do) that the motion was negatived by an immense majority; and most especially was he bound to mention (which however he did not do) the Duke of Richmond's ample and public apology to Lord Rawdon, in which he lets the world know that he never doubted that Mr John Bowman was a liar.

Leaving this enthusiastic eulogist of the British army to enjoy his triumph over Major Pringle, we wish to say a word or two about his respect for the British navy. He speaks of Sir George Cockburn's "piratical expeditions on the Chesapeake." He severely rates Major Pringle for not quoting a sentence from Gales, in which that gentlemanly Yankee says, "Cockburn was quite a mountebank in the city, exhibiting in the streets a gross levity of manner, displaying sundry articles of trifling value, of which he had robbed the President's house, &c." Mr Stuart is very lachrymose and libellous on Captain Gordon of the Sea-horse, senior naval officer of the British fleet off Alexandria, who, he says, “commenced an indiscriminate work of plunder;" and he repeats, that upon this occasion, "it is undeniable we plundered upon a great scale." With much candour and caution, he says, "I certainly do not mean to attest the truth of the fact," (how the deuce could he?)" that the Americans had got an authoritative assurance that private

property was to be respected, though it is asserted in all the American accounts of what passed at the period of the capture of Washington-but this I know," and then he talks of "from 15,000 to 18,000 barrels of flour, 800 hogsheads of tobacco, 150 bales of cotton, with a quantity of sugar and other commodities,"-of all of which the Captain of the Seahorse made plunder. Whatever Sir James Gordon did, he did well and according to orders; and it is impossible for us to mention his name without saying that the navy does not possess another officer more honoured and beloved than he-and that every tar's face brightens as he hears the tread of his timber-toe on deck-for a blasted French cannonball carried off a leg hardly equalled in vigour by any leg in the service, except by that one still remaining in his own possession. Mr Stuart says, no other injury than plunder was committed on the inhabitants by the Sea-horse. On the Chesapeake, however, into which the waters of the Potomac flow, the warfare carried on by the British, it is melancholy to reflect, was not confined to the mere plundering of the inhabitants. Attacks for a long period were made by the squadron, under Sir George Cockburn, on defenceless towns along the coast (he names them), and the inhabitants were subjected not only to the loss of their property, but to treatment and privations of the most horrible description!" "The American details of the excesses committed by the troops, are well known to have been of the most heart-rending description, owing to its having been impossible for the officers to restrain the troops." Ecce iterum Crispinus! Lo again the cobbler! "The despatch of Major Crutchfield, the officer commanding at Hampton, is published verbatim in the London Courier of the 14th August, 1813, and contains the following shocking detail -The unfortunate females at Hampton, who could not leave the town, were suffered to be abused in the most shameful manner, not only by them (the troops), but the venal savage blacks, who were encouraged in their excesses.'" And again," the people at Baltimore, and in the neighbourhood, give sad accounts of the excesses committed during the last war

in this quarter, especially by our naval troops, under the command of Sir George Cockburn, who landed on various parts of the adjoining coasts, and acted in the most barbarous manner towards the unarmed and female part of the population." We hope the present editor of the London Courier will not debase its pages by any such calumnies. It would not be easy to decide whether Mr Stuart's admiration of the British army, or of the British navy, is the higher; here he speaks of the conduct of both-but especially of our naval troops; however, here and elsewhere, as well as at Washington, "it was found impossible to restrain them from plunder," or even from rape and murder. We do not observe these exploits of our blue and our red jackets mentioned in the long list of passages which Mr Stuart refers to in his Refutation, as containing such unqualified panegyric by him on the British army as should make Major Pringle blush. We have, indeed, reason to be proud of the picture painted by this great artist of the United Service.

Conscious of having ever done ample justice to the character of the British navy and the British army, of having written at all times with enthusiasm of their gallantry and devotion to their country's service, and of having "merely alluded," in the tenderest and most delicate way, to a few other matters on which a hero-hating hack would have malignantly dwelt calling "unfortunate truths" certain Yankee allegations, which all the civilized world knew instinctively to be libels and liesMr Stuart must feel himself entitled to look down upon Major Pringle, as from a superior sphere. The hauteur of the "great American traveller" is equal to that of "the proud Duke of Somerset," or any Bubbley-jock-wild or tame-in wood or wuddy-that ever gobbled on either side of the Atlantic Ocean. With swollen ruddy chops, head crowned with a diadem royally bending back towards an erected and expanded tail that rustles in frequent shudder, with magisterial feet pompously prancing in parade, with all their ten toes looking to be at least twenty, ever and anon right or left wing dropt down to the

dirt, as if it would sweep the path on which is sidelong progressing

himself a procession-the King of all the Turkeys-so have you seen, while all other fowl, half in fun and half in fear, have stood aloof from the usurper, the Pseudo-peacock celebrating the ceremony of his own coronation-day.

Major Pringle," says he, in his first letter, "declares that his object for engaging in this correspondence was to put the character of his fellow-soldiers in a true light before the eyes of their countrymen,' and in his last letter he states that he had no motive to commence this correspondence but that of doing justice to his fellow-soldiers in every point of view. His championship of the British army is, therefore, of the most extensive description. Whether his fitness for the honourable office he has undertaken be equal to his zeal, may be doubted by those who peruse the following facts and considerations with a desire to form an impartial conclusion." This is not true. Major Pringle does not undertake a championship, of the most extensive description, of the British army; he undertakes "to do justice to his fellow-soldiers, in every point of view," who fought and bled with him in America, and other countries, and he has performed his duty in the closet as he did in the field. "Major Pringle's testimony is good for nothing; "not the slightest value attaches to Major Pringle's authority on this occasion"-though he had been selected for an important duty which he had performed to the entire satisfaction of General Ross-but not so as to satisfy Mr Stuart. Major Pringle, too, is accused, as we have seen, "of a degree of unfairness, probably without an example, in such a controversy as the present"-a most ridiculous instance of self-importance in this sensitive civilian, who would insist on the Major copying the vulgar insolence of a Yankee, who called "Sir George Cockburn a mountebank." "It is not, however, by the perusal of garbled and partial extracts from my work, or the documen tary evidence that supports it, that my statements are to be judged of. Major Pringle has not only omitted the material parts of my description of the battle of New Orleans, and, as

I have shewn, of the proceedings at Washington, which he has impugned, but in his quotation from American documents, has omitted such portions of them as prove his own statements to be erroneous. This is not the course of proceeding which I conceive I had a right to expect from a British officer, who publishes,' as he writes, to you, simply, as far as in him lies, to put the character of his fellow-soldiers in a true light before the eyes of his countrymen.' We really do not very well know what Mr Stuart "has a right to expect from a British officer;" but never was charge more false than this against Major Pringle of making "garbled and partial extracts," and "omitting such portions of them as prove his own statements to be erroneous." What can Mr Stuart's description of the battle of New Orleans possibly be to Major Pringle, who led the gallant 21st to the ditch-who had his own foot on its brink-and stood there sword in hand in the hottest of that torrent of fire, among the many hundreds of killed and wounded, till ordered, on the fall of Sir John Keane by his side, to gather together the broken brave, and conduct them into the shelter of the wood? He has shewn that at this hour Mr Stuart knows nothing of the battle; and it was his duty to quote and confute such statements as denied or withheld due honour from his companions in arms. These are "the most material parts of my description of the battle of New Orleans;" all the rest, perfectly true and perfectly dull, may go for nothing, like much other information collected during "Three Years in America." "It appears from other parts of Major Pringle's letter, that those despatches were in his hands at the time when he was writing it. He is, therefore, as I shall shew, altogether without excuse for publishing the above as a correct return of the numbers employed on the day of the engagement." We have shewn how groundless this charge is, and only quote it now as another instance of the gentlemanly style which the civilian uses towards the soldier. Sneers and sarcasms abound; and there is some wit too -but weak and muddy as ditchwater. Mr Stuart, as a writer, is heavy as the late Daniel Lambert,

who, we believe, sat fifty-seven stone; yet he is severe on the Major's style, calling it an "inflated and rhetorical style." We are not a very good judge of mere style, and our own may be as bad or as good as the Major's; but all his letters are, in our humble opinion, written with great ease, vivacity, and vigour. Grossly traduced as the character of his brave brethren in arms has been by Mr Stuart, and often as he has been all but insulted by the civilian, the soldier, conscious of the goodness of his cause, never for one moment loses his temper, and it is needless to say, always writes like a perfect gentleman. "I shall now advert to page 42 of the pamphlet, where Mr Stuart writes these words,' Moreover, he (Major Pringle) has not scrupled to make it a public complaint, "that men who are willing to suffer every privation, and to shed the last drop of their blood in the defence, or for the honour of their country, should have their good name filched from them by those who are equally unwilling to allow, and unable to appreciate their worth." These are heavy charges; affecting as they do, not only the credit of the work, but the character of the writer, in point of veracity, intelligence, and good feeling.' Sir, I never made such charges against Mr Stuart, I never questioned his veracity, intelligence, and good feeling,' I knew too well what was due to his feelings, and to my own character; and if Mr Stuart had done me the justice to quote the latter part of my letter, as it was written, this explanation would not have been necessary. Let him turn to his own pamphlet, in which my letter is published, and he will find the passage thus expressed,

should have their good name "filched from them" by those who are (no disrespect to Mr Stuart) equally unwilling to allow, and unable to appreciate their worth.' It was my firm conviction that Mr Stuart had received his intelligence from persons not capable of giving him correct information on several points stated in his work. To those persons alone were my observations directed; and that no mistake might occur on this point, I inserted the words, no disrespect to Mr Stuart,' of which he has taken no notice."