errors for correction, and for writing history in the spirit of an honest chronicler, he was entitled to a still higher degree of admiration and of public gratitude for his pointing out the want of skill, seamanship, zeal or spirit in officers, by which battles were avoided, or rendered nugatory in cases where they might have and ought to have ended in the entire destruction of the enemy. It is scarcely necessary to say that the man who possesses so fine a moral courage, and who is actuated by patriotism, loyalty, and so pure a zeal for his profession, must have to encounter the resentment of the guilty or suspected, before his conduct settles in the quiet and permanent possession of that esteem and fame which, however late, are sure eventually to be bestowed upon such deserts. Thus was Captain Brenton's valuable work blamed for its chief merits, until it gradually gained upon the public esteem, and is now in possession of a celebrity which is not likely to be diminished. We owe it in justice to our author to state, that in making these exposures he was guilty of no personalities. He betrayed not the slightest spleen, rancour, or individual feeling, but wrote in the fair spirit of history, The "Parcerè personis et dicere de vitiis" seemed to be ever present in his mind, and he attacked systems rather than men, and treated the cases rather as the vitia temporum than the crimina hominum. In these exposures he was decidedly too lenient, and, from our own personal service in the navy, we could point out important cases in which he ought to have been more severe in his observations. It is singular, moreover, that in his strictures upon the fleet off Brest, in 1794, for which he incurred such censures, his views have been fully justified by all the documents and statements which the controversy has elicited. But public opinion has long been uniformly and steadily in favour of our author on all these points, and upon this branch of the subject the work may now be pronounced as perfect. Its utility in this respect is invaluable. We now come to a by far less pleasing part of our duty as critics. We have shown that Captain Brenton's work was censured for all that was praiseworthy, and it is now our task to show that it has been praised for that which was reprehensible. Captain Brenton, as we have already observed, takes a sort of bird's-eye view, or makes a comprehensive sketch, of the military and political affairs of the world, during the period of his history, and by this means he gives importance, dignity, and increased interest to his naval details and narrations. Merely to describe a naval battle, is simply to show the relative dexterity and valour with which ships and fleets can knock each other to pieces; but to trace the causes of battles, their designs and objects, the hopes and fears, the joys and disappointments which they occasion in courts, cabinets, and nations, and to point out their effects upon relative operations of armies, and upon subsequent features of the war and final close of hostilities, is giving a grand, a useful, and interesting feature to naval warfare. We can conceive nothing more mean than a naval history of England during the first American war, written upon the one plan; nothing more grand, if written upon the other. Unfortunately, however, Captain Brenton's execution is not always equal to his plan or outline. When afloat he is comprehensive, lucid, just, and grand; but directly he gets on shore he is too apt to merge the historian into the politician, the politician into the partisan, and the partisan into the zealot. Our author, we need not say, is not a Radical, Whig, or Liberal of any denomination; nor is he a Conservative, or even a Tory in any modern or recent acceptation of the word; but he is a Tory of the nautical genus, and is just the individual of that genus that a man might expect to have found on the quarter-deck of Admiral Hosier or Commodore Benbow. In the very first paragraph of the work we find a taunt against the Americans for their "SUCCESSFUL REBELLION!" We all of us must have heard of the old joke, that treason never prospers, for if prosperous none dare give it that odious name of treason; and surely the reasoning may be applied to the twin offence-rebellion. The Americans committed no rebellion. They merely asserted a great principle, the foundation of all liberty and the very key-stone of our constitution-a principle that no man in our empire will now dispute, and which few honest and temperate men disputed at that time-the principle that representation should precede and accompany taxation. We have next a reiteration of the trite old notion, that the French Revolution was occasioned by the political infection which the French soldiers received in their service in the American war. The French Revolution was in progress at least half a century before that of America dawned on the political horizon; and a philosophic mind must see that both were the inevitable results of nations becoming too populous, wealthy, spirited, and intelligent for institutions which had never been intended for, and which were not adapted to, so advanced a state of society. "But Divine Providence," says Captain Brenton, "enabled us to overcome these two rebellions, and a most formidable and dangerous rebellion at home." Could any man believe that "this dangerous rebellion at home" is an allusion to the few days' riots of Lord George Gordon's mob-riots got up by the court as a "No Popery cry on the immediate eve of a general election, and which were for some time connived at and fostered for party purposes-riots confined to the lowest rabble, that never extended beyond the metropolis, and which were at last put down in one day, without the loss of a single life or even limb on the part of the public authorities. We are next told that France, in declaring war against us in 1793, was actuated by "persevering malignity, by deadly hate," &c. &c. But France was not actuated by any other feelings against England than those of the rivalry and nationality common between all nations adjacent or in contact. These feelings exist between the Poles and Russians, the Spaniards and Portuguese, the Swedes and Danes or Norwegians, the Austrians and Bavarians, the Prussians and Russians, the Russians and Turks, the Austrians and French, the French and English, and are reciprocal between all the petty states of Italy. These feelings arise from the cupidity of each other's possessions, and the supposed necessity of inculcating them for self-defence. But never was a nation more amicably disposed than France towards England in 1793; never did a nation make more strenuous efforts to preserve peace; and the virtual declaration of war and actual committal of hostilities commenced on the part of England. Adverting to the very laudable attempt of the Emperor of Germany to open the Scheldt in 1785, our author justly observes that "there appears a manifest injustice in denying to a people the use of a river which a bountiful Creator has given to them." Can it be believed that, after this, the author vituperates the French for their attempt to open this river in 1792, and accuses them of disregarding "those venerable monuments of antiquity," the treaties of Munster and Westphalia, by which the navigation of that river was prohibited under the guarantee of England. This is writing history in a very partial spirit. These faults, however, are much reduced in number, and mitigated in a degree in the present edition, and we point them out in a friendly spirit in order that they may not be allowed to extend beyond their present limits of the first number, or first 140 pages of the work. Captain Brenton is possessed by an anti-Gallic mania-an anti-Napoleonphobia, and nothing can exorcise the evil spirit. Can it be believed that in a very able and even beautiful description of our cruel and insane possession of Toulon in 1793, he calls Napoleon only "the celebrated Napoleon," and adds, a lieutenant-colonel of artillery, he had the ART and the AUDACITY to command respect and obedience, even from his superior officers, who blindly submitted to be led by him whom they could not instruct. To him the Convention owed the surrender of the place and the retreat of the British forces." Is this the view which a gallant officer and honourable gentleman takes of genius and valour reaping their reward on the field of battle? Speaking of this horrible expedition, the author acknowledges that Mr. Pitt was informed by the first military authority that 50,000 good troops were requisite for the purpose, and yet we undertook it with a motley gang of foreign poltroons; and when we were obliged to fly, and the wretched inhabitants were trembling with horror at the prospect of being delivered up to the slaughter and butchery of the Republican forces, our commanding officer made them a long speech, expatiated upon the paternal goodness of the king of England, who had sent out for their protection-what? the fifty thousand good troops ?-no-but two commissioners. Raving despair suc. ceeded this disgusting mockery, and in a few days the slaughter commenced. Not only does Napoleon always receive this harsh treatment at the hands of our author, but the French officers of the greatest bravery and fame are sometimes recorded with an equal want of candour. The courage and noble qualities of other French officers exhibited against us in fight are attributed to the ignoble source of personal terror. Captain Brenton cannot even narrate the glorious and hard-fought battle of the 1st of June, without assuring us that the celebrated deputy of the Convention, Jean Bon St. André," the representative of the people," as he sneeringly calls him, left the admiral's side and ran below immediately the firing commenced. Whether this man wanted or did not want personal courage, is a point utterly below the notice of history; and what therefore can be the motive of mentioning it? We could point out many similar passages. We do not say that they are petty and mean; but we may ask, whether they are consistent with the spirit of a gallant officer? Our author's candour, where his prejudices are not concerned, induces him to expose, (what indeed could not be concealed,) that many of our officers have in battle betrayed the grossest dereliction of principle, though few have been brought to courts-martial. Might not a system of vigorous justice have operated upon the fears of these men as powerfully as the terrors of the guillotine are said to have acted upon the nerves of the officers of the French navy? It is impossible, without great pleasure and improvement, to read Captain Brenton's account of the state of the navy prior to the French revolutionary war. The mind is struck with the rapid rise of this now gigantic and overwhelming arm of defence and aggression, and great surprise is occasioned both at the lateness of our most essential improvements and at their having been all borrowed tardily from other nations. Thus we find that our ships of war were not coppered till the latter part of the American war, although the French had adopted this obvious improvement throughout their service years before, and we had felt the want of it in all our naval battles. So behind-hand were we in architecture, that our chief model of two-deck ships was long the Courageux, taken from the French so late as 1761. Then our lower deck ports, even in three-deckers, only three feet eight inches above the sea, till the French taught us to make them seven, eight, or even nine feet. After the Courageux, the Tonnant, Malta, and Canopus, all captures from the French, were our models for two-deckers, whilst the San Joseph (Spanish) was perhaps the finest ship of her immense size that we had ever possessed. The Egyptienne ought to have taught us that improvement in frigates which we at last learnt to our cost by our defeats from the Americans. Even in signals the French preceded and excelled us. Captain Brenton gives an admirable account of the awful mutiny of 1797, with the less important, though still interesting, mutinies that preceded and followed it. Attempts are no longer made to conceal the fact, that the great mutiny, and generally all mutinies prior to the war of 1803, were occasioned by the truly horrible cruelties and ill usage inflicted on the men. All their grievances, or nearly all, were eventually redressed; and the fine principles that the men assumed, with their fortitude, forbearance, decorum, and discipline, under every possible incentive to indecency and outrage, stamp the character of the English sailor as the finest upon earth. No population in the world ever produced so sublime a moral scene. The men had been kept on the pay and allowances established in the reign of Charles II., false weights and measures were basely sanctioned by law, and the provisions were so seanty and bad, that the seamen were a prey to disease. Punishment was frequent, severe, and cruel almost beyond the belief of humanity; and so nominal was the division of prize-money, that in one case Captain Brenton tells us that the admiral, who was not present, shared 50,0007., each captain 30,000, and, he might have added, each seaman about three or four pounds. But all the remonstrances of the seamen, their petitions and memorials, had been neglected; and though, during the mutiny, the officers, by shooting, beating, and abusing the men, often excited them almost beyond human forbearance, yet did the seamen abstain from violence or insult, keep the crews in order, and adhere to their resolution to return to their duty should an enemy appear. Lamentable is it to relate, that in the various mutinies which extended from that of 1797 to the mutiny in Bantry Bay in 1803, more than five hundred of our best seamen and the finest men in the world were executed, and a great many of them, it is now acknowledged, without a fault, whilst the faults of a vast number of others were rendered venial by provocation and other circumstances. Captain Brenton with a manly spirit points out cases, such, for instance, as that of the Bounty, in which the officers, who had driven their crews to mutiny by conduct which ought to have been punished by courts-martial, were richly rewarded; whilst the unhappy seamen were flogged or hanged for the mutiny into which they had been so cruelly goaded. It is consolatory in this and in all other respects to reflect upon the prodigious improvement in the spirit of the age. The country is much indebted to this naval officer for pointing out the progress that has been made from the old fraudulent and ferocious to the present enlightened and humane system of naval management. There is another part of Captain Brenton's history which is invaluable. We allude to his impartial account of battles and of all naval operations, in which he brings the valour and self-devotion and patriotism of our seamen and officers before the reader in the most vivid and glowing colours, and raises to their fame an everlasting monument; whilst, on the other hand, with a candour that stamps on him magnanimity and the finest spirit, he points out where battles have been lost, or but partially gained, from a want of courage, zeal, patriotism, or professional knowledge of officers. This is doing the country a great service. It is obvious that every service of every nation must be improved if history be written in that spirit of truth which gives publicity to bad and glory to good actions, and which secures honours and rewards solely to merit-which, in short, realizes the motto on Nelson's escutcheon : "Palmam qui meruit ferat." In congratulating the public upon the appearance, in a very cheap form, of this invaluable work, we are sorry we cannot refer to a most interesting portion of it, we allude to the narration of shipwrecks and disasters, "the moving accidents by flood and field." The great resources of intellect under extreme misfortunes and difficulties, the fortitude evinced under excessive sufferings, the patience with which prolonged disappointments and disastrous accidents have been sustained, the generosity and tenderness which brave men have exhibited towards fellow-sufferers less able to bear up against appalling dangers and almost overwhelming miseries, and the master mind which has often extricated all around it from almost inevitable destruction, are not less interesting than the battles, murders, and sudden deaths which fill up the foreground of military and naval histories. In this branch of the work Captain Brenton is unrivalled; and we now dismiss the subject, having done our duty in pointing out those prejudices which we feel confident will be expunged from its future numbers. How sharp those beams are in the tree !—how fresh, Struck the new planets. None of the rust of time Of air and ocean; but how straight they come ! And now, this moment, while I write, are flooding Not with so little wisdom as some think, Of heav'n, shape forth a god, lustrous in groves *, All graceful aspiration, and had shafts Yes, still there is Apollo. Still he haunts And marble incarnations in hush'd rooms, Where, as he stands, he seems as though he need And find, for him and his, strange corners sweet LEIGH HUNT. * I cannot be sure that this passage was not suggested by the beautiful one in the Excursion (Book the Fourth) where the lonely Greek herdsman, hearing some unknown music sweeter than what himself has been playing, has his fancy excited till it "fetches Even from the blazing chariot of the Sun A beardless youth, who touch'd a golden lute, If so, I can only hope that my echo of the fancy has not quite dishonoured it. |