against the King, while they secretly wavered in their views of the policy they supported, until the tide of events ultimately carried them away beyond the possibility of redemption.

The work before us unveils many instructive particulars of this kind; and, as nearly the whole correspondence was strictly confidential, its disclosures are exempt from the suspicion which might attach to writings expressly designed for publication. Amongst the numer ous letters it contains are some from the hand of Strafford, which are deeply interesting as evincing the kindness of heart and the fine sense of honor he displayed in his domestic relations.

To the ensuing volumes we look for a full exposition of the proceedings of Sir Thomas Fairfax in the conduct of the war, and for minute details of his operations, and of the resources by which he was enabled to prosecute them with such extraordinary rapidity and success. Meanwhile, as we have touched upon that aspect of his character which exhibits him in an unfavorable light, it will be only just to set in contrast with it those qualities which are relied upon for the vindication of his fame.

From the outset of his life he displayed a remarkable aptitude for the military profession, and distinguished himself under Lord Vere in the Low Countries at the early age of seventeen. He commanded a troop of Yorkshire Red Caps in the first Scotch war, and obtained so much renown, that he was knighted before he was thirty. Two years afterwards he received a commission under his father as General of the Horse, and at thirty-four he was appointed Generalissimo of the kingdom. This swift promotion to a post of the highest power and responsibility was won by hard fighting and indomitable energy. Νο man in the country was so well qualified for a service of such difficulty and peril. He seemed to be incapable of the sensation of fatigue, unconscious of danger, and utterly indifferent to obstacles of every kind, whether they took the shape of embattled walls, or overwhelming numbers. He is said to have had a commanding figure and great personal strength; to have been modest in his bearing on ordinary occasions; generally silent and reserved, the fire in his nature waiting for the fit moment to

in his speech, which imparted a certain awkwardness and coldness to his conversation; with a face dull and heavy in repose, but susceptible of strong impression when suddenly lighted up. Beneath this unpromising exterior, lay those heroic elements which rendered him so formidable in action.

In the field (says his biographer) the great qualities which raised him so rapidly to eminence showed themselves in a sort of ecstacy. He was as reckless of his person in battle as he was of his own interests in political affairs. He appeared like a man inspired in the midst of his troops, and was so elevated and absorbed by the his officers rarely ventured to speak to him. His movements around him, that, at such moments, genius revelled in these scenes.

The mere catalogue of his successes, without a word of comment, affords astounding evidence of the fiery haste in which he fought and conquered. In April, we find him at Naseby; in May, at Oxford, and Highworth in Wiltshire; in July, at Taunton in Somersetshire, Langport, and Bridgewater; in August, at Sherborne in Dorsetshire, and Bristol; in September, at Devizes; in October, at Tiverton; January, at Plymouth, Dartmouth, and Torrington, carrying all the garrisoned places in Cornwall, compelling Lord Hopton to disband his army; and, finally, subjugating the whole of the west of England. Sieges and onslaughts succeed each other in the sanguinary phantasmagoria, and vanish as quickly as shadows in a magic glass. He rushed into peril without adequate preparation or calculation, and swept down all difficulties rather by the force of a strong will and headlong impulse than by the exercise of skill or the development of any intelligible principles of warfare. He seems to have had no plan of action; to have trusted entirely to courage and resolution, his forces being often inferior to those of the Royalists; and to have triumphed in the long run, by the mere terror which his daring and eccentric evolutions scattered round him. A single reverse, marked by signal circumstances, might have suddenly destroyed the prestige of his name, and with it the cause in which he displayed such reckless valor.

But this, we suspect, was the secret of his extraordinary success. He knew how to bring his soldiers up to the fire of the enemy, and to keep them there. It was the rush of the whirlwind. How he and his troops escaped utter annihilation on some occasions is even more marvellous than how, under such apparently hopeless circumstances, he contrived to disperse his opponents. That he frequently exposed himself to jeopardy by a wilful neglect

of the most ordinary precautions, is testified by himself in the record which he left behind him of his own exploits. A single instance, out of a dozen, will suffice to show this. Having thrown himself into Wetherby, with three hundred horse and forty foot, at a time when the whole country was bristling over with Royalist arms, he took so little care to fortify the place, or even to keep a look out upon the enemy, that, at six o'clock in the morning, the king's soldiers, to the number of eight hundred horse and foot, screened by the surrounding woods, suddenly descended upon the town, and had actually gained the entrance before the alarm was given. Sir Thomas finds an excuse for this surprise in the fact that the guards were all asleep in the houses! But had it happened five minutes later, the Royalists would have found not only the guards asleep, but the general gone; for at that very instant of time Sir Thomas was mounted, and taking his departure by another gate to visit his father, leaving all his soldiers asleep behind him. The incident might be regarded as perfectly incredible had it been related by one of the opposite party, but no force of exaggeration could render it more astonishing than his own plain statement of the fact :

I myself was only on horseback, and going out of the other end of the town to Tadcaster, where my father lay, when one came running after me, and told me the enemy was entering the town. I presently galloped to the Court of Guard, where I found not above four men at their arms; I remember two sergeants and two pikemen, who stood with me when Sir Thomas Graham with about six or seven commanders more, charged us, and after a short, but sharp encounter, they retired, in which one Major Carr was slain; and by this time more of the guards got to their arms. I must confess I knew no strength but the powerful hand of God that got them this repulse.*

Undoubtedly this repulse was of a very miraculous kind, and Sir Thomas was abundantly justified in referring it to any other cause than his own forethought. Of the Short Memorial" in which he has preserved the record of his actions, we find the following description, which completely coincides with our opinion of his military genius :

In whatever point of view we regard this work (observes the biographer,) it cannot be said to exhibit his lordship's talents to advantage. He appears to have had as indifferent skill in writing as in speaking. The manner of the "Memorial" is crude and lumbering; the matter slight aud superficial. It contains nothing more than notes of the skirmishes, battles, and sieges, in which he was engaged, imperfectly sketched

*A Short Memorial.

rather than described, and presenting no large views of military strategy, no indications of a comprehensive design, no hint of the contemplation of any results beyond the victory of the

hour.

Such we believe to have been the true char

acter of Fairfax in his military capacity. Few men, perhaps, ever exhibited greater proofs of personal courage. He was always in the hottest part of the fight. He never turned aside from the enemy; he showed an example of the most heroic contempt for danger; and animated his soldiers, by the risks he himself voluntarily incurred, to a height of the most furious zeal. These were qualities, especially in a war so desultory and irregular, peculiarly calculated to gain the affections of the army, and even to enslave their superstitous admiration. He was beloved by his troops, who would have followed him with confidence and alacrity into worse perils than he courted and encountered, if worse perils were possible. Nor was it his least recommendation to the fanaticism that surrounded him that, imminent as were the hazards he ran every day, he seemed to bear a "charmed life," generally escaping out of them unhurt. On two occasions the charm was nearly broken; once when he received a shot in the shoulder, and his recovery was despaired of, and at another time when he was struck by a cannon-ball at Pomfret Castle; but his powerful constitution survived both disasters."

The hardships and fatigues, however, which he had undergone in his youth, told against him in the latter part of his life, when he became a victim to an accumulation of infirmities, which he bore with a becoming firmness and resignation. A MS. written by his cousin, Mr. Brian Fairfax, gives the following account of his closing years:

The last seven years of his life, that disease which he was most subject to the gout, occasioned or increased by the heats, and colds, and loss of blood, and the many wounds he got in

the war, this disease took from him the use of he sat like an old Roman, his manly countenance his legs, and confined him to a chair, wherein striking awe and reverence into all that beheld him, and yet mixed with so much modesty and meekness, as no figure of a mortal man ever Most of his time did he represented more.

spend in religious duties, and much of the rest in reading good books, which he was qualified to do, in all modern languages, as appears by those he has writ and translated. Several volumes of his own hand-writing are now in the study at Denton, with my brother Henry, lord Fairfax,

Mr. Johnson has edited this correspondence with an elaboration which, however creditable to his industry, has the oppressive effect of

It

rendering the correspondence subservient to the editorial narrative. He has, in fact, proceeded upon the plan of writing a history of the reign of Charles I, introducing the Fairfax papers in illustration to his statements. But as these papers are for the most part discursive, and enter more into the personal memorabilia of history than into his full and onward action, the use he has made of his materials not only fails to bring out their spirit, but frequently exhibits them at a disadvantage. may also be suggested, that this history of the reign of Charles I. was not wanted; nor is the treatment distinguished by sufficient originality or literary merit to furnish a justifiable pretext for so superfluous a labor. Mr Johnson's style is not happy; he writes carelessly and heavily. He overloads himself with ponderous and unnecessary details, and sometimes breaks down under the weight. Nor is it the least objection to the method he has adopted, that it tempts him into tedious discussions upon matters that are hardly even alluded to in the correspondence; thus distracting our attention from the minor novelties which it was his province to display, and soliciting our consideration of topics with which we must be supposed to be as well acquainted as himself.

It is clear that Mr. Johnson has committed an error of judgment, we do not care to touch upon errors of another kind — in smothering his gems under such a heap of common-place. In order to do full justice to the curious and interesting details thrown up in the Fairfax Correspondence, he should have strictly limited himself to the less ambitious, but far more useful duty of elucidation. The editor of such a collection is like the curator of a museum, whose business it is to exhibit his treasures, and not himself. We should be just as likely to open Pepys' Diary to learn what Lord Braybrooke has to say, -an editor who has failed in the other extreme by saying too little, and not saying always accurately what he does say. The reader of the Fairfax Correspondence must exercise a little patience with Mr. Johnson; and in the letters he will find much that will furnish him with fresh sources of speculation upon the events that intervened between the accession of Charles and the breaking out of the hostilities, and a variety of incidental illustrations of the domestic and political life of the age. Fraser's Magazine.

Chief of the Government of Yucatan, Don Domingo Martinez, to the effect:

That the Indian population were in insurrection, pillaging and murdering the Spanish race-bloodshed and burning being matters of hourly occurrence, the authorities having neither the means nor power to resist the revolutionary movements, unless aided by the British with arms and ammunition.

Cautious in meddling with the turmoils of a foreign State, perchance, by unwise policy, involving England in an unsatisfactory and paltry contention, the Superintendent appears to have acted with considerable judgment and circumspection, throughout the whole of the struggle in Yucatan, and to have steered a clear and decided course between the rival factions-furnishing neither with the sinews nor means for continuing the war; at the same time humanely affording the protection

of the British flag to all seeking its shelter in the New, as in the Old World, the refuge for the wretched and destitute-and maintaining with dignity the respect due to his own government.

Thus matters rested, or, more correctly speaking, were unsettled, until the 2nd of March, when His Excellency received a memorial from several respectable friends, residing in or represented in Belize-bringing under his serious notice the defenceless condition of their mahogany works on the south side of the Rio Hondo.

Many of these gentlemen had extensive and valuable properties at stake; works, machinery, cattle, stores, and implements, with no protection against any hostile and marauding parties, except the feeble resistance which the Jaugs, widely scattered, and dispersed with an interrupted, in some cases impracticable communication with each other, could afford; and as the Indians threatened to take Bacalar, situated in close proximity to the Rio Hondo, and were a race, lawless, ignorant, without knowledge or apprehension of international rights or territorial limits, with the well-known and avowed determination to exterminate the Whites, plunder indiscriminately, and, as at Guatimala in 1839, establish a government of pardos libras, or Free Tigers; they solicited a detachment of troops might be sent from the garrison, and stationed for a short time on the British side of the Hondo, which demonstration would deter the Indians from entering on our limits, as they, and the natives of the surrounding states, hold the English forces in such awe, that they would not dare to carry into operation any contemplated attack within the most distant range of the forces.

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The Superintendent, acting promptly upon this representation, applied to the officer commanding the troops for a detachment of thirty men to be sent to within four miles of the mouth of the Hondo bar, and in the limits of the settlement, offering a house which would afford ample accommodation for the party, and the means of transport at the expense of the local government, but suggesting That the officer in command of this detachment should receive the most positive instructions not to cross the river himself, or to allow any one under his command to do so; it being clearly understood that the object of sending the troops was simply to protect Her Majesty's subjects in their industrial occupations, and not to take any part whatever in the internal disputes which harassed and disturbed the province of Yucatan.

On the 7th of March, the sergeant, the drummer, and thirty rank-and-file of the 2nd

West India Regiment, under the command of a captain, embarked from Belize, and reached the Hondo on the 10th inst., where they established themselves, and remained until the 27th of April.

Meanwhile, the Indians commenced to show themselves in small parties in different directions, and on the British side of the Rio Hondo, strong and anxious representations were made to the Superintendent, from several influential proprietors of mahogany works, of the Indians having surrounded and attacked the Jaugs, pilfering the implements and tools, and destroying the cattle. That they had crossed the Hondo at Irish creek, where upwards of one hundred families were located, and, armed with bows and arrows, had fired upon the people in charge of the provisions at Hill Bank, and were only kept off by repeated discharges of musketry, but great apprehensions were entertained that the Jaugs employed in getting out the mahogany, intimidated at the approach of the Indians, would not dare to resist, but abandon the properties and works to the mercy of the invaders.

Colonel Fancourt, considering it' of importance that the first indication of violence which occurred on our side of the river should be promptly repressed, applied to the officer commanding for such assistance as his limited force would admit of, and suggested that twenty men detached from the party at the Hondo, to Hill Bank, with the officer, would be sufficient to check any further aggressions on the part of the Indians, leaving a sergeant and ten men at Haybrack's Bank.

Hill River appeared to be a most desirable position, as communication with it and all parts of the New River were open; a good road led to the works at Irish Creek; it afforded the means of easily protecting Spanish Creek; and the post could be reached from Belize in a few hours.

These excellent and prudent arrangements of the Superintendent produced the desired effect, and the officer in charge of the party having been obliged by sickness to return to the garrison, the weak state of which did not permit of another to replace him, the detachments were recalled from New River and the Rio Hondo.

The Indians had now stormed and taken Bacalar, after three days of nominal fighting on the part of the dastardly Spaniards, who hardly ventured to oppose any resistance; the town was pillaged, a portion burned down, and the current report, with the usual organ-swell of exaggeration, proclaimed the Indians to number 10,000; dividing this by one-half, leaving the balance for imagination, our de

But although tranquillity seemed enforced and restored on our side of the border, outrages continued to be perpetrated in its immediate vicinity.

At Bacalar, houses were devoted to fire, and properties to general plunder; the most wanton destruction of valuables took place; women were violated, assassination, murder and bloodshed, the unheeded occurrences of every hour; the total extermination of the white race, the declared aim and object of the revolutionists; the wretched Spaniards thought of nothing but flight; and the masters, the tyrants who had governed with an iron hand and unmitigated severity, eagerly sought the means of concealment or escape from their former bondsmen. The undisciplined melée and heterogeneously armed mob, yelept the Army of Liberty and Yucatan, savage and uncivilized, hallooed on by their ferocious leaders, who knew no mercy, exercised no discretion, regardless or ignorant of all laws, divine or human, would listen to no terms, short of hunting the Spaniards from the rich and fruitful Province of Yucatan, they had so long wastefully, unwisely, and cruelly governed, bursting another strong link of the golden chain with which Old Spain had held in bitter, bitter bondage, the states of Central America; another act of retribution for the merciless, selfish, and sanguinary policy they had pursued to all her vast and wealthy possessions in the New World.

Alarm seized upon the public mind-a general meeting was called for by the inhabitants of Belize, and held by the Superintendent, and the sum of £5,000 currency, or £3,000 sterling, voted to aid and assist in making the necessary defences for the settlement.

Colonel Fancourt immediately despatched a fast-sailing schooner to Jamaica, with a report of the state of affairs, and although he did not appear to apprehend any immediate danger from an attack of the Indians on Belize, still, in the shattered and revolutionized aspect of Yucatan, with war, and rumors of insurrection spreading through Guatimala, and neighbors of such very fickle and dubious character within a day's march of the limits of the settlement, he deemed it only prudent, as a precautionary measure, to request a steamer and a reinforcement of troops might be despatched to Honduras with as little delay as possible.

Accordingly, a Field-Officer, three subal

iment, embarked on the 23d of May in Her Majesty's steam sloop "Vixen," Captain Ryder, and reached the settlement on the 27th, where all appeared quiet. The Spanish refugees, cowering and contented under the safeguard of the British flag, filled Belize with a population resembling a mixed breed between the Malay and Calmue, living upon fish, with which the market is so plentifully supplied, and lodging in nooks and corners, in the open streets, or under the shelter of a dorey or small boat, in many instances charitably supported by the British residents.

At Bacalar, the Indians, flushed with success filled with ardente aqua were gloriously drunk, day and night, reeling, revelling, robbing, eating, drinking, smoking, and amusing themselves, by discharging their rusty firelocks and fowling-pieces-warranted to burst into the body of some imaginary enemy, friend, or bon camarado all the time professing, from the highest to the lowest, the greatest anxiety to renew commercial intercourse with the British settlers, the most profound deference for the nation, and the highest esteem, gratitude and veneration towards His Excellency the Governor, who, they hoped, might live at least for the brief term of one thousand years to

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The Spaniards, however, were not only sufferers from the sacking and pillaging of Bacalar, and the change of masters: the good people of Belize commenced to experience a deprivation of some of their creature comforts, the markets were no longer supplied with rum, sugar, coffee, chocolate, corn, yams, fruit, vegetables, well-educated turkies, portly ducks, fat capons, wild and tame guinea birds, ceased to be conveyed in boat loads from Bacalar; the unwise conquerers, the improvident citizens, like Polyphemus, devoured all and everything, until not one solitary hen was left of the good old stock, to carry on the breed, and the commercial intercourse, the reciprocity of trade so much vaunted about, between the Army of Liberty and Yucatan and the settlers in British Honduras, existed only in profuse professions, and ill-spelt despatches written on dirty paper from the Indian authorities to the Superintendent, ending with a most modest request for some 300 arobars of powder, and a promise of payment for the same, in the shape of a draft on the Banks of the Hondo, or a draught from its current account, both equally safe and satisfactory, the last, perhaps, the most likely to be liquidated.

The decided and conciliating tone of Colonel Fancourt held the Indian leaders in awe, and the prompt redress he afforded to a com