ba killed themselves. Neither fortresses, numerous squadrons, nor the oaths and duties of states, could save the vanquished from the ascendancy and activity of the victor. In the year 45, the sons of Pompey having assembled in Spain the remnants of the armies of Pharsalia and Thapsus, found themselves at the head of a more numerous force than that of their father. Cæsar set out from Rome, reached the Guadalquivir in twenty-three days, and defeated Sextus Pompey at Munda. It was there that, being on the point of losing the battle, and perceiving that his old legions seemed shaken, it is said he had thoughts of killing himself. Labienus fell in the battle. The head of Sextus Pom

pey was laid at the victor's feet. Six months after, in the Ides of March, Cæsar

was assassinated in the midst of the Roman Senate. Had he been defeated at Pharsalia, Thapsus, or Munda, he would have suffered the fate of the great Pompey, Metellus, Scipio, and Sextus Pompey. Pompey, to whom the Romans were so much attached; whom they surnamed the Great, when he was but twenty-four years of age; who, after conquering in eighteen campaigns, triumphed over three parts of the world, and carried the Roman name to such an elevation of glory; Pompey, defeated at Pharsalia, there closed his career. Yet he was master of the sea, while his rival had no fleet.

"Cæsar's principles were the same as those of Alexander and Hannibal; to keep his forces in junction; not to be vulnerable in any direction; to advance rapidly on important points; to calculate on moral means, the reputation of his arms, and the fear he inspired; and also on political means, for the preservation of the fidelity of his allies, and the obedience of the conquered nations.

"Gustavus Adolphus crossed the Baltic, took possession of the isle of Rugen and Pomerania, and led his forces to the Vistula, the Rhine, and the Danube. He

fought two battles; was victorious both at Leipzig and Lutzen, but met his death in the latter field. In this short career, however, he established a great reputation, by his boldness, the rapidity of his movements, the discipline and intrepidity of his troops. Gustavus Adolphus was actuated by the principles of Alexander, Hannibal, and Cæsar."

He pursues this review through the campaigns of Turenne-whom he considers as altogether superior to his rival Montecuculi-and those of Frederic and Eugene. His own campaigns, the most triumphant and celebrated of them all, are rapidly traversed, and his military similitude to the race of conquerors sustained in every shape of profound theory and fierce and resistless execution. It is here that we see Napoleon in his true point of distincpulsive or contemptible. As a politition. In all other aspects he was reand tyrannical; cian, ignorant, narrow, as an individual, vicious, mean, and cruel; but, as a soldier, exhibiting the first rank of genius; bold, comprehensive, indefatigable, and original. Englishmen are not likely to be the adulators of this scourge of the human race; but it is impossible to look upon his rise and his career, the sudden splendour in which he shot above the clouds of that stormy and sullen Revolution; the mighty mastery with which he wielded the national strength, broken and dismayed as it had been; the appalling rapidity with which he crushed all that Europe had been building up of sovereignty for ages, without acknowledging that Napoleon was among the most powerful and most formidable spirits that ever influenced society. Mankind may well rejoice that he is in his grave. Of what other man for these thousand years can it be said, that his life was a terror, and his death a relief to the world?

DEAR NORTH,

YOUR anger with me for not writing articles for your Magazine, is most unreasonable. You know that the moment I turn my back on Edinburgh, you and all your concerns are forgotten, or, if remembered, heartily wished at the devil. Then come your infernal letters, week after week, with that huge head on the wax, the look of which makes me break out into a cold sweat. Oh, that the Magazine had never existed! Then might I have had some comfort in this life. How the devil can I write articles, without books, pen, ink, and paper? Oh, Lord! that the Magazine would but stop for a few months now and then, like My Grandmother. With what a venerable grace does that old lady re-appear on her crutch! and how complacently does the public welcome the bed-ridden! So would it be with Maga. Let her pretend to be dead till Christmas, and all her sins will be forgotten. But, oh! my dear sir, these eternal torments are more than flesh and blood can endure; and, good episcopal as I am, you have sickened me indeed with the THIRTY-NINE AR

"Mr Stevens, from Olaus Wormius, proves it to be a custom of the Danish kings to be buried in their armour. Seward, Earl of Northumberland, who lived in the days of Edward the Confessor, was, by his desire, buried, armed at all points. But what is more strange, Fuller, in his Worthies, relates, that one of our old savage warriors would go to bed dressed in his armour to his new-married bride." Well done, Tom Davies! Thou art the first man that ever indulged in such a fancy on beholding the buried Majesty of Denmark. Is it the King of Portugal, or who is it, that on his marriage night,

marches to bed with a cocked hat, booted and spurred, with a huge sword carried in state before him, and his bride bringing up the rear in her bedgown?

"Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain."

66

Besides, the jingle of lecherous and treacherous, the first is become almost obsolete, and, in compliance with modern manners, should be omitted, or exchanged for a word less offensive." Well done, Tom, again. What think ye of that, Mr Bowdler of Bath?

Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king.” "The play's the thing,

"That the representation of murder, before the murder, will not always produce the desired effect, (who the devil supposes it would?) we have a remarkable instance in the story of Derby and Fisher.

"They were two gentlemen, very intimately acquainted. The latter was a dependent on the former, who generously supplied him with the means of living as became a man of birth and education. But no benefits are sufficient to bind the base and the ungrateful. After parting one evening with Mr Derby, at his chambers in the Temple, with all the usual marks of friendship, Fisher contrived to get into his apartments, with an intent to rob and murder his friend. This he unhappily accomplished. For some time no suspicion fell on the murderer. He appeared as usual in all public places. He was in a side-box at the play of Hamlet; and when Wilkes uttered that part of the soliloquy, which spoke of a

Guilty creature's sitting at a play,' a lady turned about, and, looking at him, said, 'I wish the villain who murdered Mr Derby were here.' The lady and Fisher were strangers to each other. It was afterwards known, that this was the man who had killed his friend. The persons present in the box declared, that neither the speech from the actor, nor the exclamation from the lady, made the least external impression on the murderer. Fisher soon escaped to Rome, where he professed himself a Roman Catholic, and

"In the play of the Recruiting Officer, Wilkes was the Captain Plume, and Pinkethman one of the recruits. The Captain, when he enlisted him, asked his name. Instead of answering as he ought, Pinkey replied, 'Why don't you know my name, Bob? I thought every fool had known that!' Wilkes, in a rage, whispered to him the name of the recruit, Thomas Appeltree. The other retorted aloud, Thomas Appeltree! Thomas Devil! My name is Will Pinkethman;' and immediately addressing an inhabitant of the upper regions, he said, 'Harkee, friend, don't you know my name?''Yes, Master Pinky,' said a respondent, we know it very well.' The playhouse was now in an uproar; the audience at first enjoyed the petulant folly of Pinkethman, and the distress of Wilkes; but, in the progress of the joke, it grew tiresome, and Pinkey met his deserts a very severe reprimand in a hiss; and this mark of displeasure he changed into applause, by crying out, with a countenance as melancholy as he could make it, in a loud nasal twang, 6 Odso, I fear I am wrong!"-Let Liston and others read this, and blush for their gratuitous buffoonery. A low jester on the stage ought never to be suffered to use the slightest insolence to the audience. His drollery must be bounded by the row of lights above the heads of the fiddlers; and the moment he presumes farther, every person in the theatre has a right to pelt him with bad pence, or worse oranges. A hiss is insufficient -nothing like a lash on the brazen brow of the buffoon. Low farce is, at the best, somewhere about the meanest of all allowable human recreation; and the animal performing it does, for the time being, make himself too contemptible to retain any right to look a gentleman in the face, much less to colloquy with a lady in a side-box. There can be no illiberality in saying so and therefore once more we repeat, "Well done, Tom Davies !"

"Save me, and hover o'er me with your wings,

You heavenly guards."

"At the appearance of the ghost, Hamlet immediately rises from his seat affrighted; at the same time he contrives to kick down his chair, which, by making a sudden noise, it was imagined, would CONTRIBUTE TO THE

PERTURBATION AND TERROR OF THE

INCIDENT. But this, in my opinion, is a poor stage-trick, and should be avoided."

Well done, Tom Davies, again say we. Let us see what sort of notes you write on Julius Cæsar. Not so very bad, by any means, as might have been anticipated. Tom argues the celebrated question, "Was Brutus justifiable," &c., and we think he puts it in a new light. "The Romans," says he, "weighed their fishes at table, and took a pleasure in beholding them expire. The death of a mullus, with the variety and change of colours in its last moments, says Dr Arbuthnot from Pliny, was reckoned one of the most entertaining spectacles in the world. AND NOW I HOPE WE SHALL HEAR

NO MORE OF THE WISEST AND BEST MEN AMONGST THE ROMANS APPROVING THE ASSASSINATION OF JULIUS CESAR." This settles the question for ever-so let the Speculative Society discuss it no more.-Oh! North! I can read no more of this Tom Davies. The book is said to be extremely entertaining, and no doubt your correspondent T. D. could shew it to be so. But I hate the stage, and all that belongs to it; and am of opinion that none of Shakespeare's plays were originally intended for representation. I have no heart to prove this just now; but, take my word for it, it was the case; and in this way can we at once account for our admirable friend Lamb's being affected so much more in the closet than the theatre by Willy's tragedies.

Here is "British Field Sports, by William Henry Scott. Sherwood, Neely, and Jones, &c. 1818." "There must," says this humane and excellent writer, "be no indiscriminate periodical whipping of the hounds in the lump." I seriously recommend this advice to the gentlemen of your Magazine. What do they mean by everlastingly laying on these poor hounds, Hazlitt, the Hunts, and all that pack? It is of no

use. Nothing will do but hanging. By the way, Scott, my good fellow, will you have the goodness, in another edition of your excellent volume, to tell me, whether a fox-hound or a race-horse is swiftest for a race of four miles? I observe that, at page 498, you inform us, that Flying Childers, perhaps the fleetest horse that ever ran, did the Beacon course of four miles, one furlong, one hundred and thirty-eight yards, in seven minutes and thirty seconds; and, at page 407, you state positively, that a fox-hound bitch of Colonel Thornton's ran four miles in seven minutes and half a second, which, good sir, is faster than Childers. Curse me if I can swallow that at my time of life. You also inform us, that Childers ran three miles, six furlongs, and ninety-three yards, in six minutes and forty seconds, adding, "nearly after the rate of one mile in the minute." Now, worthy sir, Joseph Hume himself could not have exposed himself more than you do here; for, look again, and you will at once observe, that such running is more nearly at the rate of a mile in two minutes.

"Cock-fighting," says our author, ❝is pronounced in a breath horrible! Weighed, however, in the balance of reason and fact, it is attended with the least cruelty of all our diversions, not even my favourite horse-racing excepted. I shall be very expeditious in my proof. The game-cock is kept in a state of happiness and comfort until the day of battle; he cannot then be forced; but, in fighting, is actuated by his natural instincts-is in fact gratified; and if he falls by his adversary's weapon, he is the sooner out of the sense of pain. Let not the reader, however, mistake me for an advocate of cock-fighting, for which, in truth, I have no kind of relish; and probably should feel almost as wearied, and out of place, at the cockpit royal, as at sitting to hear a longwinded puritanical sermon-an entertainment to which stale bread and sour small beer are luxuries."

This is well put, North; and perfectly justifies you and me in our favourite sport. A cocker on a large scale, like my Lord Derby, for example, fights, we shall say, (trial battles and all,) five hundred birds per annum. One and all of these birds enjoys the utmost happiness that bird

can enjoy, during a life of one, two, or three years, as may happen; and the death of one and all of them, time taken at an average, occupies about three minutes of cut and come again. But besides these five hundred birds which fight, several hundred more have been called into existence, which do not fight at all, but enjoy the luxury of a natural death, in their chickenhood, from the hands of Dolly the scullion. Moreover, somewhere about a thousand hen-chickens have been clacked, which, but for cock-fighting, had never chipped the shell, and which are either humanely made into pies during the tenderness of their untrodden virginity, or kept for breeding; and in neither predicament are they ever heard to utter a complaint. A prodigious sum total of feathered happiness is thus produced; and a constant cock-a-doodle-doo kept up from farm-house to farm-house all over England, than which nothing can be more agreeable to the feelings of a man and a Christian. Q. E. D.

"Patience," says Mr Scott," is the angler's chief virtue." Here, sir, you are wrong. No doubt, if you take your station at the stern of a punt in a pond, and voluntarily stake your credit on an attempt to delude a brace of perch, out of the scanty brotherhood that are par-boiled in stagnant mud during the dog-days, patience will be found highly useful, indeed indispensable. But what has patience to do on the green or rocky banks of a beautiful stream, with all its pools and shallows, and its light and shade, and its calms and breezes, and its silence, its murmurs, its dashing, and its thunder? Why, the angler so placed, is happy as a bridegroom on his wedding-day; and you may as well tell me, that of an ardent youth of twenty, on that latter occasion, the chief virtue is patience. Stuff! The less patience the better. An angler should be impatient, eager, bold, active, vigorous, and full of fire-in every respect the reverse of Mr H. of the Liber Amoris, who, for his drivelling, was despised, even by the daughter of a tailor; knew not how to bait his hook, or fasten his rod; nor, after he had missed the mouth of a loose-fish by his awkward and impotent skillessness, had the sense, by a sudden jerk, to catch her by the tail-fin. A Cockney, sitting in the stocks, must have patience; but not so

ed Portugal 72,000 strong. It attacked the enemy in position on the heights of Busaco. The two armies were of equal force, but the position of Busaco was very strong. The attack failed, and the next morning the army turned those lines by proceeding on Coimbra. The enemy then effected his retreat on Lisbon, burning and laying waste the country. The French general pursued him closely, left no corps of observation to restrain the division of 15,000 militia at Oporto, abandoned his rear, and Coimbra, his place of depot, where he left 5000 sick and wounded. Before he had arrived at Lisbon, the Portuguese division had already occupied Coimbra, and cut him off from all means of retreat. He ought to have left a corps of 6000 men to occupy Coimbra, and keep the Portuguese division in awe.

"It is true, that he would in that case have arrived at Lisbon with only 60,000 men, but that number was sufficient, if it was the English General's intention to embark; if, on the contrary, he intended to maintain himself in Portugal, as there was every reason to believe, the French ought not to have passed Coimbra, but to have taken up a good position before that city, even at several marches distance, fortified themselves there, subjected Oporto by means of a detachment, organized their rear and their communications with Almeida, and waited till Badajoz was taken, and the army of Andalusia arrived on the Tagus. When arrived at the foot of the intrenchments of Lisbon, the French general failed in resolution; yet he was aware of the existence of those lines, since the enemy had been labouring on them for three months. The prevalent opinion is, that if he had attacked them on the day of his arrival, he would have carried them, but two days after it was no longer possible. The Anglo-Portuguese army was there reinforced by a great number of battalions of militia; so that, without gaining any advantage, the French general lost 5000 sick and wounded, and his communications with his rear. When before Lisbon, he discovered that he had not sufficient ammunition, he had made no calculation previously to his operation."

Napoleon here labours to shift the defeat on the shoulders of his old rival, the Enfant gaté de la Victoire. That an old soldier like Massena should have forgotten to calculate his cartridges, is absurd; the true miscalculation was on the bravery of the British, and the ability of their general. Some of his desultory and scat

tered thoughts are highly characteristic of the man.

"After the re-embarkation of the English army (at Corunna), the King of Spain (Joseph) remained inactive. He ought to have marched on Cadiz, Valencia, and Lisbon. Political means would then have done the rest. No one can deny, that if the court of Austria, instead of declaring war, had allowed Napoleon to remain four months longer in Spain, all would have been over. The presence of a general is indispensable. He is the head, the whole of an army. It was not the Roman army that subdued Gaul-it was Cæsar himself; nor was it the Carthaginian army that made the Republic tremble, but Hannibal himself; nor was it the Macedonian army which reached the Indus, but Alexander. It was not the French army which carried the war to the Weser and the Inn, but Turenne ; nor was it the Prussian army which, for seven years, defended Prussia against the three greatest powers of Europe-it was Frederick the Great."

The motive of the Russian war was undoubtedly Napoleon's ambition of being a universal conqueror, urged on by his personal hatred of England. The conquest of Russia was contemplated as completing the European barrier against English commerce and continental alliance. The alleged mo tives, however, are curious, and not inconsistent with the true.

"It was considered that the French empire, which Napoleon had created by so many victories, would infallibly be dismembered at his death; and the sceptre of Europe would pass into the hands of a Czar, unless Napoleon drove back the Russians beyond the Borysthenes, and raised up the throne of Poland, the natural barrier of the empire. In 1812, Austria, Prussia, Germany, Swisserland, and Italy, marched under the French eagles was it not natural that Napoleon should think the moment was arrived for consolidating the immense edifice which he had raised; but on the summit of which Russia would lean with the whole weight of her power, as long as she should be able to send her armies at pleasure on the Oder? Alexander was young and vigorous, like his empire. It was to be presumed that he would survive Napo

leon. Such was the whole secret of the war."

The invasion of Russia, as it was the last, was the mightiest effort of the