him an opportunity of doing justice to his brother-officers late of the Plantaganet.

After, in several instances, flatly contradicting his own official accounts, the American reviewer puts European gravity to the test, by declaring, first, that his government made war in defence of the universal rights of man," and next, that the modest,' or, as recently and more truly styled, 'arrogant,' commodore Perry, when he filched the commencing words of Nelson's letter,+ was paying his lordship a high compliment.'†

6

Had the writer in the American Chronicle' employed less

Naval

acrimony,' and

more research, in his calling, he might have received the author's thanks for pointing out several real inaccuracies,' particularly as to the size and armaments of the American ships. But these inaccuracies,' along with the hated 'cyphering business,' he has let 'pass by,' to

* Analectic Mag. and Nav. Chron. vol. VIII. p. 185. + Ib. 145.

James's Nav. Occurr. p. 294.

be rectified by the author himself, in his two works, that followed, in quick succession, that little hastily-drawn sketch, which, the American reviewer, not having seen those works, is pleased to say, ' appears to contain all that has hitherto been urged, as well as every thing that can be urged, in extenuation of the numerous disasters of England during the last war;'* but, as he more truly than consistently adds, which is in reality an indifferent production.'†, If

therefore; and if the
'admissions,' such as

So, production' teems with

British officers' ought

to 'feel mortified at,'

why is the American

reviewer, in his candid' examination of it, so extremely irritable? Even his own countrymen, the gentle' readers for whose entertainment he has labored and sweated so much, will attribute his anger to the dilemma into which he is placed, by the novel' way of weighing and measuring, by the pound and by, the foot, battles' that have turned out SO

6

* Analectic Mag. and Nav. Chron. Vol. VII. p. 289. Ib. Vol. VII. p. 307.

† Ib. p. 295.

lucrative to the American press, in general, and to the American Naval Chronicle,' in particular.

What language contained in the Synopsis,' written when the two countries were at war, equals, in falsehood, absurdity, or intended 'severity,' the assertion, made while the two countries are at peace, that American officers are more brave than their rivals' ?*

How much moderation, candour,' and discernment, the writer of the American review can bring into discussion, when his country is a party, may be gathered from his comparing, without meaning it in irony, the battle of New Orleans,' with the battles of Cressy and Agincourt.'

This sudden change from naval to military warfare recalls the author's attention to the subject immediately before him. The first point he would press upon the reader's attention is, that the system of tactics adapted to the

* Analectic Mag. and Nav. Chron. Vol. VII. p. 306.

Ib. p. 294.

cultivated plains of Europe cannot be practised amidst the wild regions of America. Woods, precipices, creeks, and morasses, are traversed with ease by native troops, while a body of the best disciplined foreigners is either opposed in its advance by insurmountable obstacles, or led into an ambush, where the more ardent the courage, the greater is the slaughter, the more certain the defeat.

The British soldier can seldom trace his acquaintance with fire-arms beyond the day of his enlistment; but the American soldier has been accustomed, from his infancy, to the free use of the most destructive of all fire-arms, the rifle. No laws have interfered to restrain him from amusing his fancy, or furnishing his table, with the game that so abundantly surrounds his home; and the daily toils of the huntsman, while they have fitted his body for enduring, without fatigue, the longest marches, have familiarized him to the intricacies of his native forests. Where bush-fighting can be practised, he is truly

formidable: an open country, and a struggle with the bayonet, he alike avoids, as the bane of his hopes.

Nearly the whole of the military contests treated of in these volumes were carried on amidst the thinly inhabited, and, of course, but slightly cultivated, parts of North-America. The reader whose mind is filled with the justly celebrated fame of British troops must, therefore, be careful how he forms an opinion upon the merits of the combatants. He should recollect, that the American troops fought their battles upon their own ground; and obtained, in consequence, a decided local superiority over the British sent out against them. Viewed thus, it cannot be objected, if all estimates of relative force between British and American troops, other than where batteries are concerned, be founded upon the principle of not a presumed inequality of powers, but-man for man, or unit for unit.

The historian may describe, in the most impassioned language, the meeting of two armies,