but we think differently; being persuaded that the degree of perfection to which the docks, buildings, machinery, ships, artillery, and all the implements of war, are carried in Great Britain, is well calculated to leave on the minds of the visitors an impression highly favourable to the state of the arts, and the resources of the nation to which they belong. Of this fact, M. Dupin's work affords a strong corroboration; since, with the single exception of the hulks or prison-ships, all our naval institutions, civil and military, practical and theoretical, receive an almost unqualified admiration; and few, we believe, are better qualified for giving a correct opinion on these matters than himself.

As M. Dupin writes solely for the instruction of his countrymen, and thinks it necessary to describe, in its minutest details, the whole system by which the civil and military affairs of the navy of Great Britain are conducted, it may be reasonably supposed that the greater part of his work offers but little that is wholly new or interesting to the English reader. We shall confine our notice, therefore, mostly to those general observations which he makes on the navy, and naval service of Great Britain, as compared with those of France; correcting the trifling mistakes into which he incidentally falls, and which are surprizingly few for a foreigner, on a subject which embraces so vast a variety of matter.

In his notice of the powers vested in the Lord High Admiral and executed by the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty, he observes that there is on record an exception to this hierarchy of the service,' in the person of the late Lord Chatham, the 'despotic Chatham, who commenced the war in 1756 by the greatest act of piracy of which any civilized nation could be guilty.' This Chatham, it seems, being then prime minister, wrote out himself instructions for the fleet, and sent them to be signed by the Lords of the Admiralty, ordering his private secretary to cover the writing with a leaf of blank paper;'*-thus, he continues, "the natural directors of the English navy remained in entire ignorance of the operation for which they were nevertheless to prepare all the elements.' We ought, perhaps, to hold him the more pardonable for repeating so absurd a story, on recollecting that the late Mr. Whitbread (on the same respectable authority, perhaps) asked, in the House of Commons, if it was not usual for the laylords of the Admiralty, as he was pleased to call them, to sign papers with a blank sheet covering the writing?

In investigating the cause of that vast superiority of the British over the French navy, in all its departments, civil and military,

He quotes for his authority Vie du Comte de Chatham,' which we suppose to be a translation of the wretched publication of Almon the bookseller-a mere tissue of falsehoods and absurdities, and wholly unworthy of any notice whatever. M. Dupin

M. Dupin endeavours to account for it, in a great degree, from the general popularity of the service, and the high encouragement given to those who enter into it. These, he thinks, may be ranked among the first of moral causes, which, operating upon others of a local or physical nature, have contributed to raise the navy of England to that high pitch of power and glory which it attained in the late revolutionary war. The local circumstances which naturally create an attachment to the seafaring life, are thus described.

'The metropolis of the British Empire includes, within its walls, the most frequented port in the universe. It is the commerce of the sea, which alone has made London the most populous and the most wealthy of the capitals of Europe; vessels from a hundred different countries wave their flags upon the Thames, in the very bosom of this immense city nevertheless there the British flags alone surpass in number those of so many other nations.'

The citizen of London is justly proud at the sight of so many fleets of merchant-ships, which daily arrive from the sea, or descend the river, —these, to export the products of the national industry-those, to import foreign produce or treasure. He cannot contemplate this immense bustle, without being convinced that the commerce and the sovereignty of the sea have created the wealth and the grandeur of his native city.. But these results of a mercantile navy are not confined to London alone

Edinburgh, (he continues,) on the shore of the most beautiful gulf of Scotland; Dublin, opposite to England, and on the spot most convenient for a rapid communication between London and Ireland; Quebec, on the banks of the river St. Lawrence, the Thames of Canada; Calcutta, on the borders of the Ganges; Halifax, on the northern coast of America; and the City of the Cape on the southern extremity of Africa,―on that point of storms which must be doubled in order to communicate between India and Europe-in a word, in all parts of the world the central points of the British power participate in the benefits of the commerce of the sea; and by these benefits contribute to the splendour, the wealth, and the power of the people and of the govern

ment.'

'In England, in Scotland, in Ireland, not only the capitals, but a multitude of cities of the first rank are also built on the sea-coasts, or on the borders of large navigable rivers-Bristol, Hull, and Liverpool; Dundee, Aberdeen, and Glasgow; Belfast, Cork, and Waterford, are united by commerce with all the cities, with all the manufactories of the interior; and the interests of the maritime cities are, at the same time, the interests of the whole country.'

'No country in the world is so well intersected with roads and canals, upon which goods and people are conveyed with extreme rapidity, from one extremity to the other of every county; there is no one point within the three kingdoms from whence one may not, in four-and-twenty hours,

arrive at one or other of the seas which surround them.'-tom. ii. p. 2, 3.

To these facilities and conveniences, which accustom young people to voyages by water, M. Dupin adds the universal fashion of visiting the sea-coasts in the bathing-season, by that class of society which, in France, he says, is destined to retire at that period to their estates in the country. These visits to the coast give rise to numerous parties of pleasure, which venture out upon the sea; these, with the fleets of shipping passing and repassing, all contribute to create a prejudice in favour of navigation, and to excite that passion for sea-voyages which kindles in a thousand hearts; elle livre à la navigation militaire, ou marchande, ou savante, une foule de volontaires, qui reviennent dans leur patrie, avec des trophées, des trésors, ou des connoissances nouvelles : dignes conquêtes de la mer !'

From these and other causes, M. Dupin observes that,

In the eyes of the people of England, the marine is the natural element of the British power, and ships are the moveable ramparts of the territory of Albion. It is not merely in the figurative language of poetry, but in the most familiar language of conversation, that Englishmen, in speaking of their ships of war, emphatically call them "our bulwarks, our wooden walls."-tom. ii. p. 4.

M. Dupin assigns another reason (somewhat hackneyed within the walls of parliament) for the preference shown by our countrymen to the navy over the army-it is, that the former never can endanger the liberties of the people, while a standing army places them in jeopardy: add to this, that the promotion in the navy being gratuitous, talent and valour are sure of succeeding in that service. Another consideration is the liberal shares of prize-money to which the superior officers are entitled, and which cannot fail to inspire a well-grounded hope of the acquisition of an independent fortune. In short,' he concludes, while admirals and post-captains enjoy all the favours of the court, fill a multitude of honourable situations near the person of the sovereign, arrive in considerable numbers at the peerage, and represent, for several boroughs and counties, the people in the House of Commons, we find only a small number of general officers and colonels who have received such marks of favour and confidence, whether from the prince or from the people.'

Here M. Dupin is evidently venturing beyond his depth. On these matters, however, a Frenchman may be permitted to blunder; but we cannot forbear smiling when, on turning to the list of the House of Commons, we find about thirteen admirals and captains representing the navy, while there are no less than fiveand-forty generals and colonels of the army; and if M. Dupin had

taken

taken the trouble to consult the Red Book, he would have found about a dozen general officers as lords and grooms of the bedchamber, to one solitary admiral, and a post-captain of the navy! He is somewhat more correct in quoting the honours bestowed on Howe, St. Vincent, Duncan, and Nelson, as proofs of the value set on naval exploits by the government; and as a testimony of the national gratitude to our officers, seamen, and marines, the public thanks given to them by the representatives of the people in parliament: but we lay no great stress on a circumstance, which he thinks remarkable, that, after the great naval victories obtained by the four officers above-mentioned, medals should have been given to the admirals and captains only, while, after the battle of Waterloo, all the individuals of the army engaged on that day, were permitted to wear that distinguished mark of approbation from the officers of the highest rank, down to the lowest soldier. Medals, in our service, seem never to have been systematically adopted; but have occasionally been distributed, incidentally or capriciously, and not on any known principle; and on this account have never created any jealousy between the two services. We admit, however, that there is something in the following observations, which, to a foreigner, could not fail to place the superior popularity of the navy in a striking, though fallacious point of view.

'I have traversed the greater number of the most considerable cities of Great Britain, and every where, even in places the most secluded, on the wildest borders of the north of Caledonia, I have seen durable monuments erected by the gratitude of the natives, to the memory of Nelson. Let us now compare these innumerable monuments with those which that victory, the most important ever gained by the British army, has produced. Trafalgar had not completed the downfall of the French empire, and Waterloo crushed this imperial fabric, restored from its ruins as if by enchantment-Waterloo delivers England and Europe from the terrors which they had so long felt, and made them tremble at the sight of the French eagles-Waterloo places (at least for some years) the British power at the head of the coalition of the continental governments. Notwithstanding these things, in traversing the three kingdoms, one looks in vain for frequent monuments in celebration of this memorable triumph. The names given to a certain number of streets and squares, a few inscriptions, here and there a statue, the name of a bridge, built for a special purpose before the campaign of the Hundred Days had commenced, these are all that remain in England to perpetuate the memory of a victory obtained by sacrifices, the burden of which still weighs heavily on a people restored to their sober senses (désenivré.)'-tom. ii. p. 12.

The sacrifice, no doubt, was great; and, whatever M. Dupin may think, was made by the people in their sober senses, and on

mature

mature reflection, that it was more wise, as well as more glorious, to sacrifice a part of the national property to secure the remainder, than by tamely sitting down and husbanding our resources,' to let in a brutal and ferocious enemy, who had vauntingly threatened London with the fate of Carthage, and insolently proclaimed his intention to convert this beautiful island into a kitchen-garden for his soldiers.

But M. Dupin mistakes egregiously, if he thinks the reflecting part of the nation does not fully appreciate the value of the victory of Waterloo; or that the national gratitude is to be measured by the applause of the populace, or by pillars of stone. The memory of the heroes who fought and fell at Waterloo will live in the national annals, and, what is still better, in the hearts of the virtuous and best part of their countrymen! A nobler monument of a nation's gratitude, than the proudest pillar of stone, was raised to such of the surviving saviours of Europe as were disabled, and to the widows and orphans of those who fell in the glorious cause, in the spontaneous and most liberal contributions for the comfort and relief of the sufferers, which flowed in from the most distant corners of the British dominions, from the northern extremity of Canada, to the land of New South Wales and Van Dieman; where even the banished outcast felt that he was still a Briton, and shared and exulted in the glories of his country. M. Dupin does not know, but it ought to be known to him, to Europe, and the world, that nearly £600,000 was raised from the impulse of real and unostentatious charity, grounded on the purest feelings of gratitude and humanity;-that of this sum, £75,000 was given to the Prussians who took part in that glorious and decisive day-that £192,000 (including the foregoing sum) have been bestowed in gratuities to wounded officers and privates;that annuities to the amount of £23,000 a-year have been granted to the widows and children of those who fell in battle; and that, from the remaining fund, portions continue to be granted to the female orphans of officers and privates on their marriage-THESE ARE THE MONUMENTS, more durable than stone, which a grateful nation has raised to the memory of the victory of Waterloo! The fact is, that M. Dupin has mistaken the thing done for the man who did it-the act for the agent, It was not to commemorate the victory of Trafalgar, nor of the Nile, nor of Copenhagen, nor of St. Vincent, that the pillars which he speaks of were raised-but to testify the feelings of those who erected them for the memory of the MAN whose whole race of life was one career of glory, and who fell at last in the arms of victory: and accordingly they are known only as Nelson's pillars ;'-they are the pious testimonials of veneration, and regret for the loss of a hero,'