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making an unnecessary, disorderly, and shameful retreat. I am, sir, your most obedient servant.

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"I beg your Excellency's pardon for the inaccuracy in misdating my letter. You cannot afford me greater pleasure than in giving me the opportunity of showing to America the sufficiency of her respective servants. I trust that temporary power of office, and the tinsel dignity attending it, will not be able, by all the mists they can raise, to offuscate the bright rays of truth. In the mean time your Excellency can have no objection to my retiring from the army. I am, sir, your most obedient humble servant.

"SIR,

GENERAL LEE TO GENERAL WASHINGTON.

"CHARLES LEE."

"Camp, 30 June, 1778.

"Since I had the honor of addressing my letter by Colonel Fitzgerald to your Excellency, I have reflected on both your situation and mine, and beg leave to observe, that it will be for our mutual convenience that a court of inquiry should be immediately ordered; but I could wish that it might be a court-martial; for, if the affair is drawn into length, it may be difficult to collect the necessary evidences, and perhaps might bring on a paper war betwixt the adherents to both parties, which may occasion some disagreeable feuds on the continent; for all are not my friends, nor all your admirers. I must entreat therefore, from your love of justice, that you will immediately exhibit your charge, and that on the first halt I may be brought to a trial; and am, sir, your most obedient humble servant.

"SIR,

GENERAL WASHINGTON TO GENERAL LEE.

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"CHARLES LEE."

Head-Quarters, English Town, 30 June, 1778.

"Your letter by Colonel Fitzgerald, and also one of this date, have been duly received. I have sent Colonel Scammell, the Adjutant-General, to put you in arrest, who will deliver you a copy of the charges on which you will be tried. I am, sir, your most obedient servant.

CHARGES AGAINST GENERAL LEE.

"GEORGE WASHINGTON."

"First: Disobedience of orders in not attacking the enemy on the 28th of June, agreeably to repeated instructions.

"Secondly: Misbehaviour before the enemy on the same day, by making an unnecessary, disorderly, and shameful retreat.

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Thirdly: Disrespect to the Commander-in-chief, in two letters, dated the 1st of July and 28th of June."

"The court-martial was convened on the 4th of July, consisting of one majorgeneral, four brigadiers, and eight colonels. Lord Stirling was president. The court sat, from time to time, till the 12th of August, when they declared their opinion, that General Lee was guilty of all the charges, and sentenced him to be suspended from any command in the armies of the United States, for the term of twelve months. The testimony at the trial was extremely full, and it exhibits a minute detail of the operations in the battle of Monmouth. Congress approved the sentence of the court

"This letter, in the original, is dated June 28th, which is evidently a mistake, because that was the day of the battle; and moreover it must have been written after the preceding one from General Washington, to which it is an answer. Hence both of General Lee's offensive letters were erroneously dated."

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martial, by a vote of thirteen in the affirmative and seven in the negative, and ordered the Proceedings of the court to be published."

Washington's delicacy was strongly exemplified in his communications to Congress upon the subject; and that body entertained the highest sense of his conduct in the battle. President Laurens wrote to him

"I arrived here on Thursday last, but hitherto have not collected a sufficient number of States to form a Congress; consequently I have received no commands. Your Excellency will therefore be pleased to accept this as the address of an individual, intended to assure you, sir, of my hearty congratulations with my countrymen, on the success of the American arms under your immediate command at the battle of Monmouth, and more particularly of my own happiness in the additional glory achieved by you in retrieving the honor of these States in the moment of an alarming dilemma. It is not my design to attempt encomiums. I am as unequal to the task as the act is unnecessary. Love and respect for your Excellency are impressed on the heart of every grateful American, and your name will be revered by posterity. Our acknowledgments are especially due to Heaven for the preservation of your person, necessarily exposed for the salvation of America to the most imminent danger on the late occasion.-MS. Letter, July 7th."

In our observations upon the first two volumes of this publication, we made a remark upon the question of the authorship of the papers bearing Washington's name. We find in the fifth volume a note of Mr. Sparks, which bears upon the point, and which we shall extract. There can be but little doubt of the correctness of this gentleman's reasoning and conclusions. He is speaking of a report to Congress on the general organization and management of the army.

·

"In the Life of Alexander Hamilton, Vol. I. p. 174, it is said of this paper, that it is manifestly the work of Colonel Hamilton. This inference is drawn from the circumstance, that a draft exists in his handwriting. But it was, in fact, the work of many hands. There are few points in the paper itself, which are not contained or intimated in some of the communications of the general officers. As one of General Washington's aids, it was natural that Colonel Hamilton should be employ. ed to arrange and condense the materials into the proper form of a report, especially as no one connected with the General's family was better qualified to execute the task, both from his knowledge of the subject and his ability. This is the only sense in which it can be considered as his work. Indeed, whoever is accustomed to consult the manuscripts of public documents, will often be led into error, if he ascribes the authorship of every paper to the person in whose handwriting it may be found. This remark has particular force, when applied to the important papers to which Washington affixed his name. They were always the results of patient thought and investigation on his own part, aided by such light as he could collect from others, in whose intelligence and judgment he could confide. Whatever pen he may have employed to embody these results, it may be laid down as a rule, to which there is no exception, that the writer aimed to express as clearly and compactly as he could, what he knew to be the sentiments of Washington. The fact alone can account for the extraordinary uniformity in style, modes of expression, and turns of thought, which prevail throughout the immense body of Washington's letters, from his earliest youth to the end of his life. It will seldom be accurate to say, in regard to any of his papers, that the person, in whose handwriting they may be found, was their author; nor indeed is it believed, that there is in history an instance of a public man, who was, in the genuine sense of the term, more emphatically the author of the papers, which received the sanction of his name."

We cannot conclude our review of these letters without no

ticing the vein of piety which so many of them exhibit. A lowly dependence upon God was a feature of Washington's character, that claims our instant respect; and which, while we so justly accord to him the appellation of great, amply justifies the nobler addition of good.

ART. V.-A Sketch of Chinese History, Ancient and Modern : comprising a retrospect of the Foreign Intercourse and Trade with China. Illustrated by a new and corrected Map of the Empire. BY THE REV. CHARLES GUTZLAFF, now, and for many years past, resident in that Country. 2 vols. pp. 312 and 380. New York. John P. Haven: 1834.

THE Celestial Empire, as its inhabitants proudly style it, has long excited the interest of the European race. The earliest profane historians had heard of a civilized people beyond the countries inhabited by the wandering tribes of Scythia, more just than the rest of the human race; and it is no stretch of imagination to conceive that this people, to whom the early Greeks, hearing of them from nations residing in the north, ascribed a position under the poles, were the Chinese, who even then had adopted the lofty code of morals which they still teach, if they do not practise.

In later times, at the close of the dark ages of Europe, a family of Venetian merchants, the Polos, penetrated into this remote region, and returning loaded with wealth, excited the imagination of poets, and roused the enterprise of navigators, with visions of the riches and power of the Empire of Cathay, and its vast and populous capital Cambalu. Such visions played before the eyes of Columbus, when he launched his bark into an unexplored ocean; and he died under the persuasion that instead of having given a new world to the inhabitants of Europe, he had penetrated to some of the remote provinces of the fabulous empires of China and Japan.

When de Gama had shown the way from the Atlantic to the ocean of India, Portuguese, Spaniards, Dutch and English in succession, visited the seaports of China. Here they found a civilization and useful arts in many respects more advanced than their own; and when we consider of what materials the earlier expeditions were composed, how rude and ignorant were the crews of the vessels by which these navigations were accomplished, how fierce and lawless even the most accomplished of their officers, we have no reason to wonder that they were stig

matized by the enlightened part of the Chinese as barbarians; a term of reproach, that, in spite of the advances since made in European civilization, is still applied to all strangers who visit the empire.

The superiority which the Chinese arrogate to themselves, if not founded on the existing state of things, is well supported upon recollections of the past. When Thebes and Nineveh were the boast of the western nations, the progenitors of the Chinese were not behind the Egyptian and Assyrian empires in civilization. When the Latin eagle reached its remotest eyrie in the mountains of Armenia, Chinese armies manœuvred on the eastern shores of the Caspian; and when Attila thundered at the gates of Rome, he led hordes expelled from the neighbourhood of the great wall, by the address of Chinese diplomacy.

The inventions on which modern nations pride themselves, are of separate and remote origin in China; the magnetic needle directed armies and caravans, in the deserts of Central Asia, and pointed out the course of junks from Canton to the Persian Gulf, while European navigators had no more certain guide than the stars; the walls of the cities of Persia and Bucharia, yielded to the force of Chinese gunpowder, when the most formidable weapon of Europe was the bow. Paper was abundantly manufactured in China, when the monks of Italy were erasing the precious writings of the ancients in order to obtain materials on which to inscribe the legends of saints; the writings of Confucius were multiplied by the art of printing ages before Faust was accused of magic; and paper money, on which the administration of "the most enlightened nation upon earth" is now engaged in experimenting, was issued at Pekin to pay the armies which occupied Bagdad and overthrew the throne of the Caliphs.

In the regions which extend from the Caspian and Persian Gulf westward to the Atlantic ocean, civilization and the arts have been constantly fluctuating and changing their seats. Thebes, Jerusalem, Nineveh, Babylon, Persepolis, Athens, Alex andria, Rome, Constantinople, Bagdad, and Cordova, have in succession stood first, as seats of learning and science. Each in its turn lost its superiority by violence, and much of the improvement previously obtained was lost at each convulsion. Yet upon the whole, the progress of the human mind has been onwards, and in the intervals of repose more was generally gained than had been lost in the preceding catastrophe. The annals of China present a very different history. A small tribe composed but of a few families, attained at an early date a degree of refinement, probably unequalled by any contemporary nation. Partly by arms and partly by the arts of peace, the neighbouring barbarians were united and amalgamated with them, until a degree

of wealth and power was attained, which excited the cupidity or alarmed the jealousy of the rude and savage nations of the North of Asia. With these, for more than thirty centuries, Chinese civilization has maintained a constant and triumphant contest; when threatened with invasion, policy has turned the arms of one tribe against another, or united enemies with the body of the nation; when actually conquered by arms, the triumph of the conquerors has been changed into a defeat, and the new rulers have yielded to the unaltering laws of the Celestial Empire.

The evidence of all history shows that different races possess different capacities for intellectual improvement. That which gave birth to the Empire of China, must have been favoured in this respect in a very high degree. The continual mixture with Mongolian, Turkish and Tongusian blood, appears to have limited this capacity; or perhaps the successive additions made to the nation have been dazzled by the superiority of the original Chinese to such a degree as to conceive their arts, their literature, and their science, incapable of further improvement. To whichever of these causes we may ascribe the result, it is not the less remarkable that ages have elapsed since any advance has been made in these directions. The arts of China are directed by the same receipts which Marco Polo saw in use; her modern literature aspires to no other merit than that of a close imitation of ancient models, and science has degenerated into servile adherence to the rules of bygone times. Two enlightened conquerors, Kublai Khan and Khang-Hi, not only adopted all which they admired in the subjugated nation, but would willingly have engrafted upon it, the one the learning of the Arabs, the other the sciences of modern Europe, but the inertia of Chinese mind was not to be moved by their endeavours, and their successors were speedily wrapped in that dream of fancied superiority, which rejects the introduction, of every thing foreign.

China proper is itself a large and extensive country, possessed of a fertile soil, and such variety of climate as adapts it to the most valuable productions of temperate climates, and admits, in the south, of the cultivation of the fruits of the tropics. Situated under the same parallels with our own middle and southern states, occupying like them the eastern shore of a great continent, there is an analogy in temperature and vicissitudes of season that is very remarkable. But while our country is thinly covered by an active moving population, which seeks new outlets for its increase in the fertile regions of the west, China, bounded by barren deserts or sterile mountains, has been for ages compelled to provide for the settlement and support of its redundant population, in the artificial increase of the resources of its own soil. Thus morasses have been reclaimed, mountains cut into terraces,

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