this, by entrenching himself in the interior of the bastions. In short, we most positively do order and command him to run the chances of an assault, for the purpose of protracting his defence, and increasing the loss of the enemy. He must recollect that a Frenchman should think his life of no value the moment it is put in competition with his honour; this idea must be to him, and his subordinate officers, the main spring of all his actions; and as the reduction of the place must be the last term of his efforts, and the result of the total impossibility to resist any longer, we forbid him to accelerate that unfortunate event by his consent, even by one hour, and under pretence of obtaining an honourable capitulation.

"We direct that whenever the council of defence shall be called together to consult on the operations, these lettres patentes' shall be read in an audible and intelligible voice.

"Given this 11th day of August, 1809, and of our reign the 6th.'”

M. Carnot concludes, from the authorities he cites, and his general reasonings, that a good garrison entrusted with the defence of a fortified place can, as long as supplied with provisions and ammunition, successfully resist a besieging army ten times its number; and ultimately effect its destruction. He enumerates various means adopted by an enemy to obtain the speedy surrender of fortified towns, and the signal success of his own countrymen in employing threats and bombardments in the early part of the revolutionary war.

"The most striking instance of the effect produced by threats, was that which restored us the four towns of Valenciennes, Condé, Le Quesnoy, and Landrecies.-After the battle of Fleurus, the enemy having been repulsed to some distance, we immediately formed the blockade of these four towns; Landrecies and Le Quesnoy were soon reduced by regular attacks: but the most important and most difficult to take, still remained: particularly Valenciennes, which had been completely repaired by the enemy, was abundantly supplied, had a numerous garrison, and an immense train of artillery. On our side, we had no means whatever to form a regular siege; hardly could we hope to maintain the blockade, being in absolute want of the necessary "material" for it; still it was of the utmost importance to us to retake those places without loss of time, in order to reinforce, with the troops employed in the blockade, the army which acted offensively against Under all these the enemy, and which was greatly in want of support.

circumstances we determined to summon the garrison. The violence of our threats was in proportion to our inability of undertking any thing whatever: fortunately these fortresses surrendered, their garri sons were made prisoners, and the enemy lost, in one momeut, the fruit of this campaign.-Our detached divisions joined the main army: aud from this day we had a superiority over the coalesced powers, which we maintained during the year.

"The same war furnishes us with another instance to this effect: in 1795 we were endeavouring to find a passage across the Rhine, and to

procure ourselves a tête-de-pont on the right bauk, which was entirely occupied by the enemy, whilst we were posted on the left; we merely established a mortar-battery close on the bank of the river, facing Manheim. We judged that the town, although fortified according to Cohëorn, would not resist a bombardment, in consequence of the magnificent edifices it contained, which the inhabitants would not suffer to be destroyed. And so it proved, for we had hardly began to open fire, when the place surrendered, which procured us at once an excellent tête-de-pont."

The greatest part of the work is occupied by accounts of sieges, some of which appear irrelevant to the illustration of their object; and most, if not all, must be well known to every tolerably informed military man. The book is drawn up in a popular way, calculated to impress young officers with the importance of obstinately defending a place, and making intelligent individuals, amongst the inhabitants, acquainted with the views upon which the defence is conducted. As a compendium of historical facts, and of the results of the military theory of defence, it is likely to be well received; but it is principally valuable for acquainting us with the principles employed by the French, for holding out during an unusual length of time, in situations which were calculated upon being carried with comparative facility.

The Speeches in Parliament of Samuel Horsley, L. L. D. F. S. A., late Lord Bishop of St. Asaph. 8vo. pp. 544.

[From the Eclectic Review.]

In our whole national economy there is, perhaps, no one kind of advancement in the scale of what we call consequence, that does so much for a man who has not the advantage either of birth or fortune, as being made a bishop. Considered in proportion to its prerequisites and preparation, it is a greater transition than can be made in any other case. Other plebeians may become lords; but, generally speaking, they must be the possessors of great wealth, or have distinguished themselves in an ascending progress through important offices, or a long course of senatorial activity. And on the strength of this ponderous wealth, or in the exercise of these public functions, they will have approached to the habits, and even been familiarized to the society, of the nobility, and accustomed to so much deference in their vicinity, or so much obsequiousness to the authority of their offices, or so much attention to their exhibitions in great assemblies, that they have more than half attained the advantages of the peerage before they formally receive its patent and its ceremonial appendages. Whereas a clergyman that has no

riches, that may have lived chiefly, or, at least, comparatively, in retirement, that has never been heard in any kind of debating assemblies, that has received only the common attentions due to a gentleman and scholar, with a certain moderate addition on his attaining, perhaps, one of the subordinate dignities of the church, may be suddenly introduced into the house of lords, shall take there what will be generally felt a higher rank than many of its occupants, and may demand the attention of the collective nobility of the country to what he thinks and wishes on any subject that comes before them; while in the view of his friends, his former ecclesiastical, and, perhaps, desponding equals, and the portion of the community suddenly placed under his spiritual jurisdiction, he takes the bench or ascends the throne as a personage widely and inexplicably different from the man that was a few years since a plain vicar or rector.

It should seem that many prelates have themselves felt such amazement at this metamorphosis, that they have never ac. quired self-possession enough to take the full advantages of it. Whether they have been absorbed in the endeavour to comprehend the mystery of the circumstance, or could not positively verify the reality of the new mode of being, or could not bring their strength or resolution up to the requisite pitch for assuming and asserting its functions and rights, or whatever else has been the cause, the fact is, that few of the order have, in later times, assumed to act a distinguished part in the elevated assembly to which they belong: so few, indeed, that a natural philosopher who puts a value on all agents as the possessors of some kind of faculty and power, by exercising which he expects them to maintain their places in the great economy, might look at the class in question, with the suspicion of its having been assigned to an inappropriate situation; or, at least, with a degree of regret, that it should not manifest the properties agreeing to that situation.

Such an observer will therefore feel a very lively gratification in seeing one of the class prove that it has great aristocratic and legislative capabilities, however latent, by coming so boldly and effectively into action, as did Bishop Horsley. He, at any rate, showed no signs of marvelling at his new situation, or of being afraid of it. He sought no refuge from its overpowering. impressions in the solemn quietude of a reverend formality. His faculties suffered no repression or paralysis in his looking round on the majesty of the assembly; a view which was not taken by a succession of cautious and partial glances, ventured at intervals; but by an open, confident look of examination and challenge. He presently took his share in debate on any subject on which he had formed an opinion, and within this compass almost every subject was included. Though peculiarly vigilant and peremp

tory on all occasions involving ecclesiastical questions, he scorned any notion of an obligation to confine himself to what might be called professional matters; and it must have been a very daring opponent that would have ventured to hint to him the propriety of any such limitation. He soon committed himself to all the dangers of positive battle, and had a peculiar and provoking intrepidity in challenging the enemy to do his worst. It is true, indeed, and almost too obvious to need noticing, that the valour which fights generally in the ranks of the ascendant party, is not subjected to the hardest test, and can never attain a character of romantic heroism. Nevertheless, our right reverend combatant had in his manner something so peculiarly and emphatically assailant, such an air of direct defiance, such a confidence to commit himself totally, without reserve, or provided means of retreat, such a promptitude to expose himself singly in advance before his allies, such a perfect, unhesitating explicitness in telling his opponents to their beards, that he would give them "to the fowls of the air, and the beasts of the field," such an embodying in his own person of the stress of the war, such an apparent carelesness, how much of the opposite and vindictive force he might draw on himself individually, fearless of taking the champion's proportion of the hazard, and such a confident occupation of whatever position would present him most prominently to their weapons, that we are compelled to acknowledge him to have been possessed of a bravery competent to dare any conflict without previously counting the fellow-fighters.

One of the strongest indications how much he was at his ease in assuming the full exercise of the functions of his new situation, appears in that facility of irony and sarcasm which marks the first speech here reported to us, which was made very soon after his attainment of the bench. Almost all the subsequent speeches have here and there some touches of this sort of gayety. It comes without the smallest affectation or effort. It is quite genuine, and often sudden. It is sometimes transient, and sometimes a little prolonged, just as it may happen. It is almost always powerfully caustic. In some instances, where its application was signally just, as for example, when it fell on the defenders of slavery and the slave trade, the reader is extremely gratified in imagining the mortification it must have inflicted.

Clear statement, however, acute discrimination, and vigorous argument, form the leading intellectual distinction of these speeches; and it is needless to say that these are supported by so wide and accurate a knowledge of facts, that whether the reasoning has been deliberately prepared beforehand, or is called forth by some view of the subject presented at the time, makes no difference as to the sufficiency of the orator's resources. Even the critical and biblical learning of our prelate is brought,

with striking advantage to the subject, and triumphant effect in debate, to bear on the question of West-India slavery.

Every one, who is at all acquainted with the character and style of Warburton, will be very often reminded of him in listening to Horsley. He will have, in broad display before him, many of the same moral and intellectual characteristics; the intrepidity, the self-confidence, the arrogance, the driving urgency, if we may so express it, and the habitually aggressive temper and attitude; -the acuteness, in a measure the rapidity of thought, the facility of turning to use any part of the most ample resources, the delight to beat the adversary with an apparent paradox, the readiness to adopt a cause or argument under its greatest hazards, and maintain it at its weakest point, as a gratuitous display of courage and skill, previously to taking the strongest ground, and best weapons. In point of diction, there is often the same mixture of the scholastic, and the familiar, and colloquial; the same disdain to be confined to the niceties of a trim elegance. Horsley is, however, immensely surpassed by that powerful wildness of freedom which distinguishes Warburton's manner, the expression of that unlimited and indefatigable versatility which assumed the whole creation as the field of its mingled sport and action. Warburton has the advantage of being vastly more eloquent, in that sense of the word in which it imports something bordering on poetry. He abounds in happy allusions, and is often surrounded by some sudden splendour of a creative fancy.

This volume comprises fifteen speeches, which purport to be given at length, in the precise words in which they were delivered. Most of the subjects are important; the abolition of the slave trade; the claims of the Irish catholics; the bill for preventing the marriage of persons divorced for adultery; the treason bill of November, 1795; the preliminaries of the peace of Amiens. Several are on ecclesiastical matters. One of them, of enormous length, (80 pages,) is, we think, very injudiciously inserted. It was a laborious and extremely able exertion, in vindication of the claims of a particular clergyman, whose interests were implicated in a particular enclosure bill, and proves that the bishop, had he fallen into another profession, would have made a consummate barrister; but the subject cannot be of the smallest general interest, and its filling so large a space will only make the purchasers of the volume the more sensible of its exorbitant price.

No one will feel it worth while to quarrel with these speeches for declaring, without ceremony, the bishop's well-known high church notions, coupled with his firm faith in the horrible wickedness of lifting a finger against the "powers that be," whoever they may be, and however flagitious their couduct. It is amusing to think what a dreadful explosion there would have been, had