Chapter VII: Part 7

* * * * *

The fate of one of the humble characters who have figured in these pages, we must yet tarry a while longer to describe.

During the past winter, a party of mountaineers, flying from overpowering numbers of hostile Sioux, found themselves, one stormy evening, in a wild and dismal cañon near the elevated mountain valley called the "New Park."

The rocky bed of a dry mountain torrent, whose waters were now locked up at their spring-heads by icy fetters, was the only road up which they could make their difficult way: for the rugged sides of the gorge rose precipitously from the creek, scarcely affording a foot-hold to even the active bighorn, which occasionally looked down upon the travellers from the lofty summit. Logs of pine, uprooted by the hurricanes which sweep incessantly through the mountain defiles, and tossed headlong from the surrounding ridges, continually obstructed their way; and huge rocks and boulders, tumbling from the heights and blocking up the bed of the stream, added to the difficulty, and threatened them every instant with destruction.

Towards sundown they reached a point where the cañon opened out into a little shelving glade or prairie, a few hundred yards in extent, the entrance to which was almost hidden by a thicket of dwarf pine and cedar. Here they determined to encamp for the night, in a spot secure from Indians, and, as they imagined, untrodden by the foot of man.

What, however, was their astonishment, on breaking through the cedar-covered entrance, to perceive a solitary horse standing motionless in the centre of the prairie. Drawing near, they found it to be an old grizzled mustang, or Indian pony, with cropped ears and ragged tail, (well picked by hungry mules,) standing doubled up with cold, and at the very last gasp from extreme old age and weakness. Its bones were nearly through the stiffened skin, the legs of the animal were gathered under it; whilst its forlorn-looking head and stretched-out neck hung listlessly downwards, almost overbalancing its tottering body. The glazed and sunken eye--the protruding and froth-covered tongue--the heaving flank and quivering tail--declared its race was run; and the driving sleet and snow, and penetrating winter blast, scarce made impression upon its callous, insensible, and worn-out frame.

One of the band of mountaineers was Marcellin, and a single look at the miserable beast was sufficient for him to recognise the once renowned Nez-percé steed of old Bill Williams. That the owner himself was not far distant he felt certain; and, searching carefully around, the hunters presently came upon an old deserted camp, before which lay, protruding from the snow, the blackened remains of pine logs. Before these, which had been the fire, and leaning with his back against a pine trunk, and his legs crossed under him, half covered with snow, reclined the figure of the old mountaineer, his snow-capped head bent over his breast. His well-known hunting-coat of fringed elk-skin hung stiff and weather-stained about him; and his rifle, packs, and traps, were strewed around.

Awe-struck, the trappers approached the body, and found it frozen hard as stone, in which state it had probably lain there for many days or weeks. A jagged rent in the breast of his leather coat, and dark stains about it, showed he had received a wound before his death; but it was impossible to say whether to this hurt, or to sickness, or to the natural decay of age, was to be attributed the wretched and solitary end of poor Bill Williams.

A friendly bullet cut short the few remaining hours of the trapper's faithful steed; and burying, as well as they were able, the body of the old mountaineer, the hunters next day left him in his lonely grave, in a spot so wild and remote, that it was doubtful whether even hungry wolves would discover and disinter his attenuated corpse.

FOOTNOTES:

[2] The word _fandango_, in New Mexico, is not applied to the peculiar dance known in Spain by that name, but designates a ball or dancing meeting.

[3] Nickname for the idle fellows hanging about a Mexican town, translated into "Greasers" by the Americans.

[4] Cask-shaped gourds.

[5] The knives used by the hunters and trappers are manufactured at the "Green River" works, and have that name stamped upon the blade. Hence the mountain term for doing any thing effectually is "up to Green River."

[6] Always alluding to Mexicans, who are invariably called Spaniards by the Western Americans.

THE LATE GEORGE FREDERICK RUXTON.

The readers of _Blackwood's Magazine_, who for six succeeding months have followed La Bonté and his mountain companions through the hardships, humours, and perils of "Life in the Far West," will surely not learn with indifference, that the gallant young author of those spirited sketches has prematurely departed to his long home, from that Transatlantic land whose prairies and forests he so well loved to tread, and the existence and eccentricities of whose wildest sons he so ably and pleasantly portrayed. Nearly a month has now elapsed since the London newspapers contained the mournful tidings of the death, at St Louis on the Mississippi, and at the early age of twenty-eight, of Lieutenant George Frederick Ruxton, formerly of her Majesty's 89th regiment, known to the reading world as the author of a volume of Mexican adventure, and of the above-named contributions to this Magazine. The former work has too completely gained the suffrages of the public to need commendation at our hands: it divides, with Madame Calderon de la Barca's well-known volumes, the merit of being the best narration extant of travel and general observation in modern Mexico.

Many individuals, even in the most enterprising periods of our history, have been made the subjects of elaborate biography, with far less title to the honour than our late departed friend. Time was not granted him to embody in a permanent shape more than a tithe of his personal experiences, and strange adventures, in three quarters of the globe; indeed, when we consider the amount of physical labour which he endured, and the extent of the fields over which his wanderings were spread, we are almost led to wonder how he could have found leisure even to have written so much. At the early age of seventeen, Mr Ruxton quitted Sandwich, to learn the practical part of a soldier's profession on the field of civil war then raging in the peninsula of Spain. He received a commission in a royal regiment of lancers, under the command of Don Diego Leon, and was actively engaged in several of the most important combats of the campaign. For his marked gallantry on these occasions, he received from Queen Isabella II. the cross of the first class of the order of St Fernando, an honour which has seldom been awarded to one so young. On his return from Spain he found himself gazetted to a commission in the 89th regiment; and it was while serving with that distinguished corps in Canada that he first became acquainted with the stirring scenes of Indian life, which he has since so graphically portrayed. His eager and enthusiastic spirit soon became wearied with the monotony of the barrack-room; and, yielding to that impulse which in him was irresistibly developed, he resigned his commission, and directed his steps towards the stupendous wilds, only tenanted by the red Indian, or the solitary American trapper.

Those who are familiar with his writings cannot fail to have remarked the singular delight with which the author dwells upon the recollections of this portion of his career, and the longing which he carried with him to the hour of death, for a return to those scenes of primitive freedom. "Although liable to an accusation of barbarism," he writes, "I must confess that the very happiest moments of my life have been spent in the wilderness of the Far West; and I never recall, but with pleasure, the remembrance of my solitary camp in the Bayou Salade, with no friend near me more faithful than my rifle, and no companions more sociable than my good horse and mules, or the attendant cayute which nightly serenaded us. With a plentiful supply of dry pine-logs on the fire, and its cheerful blaze streaming far up into the sky, illuminating the valley far and near, and exhibiting the animals, with well-filled bellies, standing contentedly at rest over their picket-fires, I would sit cross-legged enjoying the genial warmth, and, pipe in mouth, watch the blue smoke as it curled upwards, building castles in its vapoury wreaths, and, in the fantastic shapes it assumed, peopling the solitude with figures of those far away. Scarcely, however, did I ever wish to change such hours of freedom for all the luxuries of civilised life; and, unnatural and extraordinary as it may appear, yet such is the fascination of the life of the mountain hunter, that I believe not one instance could be adduced of even the most polished and civilised of men, who had once tasted the sweets of its attendant liberty, and freedom from every worldly care, not regretting the moment when he exchanged it for the monotonous life of the settlements, nor sighing and sighing again once more to partake of its pleasures and allurements."

On his return to Europe from the Far West, Mr Ruxton, animated with a spirit as enterprising and fearless as that of Raleigh, planned a scheme for the exploration of Central Africa, which was thus characterised by the president of the Royal Geographical Society, in his anniversary address for 1845:--"To my great surprise, I recently conversed with an ardent and accomplished youth, Lieutenant Ruxton, late of the 89th regiment, who had formed the daring project of traversing Africa in the parallel of the southern tropic, and has actually started for this purpose. Preparing himself by previous excursions on foot, in North Africa and Algeria, he sailed from Liverpool early in December last, in the Royalist, for Ichaboe. From that spot he was to repair to Walvish Bay, where we have already mercantile establishments. The intrepid traveller had received from their agents of the establishments such favourable account of the nations towards the interior, as also of the nature of the climate, that he has the most sanguine hopes of being able to penetrate to the central region, if not of traversing it to the Portuguese colonies of Mozambique. If this be accomplished, then indeed will Lieutenant Ruxton have acquired for himself a permanent name among British travellers, by making us acquainted with the nature of the axis of the great continent of which we possess the southern extremity."

In pursuance of this hazardous scheme, Ruxton, along with a single companion, landed on the coast of Africa, a little to the south of Ichaboe, and commenced his journey of exploration. But it seemed as if both nature and man had combined to baffle the execution of his design. The course of their travel lay along a desert of moving sand, where no water was to be found, and little herbage, save a coarse tufted grass, and twigs of the resinous myrrh. The immediate place of their destination was Angra Peguena, on the coast, described as a frequented station, but which in reality was deserted. One ship only was in the offing when the travellers arrived, and, to their inexpressible mortification, they discovered that she was outward bound. No trace was visible of the river or streams laid down in the maps as falling into the sea at this point, and no resource was left to the travellers save that of retracing their steps--a labour for which their strength was hardly adequate. But for the opportune assistance of a body of natives, who encountered them at the very moment when they were sinking from the influence of fatigue and thirst, Ruxton and his companion would have been added to the catalogue long of those whose lives have been sacrificed in the attempt to explore the interior of this fatal country.

The jealousy of the traders, and of the missionaries settled on the African coast, who constantly withheld or perverted that information which was absolutely necessary for the successful prosecution of the journey, induced Ruxton to abandon the attempt for the present. He made, however, several interesting excursions towards the interior, and more especially in the country of the Bosjesmans.

Finding that his own resources were inadequate for the accomplishment of his favourite project, Mr Ruxton, on his return to England, made application for Government assistance. But though this demand was not altogether refused, it having been referred to, and favourably reported on by, the Council of the Royal Geographical Society, so many delays were interposed that Ruxton, in disgust, resolved to withdraw from the scheme, and to abandon that field of African research which he had already contemplated from its borders. He next bent his steps to Mexico; and, fortunately, has presented to the world his reminiscences of that country, in one of the most fascinating volumes which, of late years, has issued from the press. It would, however, appear that the scheme of African research, the darling project of his life, had again recurred to him at a later period; for, in the course of the present spring, before setting out on that journey which was destined to be his last we find the following expressions in a letter addressed to us:--

"My movements are uncertain, for I am trying to get up a yacht
voyage to Borneo and the Indian Archipelago; have volunteered
to Government to explore Central Africa; and the Aborigines
Protection Society wish me to go out to Canada to organise the
Indian tribes; whilst, for my own part and inclination, I wish to
go to all parts of the world at once."

As regards his second work, we shall not, under the circumstances, be deemed egotistical, if we here, at the close of its final portion, express our very high opinion of its merits. Written by a man untrained to literature, and whose life, from a very early age, had been passed in the field and on the road, in military adventure and travel, its style is yet often as remarkable for graphic terseness and vigour, as its substance every where is for great novelty and originality. The narrative of "Life in the Far West" was first offered for insertion in _Blackwood's Magazine_ in the spring of the present year, when the greater portion of the manuscript was sent, and the remainder shortly followed.

The wildness of the adventures which he relates have, perhaps not unnaturally, excited suspicions in certain quarters as to their actual truth and fidelity. It may interest our readers to know, that the scenes described by the author are faithful pictures of the results of his personal experience. The following are extracts from letters addressed to us in the course of last summer:--

"I have brought out a few more softening traits in the characters
of the mountaineers--but not at the sacrifice of truth--for some
of them have their good points; which, as they are rarely allowed
to rise to the surface, must be laid hold of at once, before they
sink again. Killbuck--that 'old hos' _par exemple_, was really
pretty much of a gentleman, as was La Bonté. Bill Williams,
another 'hard case,' and Rube Herring, were 'some' too.

"The scene where La Bonté joins the Chase family is so far true
that he did make a sudden appearance; but, in reality, a day
before the Indian attack. The Chases (and I wish I had not given
the proper name[7]) did start for the Platte alone, and were
stampedoed upon the waters of the Platte.

"The Mexican fandango _is true to the letter_. It does seem
difficult to understand how they contrived to keep their knives
out of the hump-ribs of the mountaineers; but how can you account
for the fact that, the other day, 4000 Mexicans, with 13 pieces of
artillery, behind strong intrenchments and two lines of parapets,
were routed by 900 raw Missourians; 300 killed, as many more
wounded, all their artillery captured, as well as several hundred
prisoners; and that not one American was killed in the affair?
_This is positive fact._

"I myself, with three trappers, cleared a fandango at Taos, armed
only with bowie-knives--some score Mexicans, at least, being in
the room.

"With regard to the incidents of Indian attacks, starvation,
cannibalism, &c., I have invented not one out of my own head. They
are all matters of history in the mountains; but I have, no doubt,
jumbled the _dramatis personæ_ one with another, and may have
committed anachronisms in the order of their occurrence."

Again he wrote to us as follows:--

"I think it would be as well to correct a misapprehension as to
the truth or fiction of the paper. It is _no fiction_. There is no
incident in it which has not actually occurred, nor one character
who is not well known in the Rocky Mountains, with the exception
of two whose names are changed--the originals of these being,
however, equally well known with the others."

His last letter, written just before his departure from England, a few weeks previously to his death, will hardly be read by any who ever knew the writer, without a tear of sympathy with the sad fate of this fine young man, dying miserably in a strange land, before he had well commenced the adventurous journey whose excitement and dangers he so joyously anticipated:--

"As you say, human natur can't go on feeding on civilised fixings
in this 'big village;' and this child has felt like going West
for many a month, being half froze for buffler meat and mountain
doins. My route takes me viâ New York, the Lakes, and St Louis, to
Fort Leavenworth, or Independence on the Indian frontier. Thence
packing my 'possibles' on a mule, and mounting a buffalo horse,
(Panchito, if he is alive,) I strike the Santa Fé trail to the
Arkansa, away up that river to the mountains, winter in the Bayou
Salade, where Killbuck and La Bonté joined the Yutes, cross the
mountains next spring to Great Salt Lake--and that's far enough
to look forward to--always supposing my hair is not lifted by
Comanche or Pawnee on the scalping route of the Coon Creeks and
Pawnee Fork.

"If anything turns up in the expedition which would 'shine' in
Maga, I will send you a despatch.--Meanwhile," &c. &c.

Poor fellow! he spoke lightly, in the buoyancy of youth and a confident spirit, of the fate he little thought to meet, but which too surely overtook him--not indeed by Indian blade, but by the no less deadly stroke of disease. Another motive, besides that love of rambling and adventure, which, once conceived and indulged, is so difficult to eradicate, impelled him across the Atlantic. He had for some time been out of health at intervals, and he thought the air of his beloved prairies would be efficacious to work a cure. In a letter to a friend, in the month of May last, he thus referred to the probable origin of the evil:--

"I have been confined to my room for many days, from the effects
of an accident I met with in the Rocky Mountains, having been
spilt from the bare back of a mule, and falling on the sharp
picket of an Indian lodge on the small of my back. I fear I
injured my spine, for I have never felt altogether the thing
since, and shortly after I saw you, the symptoms became rather
ugly. However, I am now getting round again."

His medical advisers shared his opinion that he had sustained internal injury from this ugly fall; and it is not improbable that it was the remote, but real cause of his dissolution. Up to this time of writing, (21st October,) however, no details of his death have reached his afflicted friends, nor any account of it, other than that given by the public journals. From whatsoever it ensued, it will be a source of deep and lasting regret to all who ever enjoyed opportunities of appreciating the high and sterling qualities of George Frederick Ruxton. Few men, so prepossessing on first acquaintance, gained so much by being better known. With great natural abilities, and the most dauntless bravery, he united a modesty and gentleness peculiarly pleasing. Had he lived, and resisted his friends' repeated solicitations to abandon a roving life, and settle down in England, there can be little doubt that he would have made his name eminent on the list of those daring and persevering men, whose travels in distant and dangerous lands have accumulated for England, and for the world, so rich a store of scientific and general information. And, although the few words we have thought it right and becoming here to devote to his memory, will doubtless be more particularly welcome to his personal friends, we are persuaded that none will peruse without interest this brief tribute to the merits of a gallant soldier, and accomplished English gentleman.

FOOTNOTE:

[7] In accordance with this suggestion, the name was changed to Brand. The mountaineers, it seems, are more sensitive to type than to tomahawks; and poor Ruxton, who always contemplated another expedition among them, would sometimes jestingly speculate upon his reception, should they learn that he had shown them up in print.

THE NAVAL WAR OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.[8]

The navy of England is the right arm of the British empire. The gallantry of British troops requires no praise of ours, as it admits of no doubt on the part of our enemies. But until some convulsion of the globe shall make England _Continental_, so long must her chief force be naval, her chief defence be by her strength at sea, and her chief victories be gained on the ocean.

The navy has another incomparable adaptation to the especial circumstances of England. Her empire is colonial: the extent of Great Britain itself scarcely equals one of those provinces beyond the ocean which Providence has given into her hands. Their defence, their maintenance, and their existence, must depend on the superiority of our fleet: if it were once extinguished, the British empire must be again contracted within the British Isles.

A third, and perhaps a more important qualification than either, is--that a fleet is the only form of national force which can _never_ endanger national freedom.

On those _data_, the question of _national_ fleets is easily decided. England is not only the first naval power in the world, but she must _continue_ the first; because a fleet is _necessary_ to her existence, which _it is not_ to that of any other European throne. This is the dictate of nature, and is therefore a _law_. Other powers may possess a fleet as an appendage to their national strength, as suitable to their rank, or as adding to their means of hostilities. Still, to them, a fleet is not a _necessity_. Russia, France, and Spain have no more _necessity_ for a fleet, than Prussia, Austria, and Switzerland! But England, without a fleet, would be exposed to invasion on every point of a coast extending two thousand miles. Her wealth is all loose upon the ocean; her chief territories are all beyond the ocean: thus, _without_ a fleet, she would be almost wholly without the means of external defence, of retaliation for injuries, and of the commerce which is the most essential basis of her revenue. The result is, that, while the Continental kingdoms might be powerful states, yet not possess a ship on the seas, England, stript of her naval superiority, would instantly sink from her high position, would lose the larger portion of her power, would be separated from her most important colonies, would see her revenues decay,--and, if assailed by a foreign enemy, would see her resources suddenly stopped, and must prepare for the last extremities of struggle, hand to hand.

In this view, we do not confine the question to the national fondness for the sea--to that mixture of boldness and skill which predominates in the character of our sailors, and forms the especial qualification of a sea-faring people,--nor to national superiority of any kind; but to the simple fact, that the possession of predominant power on the ocean _cannot_ be dispensed with by England, while it _can_ be dispensed with by every other power of the globe.

There is also another reason for this supremacy; arising from the fact, that England may throw her whole national force into a navy; while other powers, however ambitious of naval eminence, _must_ at least divide their force between the land and sea services. France, with its immense frontier, must keep up an immense army during war. Russia, with a frontier from the Niemen to the North Pole, must keep up an immense army at all times. The maintenance of those armies is essential to the national existence, while the maintenance of a fleet is only gratifying to the national ambition. The consequence is as clear as a matter of arithmetic. France and Russia, attacking England separately, _must_ be ultimately beaten. America, even if she were a more formidable opponent than either, will also be beaten, and for the same reason. A fleet is not _essential_ to her; the undivided force of the States will never be applied to her navy. The national strength will be expanded over inland conquest; the sea-coast towns will be rapidly reduced to insignificance by the superiority of the great inland settlements; and the time will come, when the cities of New York, Philadelphia, and Boston, will have no more weight with the inland powers of Louisiana and the prairies, than Brighton or Broadstairs have with the power of London. They will be watering places, or, at best, warehousing places, and will be no more able to keep up a navy, than the Isle of Thanet would be able to keep up the Channel fleet. All this, however, tends only to show, that a fleet is the supreme instrument of British dominion; and that its strength, its skill, and its discipline, should employ the utmost activity, liberality, and vigilance of every Cabinet which desires to do its duty to the empire.

We now proceed to give some account of the interesting and intelligent work of which Captain Plunket has supplied the translation, accompanied with valuable explanatory notes of his own.

Some time since, there appeared in the well-known Parisian _Revue des deux Mondes_, articles on the English and French naval systems, by a French officer, Captain de la Gravière. The object of those papers was less to give a history of the naval war, than to ascertain the causes of that almost unbroken series of triumphs which made the fame of the British fleet; and, on the other hand, which ultimately extinguished the fleet of a nation so brave, ambitious, and enterprising as the French.

M. de la Gravière, to his credit, had not followed the usual "perfide Albion" style of the French journalists, nor exhibited that jesuitical evasion of fact, and the perpetual peevishness against England, which marks and disgraces French history. He never sinks English success into failure, or inflates French failure into victory. He writes with the calmness of a man in search of the truth; judges with every visible _intention_ of impartiality; examines the private documents of the transactions; and pronounces a judgment which, though obviously and essentially _French_, is perhaps as honest an effort in pursuit of the reality of things, as is compatible with the nature of our clever and lively libellers on the other side of the Channel.

Those volumes begin by some striking remarks of Napoleon at St Helena. This extraordinary man never spoke of his defeat at Acre in 1799 but with bitter regret. He declared that it was his intention, had he taken that fortress, to have marched to Constantinople at the head of the tribes of Mount Lebanon, or to have followed the steps of Alexander to the Indus. His repulse from Acre, he always said, "marred his destiny."

All this verbiage of the great Captain, however, has been sufficiently exposed by the actual event. He could no more have marched to Constantinople than he could have marched to the Indus, nor have marched to the Indus more than he could have marched to the Pole star. With but 40,000 men, (the whole number which landed in Egypt,) it would have been utterly impossible for him to have carried a force through Syria and Asia Minor equal to the attack on Constantinople--even if the Russians were not _at hand_. The march to the Indus would have lain through the deserts of Arabia and Persia, and have stripped him down to a corporal's guard before he had got half-way. A French foot would never have been dipt in that far-famed river, which is now a British Canal. The tribes of Lebanon would no more have recruited his ranks, than they would have given him their sequins. His destiny lay in another direction. No man knew this better; and doubtless he rejoiced, when he found himself on board the frigate carrying him westward, and relieving him of the "glory" of being slaughtered by the Arabs, and embalmed by the sands.

But the inveterate hostility of Napoleon seemed to rage against England, with the ravening of a mad dog, who dies biting the club which has laid him on the ground. All his anti-English policy was a succession of gross and ruinous blunders. To assail England without a fleet was naturally impossible. To form a fleet for the purpose of assailing her was, therefore, always a new temptation. If, after the First of June, which destroyed the Channel fleet of France, and the burning of the arsenals of Toulon, which destroyed her Mediterranean fleet, France had never built another vessel beyond the tonnage of a coaster, she would have shown her good sense. But Napoleon, when in the plenitude of power, went on building huge vessels, only to see them sent into English ports.

The waste of time, waste of thought, and waste of money, on those projects of English invasion, were among the most capital faults of his extravagant career. He might have made France the great corn country, or the great garden of Europe, with half the sums which he threw away only to be beaten. His fifty ships of the line which were to sweep the Channel, in the absence of our fleet--his one hundred and twenty thousand men on the shore of Boulogne--all only enhanced the naval glory of the great commander; who, after pursuing the French flying squadron of eighteen great ships, with ten, to the West Indies, finished in one day the naval war, extinguished the existence of the French and Spanish navies, and crowned his own gallant career.

The impolicy of these attempts was equally exhibited in another form--they stimulated at once the power and the spirit of England. The monotony of a war of defence would have disgusted the gallantry of the nation, but the victories of the British navy continually cheered the people under the burdens of the war. What minister could have dared to propose a "compromising" peace, on the day after the battle of the Nile? What minister would have dared to propose any peace on the day after Trafalgar? The war, too, broke down more than the French fleet--it buried the Opposition.

The French author divides his history into three periods--the first, that of the battles of Howe and Hood, of Hotham and Bridport; the second, that of Jervis; the third, (from 1798 to 1805) belonging to Nelson, without an equal, without even a competitor--the most glorious series of successes ever won on the ocean.

The true definition of these volumes is, in fact, a "Life of Nelson"--a hurried, but clear and animated memoir, on a subject which can never be too often repeated to the ear or the heart of Englishmen; but a subject which is here coloured with the inevitable, and yet not unamusing, prejudices of a Frenchman and an enemy. He admits Nelson to have been a naval hero, while he labours to show that his chief successes arose from a lofty disregard of circumstances, a native contempt of rule, a transcendental rashness, which, continually exposing him to the chance of utter ruin, strangely always issued in victory. But those views are wholly imaginary. It is the foreign habit, to be perpetually in pursuit of _astonishment_; to think nothing meritorious which is not _magical_; and to carry into the greatest and gravest operations of public life the passion for the harlequinades of the theatre. The supremacy of Nelson arose from the more substantial grounds, of a thorough knowledge of his profession, of a strict deference for discipline, and a sort of instinctive and unhesitating determination to do the work set before him, with all the powers of his mind and frame. He, of course, possessed personal intrepidity in the most complete degree; but this amounted simply to the exposure of his life on all occasions where duty was to be done. Nelson was no fire-eater--no man of quarrel. We are not aware that he ever fought a duel. But he knew what was due to himself as much as any man--a fact shown by his answer to the Governor of Jamaica, who, having, on some remonstrances to him, rather haughtily observed, "that old generals were not accustomed to take advice from young captains." Nelson retorted by letter--"That he was of the same age as the prime minister of England, (Pitt), and that he thought himself as capable of commanding one of his Majesty's ships, as the premier was of governing the state."

But Nelson could not have gained his glories alone: he made his captains like himself; and every sailor in his fleet was ready to die along with him. His art in this was the simple one of justice. He acknowledged every man's merit. The officer who distinguished himself, was sure of receiving due honour from Nelson; promotion was regulated by service, and every brave man was confident in the recommendation of the admiral. He was also a kind man by nature: he hated punishment on board; he spoke good-naturedly to the sailors; he even gave way to any peculiarity which was not injurious to discipline. Some of his crew had become Methodists, and, offended with the general coarse conversation of the ship, desired to have their mess separate. Nelson immediately gave the required permission. The hearts of men naturally follow such a leader.

He had also the powerful sagacity which insures confidence; and no man doubted that, when Nelson commanded, he was leading to victory. He was, besides, a master of his profession--all his battles were the finest lessons of the tactician. He was never outmanoeuvred; he was never surprised; he was never even thrown into any difficulty, for which he had not a ready resource. The "Nelson touch" became proverbial; and the variety, completeness, and brilliancy of his plans for action sometimes excited the most extraordinary emotion, even to tears, among his officers. Something of this kind is said to have occurred on the final summoning of his captains into the cabin of the Victory, and laying before them his plan for the battle of Trafalgar.

Nelson had also the power, perhaps the most characteristic of genius, of throwing his thought into those shapes of vividness which penetrate at once to the understanding. When, on steering down for the French line at Aboukir, some one observed to him that the enemy were anchored too near the shore, for the British to pass within them;--"Where a French ship can swing, a British ship can anchor," was his decisive reply; and he instantly rushed in, and placed the French line between two fires. Another of those noble maxims was--"The captain cannot be wrong, who lays his ship alongside the enemy." It contains the whole theory of British battle. His "I can see no signal," when he was told that Admiral Parker had made the signal for retiring at Copenhagen, would have been immortalised, with the act which accompanied it, among the most brilliant "sayings and doings" of ancient Greece. But his last and well-known signal at Trafalgar surpassed all the rest, as much as the triumph surpassed these triumphs. The addresses of Napoleon to his armies were unquestionably fine performances. They spoke to the Frenchman by his feelings, his recollections, his personal pride, and his national renown. But, with the animation of the trumpet, they had its sternness and harshness. They were invocations to the French idol, that was to be worshipped only with perpetual blood. But the signal at Trafalgar recalled the Englishman only to the feelings of home. The voice of war never spoke a language more capable of being combined with all the purposes of peace. "England expects every man to do his duty" was fitted to bring before the Englishman the memory of his country, his home, his wife and children, all who might feel concerned in his conduct and character in the proud transactions of that great day. We think it the noblest appeal to national feeling ever made by a warrior to warriors.

Yet, what was the especial secret of that supreme rank which Nelson held over all the naval leaders of his time? Others may have been as intelligent, and indefatigable, and, it is to be hoped, all were as brave. The secret was--that Nelson was never satisfied with what he had done, and that he never _half did_ anything. There was no "drawn battle," among _his_ recollections. This is the more remarkable, as, for fifty years before, nearly all our naval battles had been drawn battles. Rodney's defeat of de Grasse was the great exception. British admirals, who were afraid of nothing else, were afraid of losing their masts! and were content with knocking down those of the enemy. Great fleets met each other, passed in parallel lines, fired their broadsides as they passed, one to the north and the other to the south. They might as well have been firing salutes. The wind soon carried them out of sight of each other; the admirals sat down in their cabins to write their respective histories of "the battle," which would have been only too much honoured by being called a _brush_; and the fleets went by mutual consent into harbour. In this sort of _War_! the French were as clever as we; and the Suffreins, di Guichens, d'Estaings, and Villeneuves, made their fame on this system of cannonading a mile off, and getting out of the way as quickly as possible.

Rodney first spoiled the etiquette of those affairs, by driving straight forward through the enemy's line, changing the easy parallel for the fighting perpendicular, and compelling at least one-half of the Frenchmen to come to close quarters. This was the method of Jervis, when his captain told him, that the fleet on which he was bearing down in the morning twilight were at least twenty. "If they were fifty," said the brave sailor, "I'll _drive through them_." He drove through them accordingly, and beat the Spaniards, with half their numbers.

Wellington observed, in the Peninsula, that the generals commanding under him were afraid of nothing but responsibility. This fear arose from the ignorant insolence, with which the loungers of the legislature were in the habit of fighting campaigns over their coffee-cups. It is to be hoped that the fashion has since changed. But Wellington demurred to the authority, and Nelson seemed not to have thought of its existence. They both supplied the sufficient answer to the _home_ campaigners, by beating the enemy wherever they met him.

We find a striking evidence of the hatred of "doing well enough" in one of Nelson's letters to his wife, on Hotham's battle with the French, under Martin, off Genoa, in 1795. Hotham was one of the old school, and though, in two awkward engagements, he had taken two of the French line, while a third had been burned, Nelson was indignant that the whole French fleet had not been captured. He had urged the admiral to leave the disabled ships in charge of the frigates, and chase the French.

"But," says the letter, "he, much cooler than myself, said, 'we must be contented--_we had done very well_.'" Nelson's evidently disgusted remark on this species of contentment is--"Had we taken ten sail, and suffered the eleventh to escape, when we could have got at her, I could _never_ have called it _well done_." In another part he says, "I wish to be an admiral, and in command of the British fleet. I should very soon do much, or be ruined. My disposition cannot bear tame and slow measures. _Sure I am_, that, had I commanded our fleet on the 14th, the whole French fleet would have graced our triumph, or I should have been in a confounded scrape." This was the language which, like the impulse of a powerful instinct, predicted the days of Aboukir, Copenhagen, and Trafalgar.

But the drag-chain on the progress of British intrepidity was at length to be taken of. Hotham was succeeded by Jervis. This eminent officer instantly reformed the whole condition of the Mediterranean fleet. He had evidently adopted the same conception of naval merit, which Nelson had so long kept before his eye. In selecting him for the command of the squadron sent to the Nile, Jervis wrote to the admiralty: "Nelson is an officer, who, whatever you bid him do, is sure _to do more_." And, in this spirit, Nelson was not content with running to Alexandria, and returning to say, that he found no one there; his resolve was, to find the French wherever they were, and fight them wherever they were found.

One word still for gallant old Jervis, the man who first confirmed the discipline of the navy. His firmness was the secret. When the Irish conspirators on board the Channel fleet had spread the spirit of mutiny in 1797, Jervis was warned from the admiralty that his fleet was in danger. It was suggested to him by some of his officers, to stop the letters from home: "No," said he, "the precaution is useless: I will answer for it that the commander-in-chief of _this_ fleet will know how to maintain his authority, if it is threatened."

But he left nothing to chance: he prohibited communication between the ships--he sent for the captains of marines, and ordered that their men should mess and sleep separately from the sailors; that the sailors should not be suffered to converse in Irish, and that the officers should be on the alert. He hanged the detected mutineers without delay. Forgiveness was out of the question. To Captain Pellew, who had interceded in favour of a mutineer, whose conduct had previously been irreproachable, he replied, "We have, we think, punished only the worthless. It is time, that our men should learn, that no past conduct can redeem an act of treason."

Nothing could be more rational, or even more necessary, than this determination; for treason is the most comprehensive of all crimes. The mere robber, or murderer, commits his single act of guilt--but the guilt of the traitor may cost the lives of thousands. The traitor is never to be regarded as a solitary criminal, and this maxim was never more necessary than at this moment. If laws are to be turned into sentimentality, and conspiracy is to be dealt with like the tricks of children, there must be an end of all security to _honest men_. If the villains who have been lately inflaming the Irish mind into madness, had been hanged by the sentence of the drum-head, within half an hour after their seizure, there would have been no necessity, at this moment, for keeping up a garrison of 45,000 men in Ireland. Martial law is the _only_ law fit for the ruffians of the torch and pike, and the gibbet is the only moral which they will ever comprehend. To suppose that the Irish conspirators had even entertained the expectation of forming an established government, or of being suffered by England to raise a republic--or that any man out of Bedlam could have dreamt of the possibility of waging a successful war against England, while her fleets might starve Ireland in a week, and nothing but English alms even now enables her to live--would be absolute folly. The true object of Irish conspiracy was, and is, and will always be, robbery and revenge; a short burst of rapine and blood, followed by again running away, again begging pardon, again living on alms, and again laughing at the weak indulgence and insulted clemency of England.

Jervis, instead of listening to the cant of men of blood whining about their wives and children, hanged them; and, by thus ridding his fleet of a nest of villains, saved it from destruction, and perhaps, with it, saved not merely the lives of thousands of brave men, whom their impunity might have debauched into conspiracy, but saved the honour of our naval name, and restored the enfeebled hopes of his country.

We here quote with pleasure from the Frenchman:--"Jervis, in the face of those symptoms, which threatened the British navy with disaffection, sternly devoted himself to the establishment of _implicit obedience_. The efficient organisation of the fleet was the labour of his life, and occupied his latest thoughts. Never rash himself, he nevertheless opened the way for the most daring deeds. Nelson rushed into the arena, and, with the rapidity of lightning, showed the latent results of the change. The governing principle witnessed, rather than decreed the change. Its source, in fact, was _not_ in the Admiralty, but in those floating camps, wherein the triumphs which astonish us are gradually elaborated. Official power is but the inert _crucible_ which transmutes the subsidies of Parliament into ships. But a quickening principle is wanting to those immense fleets, and the admirals supply it. Jervis and Nelson rapidly transmitted the creative spark, and bequeathed a certain sort of sovereignty under the distrustful eye of the English Admiralty--a kind of dynasty arose--'the mayors of the palace took the sceptre from the do-nothing kings.'"

All this is comparatively just. But the Frenchman peeps out under the panegyrist, after all. Can it be conceived that any other human being, at the end of nearly half a century, would quote, with the slightest degree of approval, the report of Decrès, the French minister of the marine to Napoleon, in 1805, after all Nelson's victories, and just preceding the most illustrious of them all--Trafalgar?

"The boasting of Nelson," writes Decrès, "equals his silliness, (_ineptie_)--I use the proper word. But he has one eminent quality--namely, that of aiming among his captains _only_ at a character for bravery and good fortune. This makes him _accessible to counsel_, and consequently, in difficult circumstances, if he commands nominally, _others direct really_."

We have no doubt that, after scribbling this supreme _ineptie_, Decrès considered himself to have settled the whole question, and to have convicted Nelson of being simply a bold blockhead--Nelson, the man of the hundred fights--the prince of tacticians--the admiral who had never been beaten, and from whom, at the battle of Aboukir, Decrès himself was rejoiced to make his escape, after having seen the ruin of the French fleet.

We find a good deal of the same sort of petulant perversion, in the narrative of Nelson's conduct at Naples. M. Gravière suddenly becomes moral, and tells us the ten-times-told story of Lady Hamilton. But what is all this to the naval war? Englishmen are not bound to defend the character of Lady Hamilton; and if Nelson was actually culpable in their intercourse, (a matter which actually has never yet been _proved_,) Englishmen, who have some morality,--not Frenchmen, who make a point of laughing at all morality--may upbraid his conduct. But a French stoic is simply ridiculous. There are perhaps not fifty men in all France, who would not have done, and are not doing every day, where they have the opportunity, all that this moralist charges Nelson with having done. Even if he were criminal in his private life, so much the worse for himself in that solemn account which all must render; but he was not the less the conqueror of Copenhagen, Aboukir, and Trafalgar.

The hanging of Caraccioli also figures among the charges. We regret that this traitor was not left to die of remorse, or by the course of nature, at the age of eighty. We regret, too, that he could allege even the shadow of a capitulation for his security. We equally regret the execution of Ney under a similar shadow. But Caraccioli had been an _admiral_ in the Neapolitan service, had joined the rebellion by which rapine and slaughter overspread the country, and had driven the King into exile. No man more deserved to be hanged, by the order of his insulted, and apparently ruined King;--he _was_ hanged, and _all_ rebels ought thus to suffer. They are made for the scaffold.

The men who plunge a kingdom in blood, whose success must be purchased by havoc, and whose triumph makes the misery of thousands or millions, ought to make the small expiation which can be made by their public punishment; and no country _can_ be safe in which it is not the custom to hang traitors. Still, those acts, even if they were of an order which might shock the sensibility of a Frenchman to breach of treaty, or the sight of blood, have no reference to the talents and the triumphs of Nelson.

But these volumes suddenly deviate from the history of the great admiral, into remarks on the great living soldier of England. There, too, we must follow them; and our task is no reluctant one; for it enables us at once to enlighten intelligent inquiry, and to offer our tribute to pre-eminent fame. But, in this instance, we argue with our accomplished neighbours on different principles. The Frenchman loves glory--the Englishman its fruits. The Frenchman loves the excitement of war; the Englishman hates it, as mischievous and miserable, and to be palliated only by the stern necessity of self-defence. He honours intrepidity, but it only when displayed in a cause worthy of human feeling. No man more exults in the talent of the field; but it is only when it brings back security to the fireside. The noblest trophy of Wellington, in the eyes of his country, is the thirty years of peace won by his sword!

It has become the fashion of the French to speak of this illustrious personage with something of a sneer at what they pronounce his "want of enterprise." Every thing that he has done is by "_phlegm_!" Phlegm must be a most valuable quality, in that case, for it enabled him to defeat every officer to whom he had been opposed; and there was scarcely any man of repute in the French army to whom he had not been opposed. It is in no spirit of rational taunt, or of that hostility which, we will hope, has died away between England and France, that we give the list of the French marshals whom Wellington has fought, and _always_ beaten, and several of them _several times_:--Junot at Vimeira, Soult at Oporto and the Pyrenees, Victor and Sebastiani at Talavera, Massena at Busaco, Marmont at Salamanca, Jourdan at Vitoria, and a whole group of the chief generals of France, with Ney, Soult, and Napoleon himself, at their head, at Waterloo.

But have the British military authors ever doubted the talent, or disparaged the gallantry, of those distinguished soldiers? Certainly not; they have given them every acknowledgment which ability and bravery could demand. Let the French nation read the eloquent pages of Alison, and see the character given by the historian to the leaders in the Italian, German, and Spanish campaigns. Let them read the spirited pages of Napier, and see them decorated almost with the colours of romance. Does either of these popular and powerful authors stigmatise the French generals with "_ineptie_," or characterise their victories, as the mere results of inability either to attack or to run away? Let them be the example of the future French military writers, and let those writers learn that there is a European tribunal, as well as a Parisian one.