sistency. As illustrative of this conduct, we may mention, that when the gift of military stores, sent by the generosity of Great Britain, for the service of the Swedes, was brought to shore at Stralsund, the generous Bernadotte would have very quietly allowed us not only to pay the expences of the debarkation of those stores, but absolutely to discharge the rent of the storehouses in which they were temporarily kept in his (Bernadotte's) own dominions, but for the very spirited and praiseworthy remonstrance of Lord Londonderry! The Crown Prince, in the meantime, in all the interviews which our minister had with him, talked, in splendid terms, of the deeds which, in conjunction with the Allies, he pledged himself at no distant time to perform. The royal boaster, who all the time, kept at a respectable distance from the theatre of war, was in the habit of calling for maps, of evolving them with a majestic attitude before his company, and thereupon he would, with a most impotent mimicry of political omnipotence, push here and there, as his great designs required of him, ancient boundaries and time-honoured landmarks with the most elevated indifference; on parchment, however,-all on parchment. Now and again Londonderry, with that eye to business, which never winks in the forehead of a single son of the "country of shopkeepers," used to pose the grandiloquent bravo by some simple proposition-"I want to see your army in motion." "Ah," replied the cunning Bernadotte, "it is not prudent to collect our masses too early, lest the enemy should be aware of our points of concentration." His answers seemed generally to have satisfied our minister, and we are not surprised at their being so easily swallowed by him, since they were recommended by such condiments as the Prince Royal was, according to this authority, capable of combining with them.

Whenever the Prince Royal,' we are informed by Lord Londonderry, 'conversed, it was always with the greatest affability and cordiality. It is impossible to resist the fascination of his eloquent expressions, or be indifferent to his insinuating tone and manner; and when armed, as he always is, with a bottle of Eau-de-Cologne in one hand, and a white handkerchief in the other, inundating every thing lavishly around him with the perfume, it requires some hardihood to be quite collected and insensible to beautiful phraseology, so as to discover the drift or solidity of the extraordinary man into whose presence you are at all times admitted, and accosted as "Mon Ami."'-p. 88.

Now this very specious person, with his white handkerchief, appears after all to be a very finished dissembler, as is most unequivocally shewn in some of the pages of Lord Londonderry's work. It seems that the present Duke of Cumberland was extremely anxious at this time to have a command in some service or another, or, as it is more vaguely expressed in this narrative, his Royal Highness 'was anxious to see the active operations that might take place.' The eagerness of the Duke was mentioned to Bernadotte, who at once put an extinguisher upon the ambition of the young

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Prince, by saying, that any nomination to command over such troops as received pay from England, must originate with England. Lord Londonderry, however, shortly afterwards is thunderstruck on being told by the Duke of Cumberland himself, that Bernadotte actually pressed upon his Royal Highness the command of all the Hanoverian troops in a most urgent manner, and that too within a very short period after the Prince Royal had so resolutely stated that such appointments must come from England! This conduct Lord Londonderry calls "disingenuous;" which diplomatic phrase, when translated into current language, means, we presume, utterly base and hypocritical. Of the two royal personages thus brought together, we may observe that Lord Londonderry mentions the following very curious, perhaps it may be found instructive, anecdote :

During the stay of the Prince Royal at Mecklenburgh, we had no little difficulty as to the etiquette of this small court with the two princes. The Prince Royal, as heir to the throne of Sweden, considered that he should take the pas. The Duke of Cumberland, most properly and rationally, could not brook his blood should give way, at his uncle's court, to Bernadotte, much less did he incline to cede the fair princess who presided there. The old Duke of Mecklenburgh, under these circumstances, entreated me to settle some plan for them to get from the saloon into the dining room. After some reflection, I proposed that the two ladies of rank present, the Princess of Solms and the Landgravine of Darmstadt, should go out together, and that the Royal Princes should follow hand in hand. This was adopted after considerable difficulty; but the Duke of Cumberland soon assumed his birth rights, and took the first place by the Princess; which the Prince Royal not only perceived, but certainly resented it, by showing extreme ill humour during the dinner.'-p. 91.

Here is one of those ridiculous situations into which fortune loves occasionally to thrust some of the great ones of the world, in order, perhaps, to afford a means of consolation to others in their comparative state of inferiority. To our minds, the Duke of Cumberland, as well as his compurgator Lord Londonderry, behaved on the occasion with egregious silliness. For, in the first place, the Royal Duke was a resident in his uncle's abode, and, from the circumstance of relationship to the host, was one of those inmates from whom the duties of hospitality were to be expected by a stranger guest. In the next place, the laws of precedency gave the pas to the Prince of Sweden, and it is utterly ridiculous in a man like Lord Londonderry, himself the creature (we speak it with no disrespect,) of conventional regulations, to applaud the Duke of Cumberland for not yielding the place of honour to Bernadotte; birth is out of the question in such a case, and, if the authority which gave Bernadotte the right of precedence, is to be set at nought, what becomes of the rank of the Duke of Cumberland himself? But it is most agreeably ludicrous to think of the two overgrown children setting out together from the saloon, "hand in hand," too, we suppose, as our first parents marched out of

wan

Paradise; and, no doubt, like them also, advancing with dering steps and slow," while the "hastening angel" of the scene, Lord Londonderry, caught with either hand the lingering pair, "and to the dining-room

Led them direct."

But to return to Prague, the seat of the conferences. The 10th of August was approaching, the day for the termination of the armistice. Even yet Napoleon's existence, as Emperor of the French, lay upon the cast of a die; for, notwithstanding all the inauspicious clouds which ranged themselves on his side of the horizon, that Emperor might still have made his peace with the allies. The proposals of Austria, which he declined, must not have been of a nature so extremely difficult to be assented to, since Caulaincourt declared that they met his approbation, and that all he wanted was competent authority to close with Metternich at once. In what a state of jeopardy, then, was the gigantic plan of England, the progress of which even so far had cost her such amazing sacrifices! But the fate of Buonaparte was decided. Austria enrolled herself amongst the allies, and afterwards afforded unquestionable evidence of the sincerity and cordiality with which she co-operated for the common object. It would be scarcely pardonable in us, were we to waste time in going over the diary, so minutely furnished to us by our author, of the various movements and operations performed by the allied armies, with the view of driving the enemy across the Elbe in the first instance, and pursuing him,-they scarcely dare yet imagine whither. One point, however, merits a little attention, and that is the embarrassment which now arose with respect to the individual to whom the supreme command of the allied forces should be entrusted. The Emperor Alexander was anxious for it, but Austria, in consequence of the high authority which she had a right to assume amongst the allies, thought that her choice ought to prevail, and Prince Schwartzenburgh was finally elevated to the rank of Generalissimo. Notwithstanding the concentration of all military authority in the hands of one person, very little, if any indeed, of the good results which we expect from a unity of influence, arose for some time from this appointment. The attempt on Dresden, which subsequently took place, by the allies, is a reproach on the advanced state of modern warfare. The Austrian columns of attack, for example, proceeded up to the glacis of the town, without any breach in it having been previously made, and unprovided with ladders, or any other implements whatever by which they could possibly make a lodgement. Again, the hour chosen for approaching the town was precisely that which was the most unfavourable to the assailants. If the practice of the best generals had not convinced us, certainly common sense must have informed us, that the time for advancing to a rampart should be a time of darkness-arrived at the point of attack, the storming party will wait for the light to begin operations. This principle, which was never departed from in the Penin

sula but with disastrous consequences to the offensive party-witness the repeated stormings of St. Sebastian--was literally reversed before Dresden. The assault began late in the evening, the enemy had full light to observe the approach of the allied columns, now necessarily unable to effect any good purpose in consequence of the darkness which involved them, and which, of course, favoured the operations of the garrison. It was before Dresden that Moreau, the famous French general, who had but recently arrived from America and joined the allied forces, was killed by a cannot shot. We expected some original account of the unhappy termination of this warrior's career from a brother in arms, but we have been disappointed, as the only novelty connected with the death of Moreau, which proceeds from the pen of Lord Londonderry, is the fact that after he received the wound, a groan or an expression of complaint never passed the lips of Moreau; and that the instant after the fatal shot struck him he tranquilly smoked a cigar.

There can be no doubt that the defeat of the allies before Dresden was attended with greater disasters than their friends have ever been willing to avow; at all events that defeat, and the hasty retrograde movement which they were forced to make in consequence, had a wonderful effect in opening the eyes of the sovereigns afresh to the blessings of peace. On what a straw were the hopes and wishes of England doomed to rest once more! From the general complexion of affairs,' says Lord Londonderry, it appeared that if Buonaparte persevered in making propositions, there was great probability they would be listened to!' Then it seems that the Emperor of Russia became disgusted that the supreme command was given to an Austrian in preference to himself, and Prince Schwartzenburgh informed our author personally that he deemed it judicious to act for the present altogether on the defensive. What a leveller of high boasters and lofty pretenders does true history ultimately prove! The whole of this glorious crusade against French principles, which the allies took up as a duty; which they were ever ready, they said, to make sacrifices to promote; nay, which they contracted with England, for a very handsome consideration, to carry on,-this crusade, they were, at any instant, ready to break off, and if they did not succeed in bringing the war to a premature close, the cause is to be ascribed solely to the impracticable obstinacy of Napoleon himself. But the time for the developement of that singular man's destiny had arrived, and every event connected with him must contribute to bring it about. The allies rallied; and in several encounters with the French, gained advantages which encouraged them to still further and better combined exertions, and ultimately produced the victory of Leipsic. Even after this success, the harmony of the alliance was in danger of being every hour shattered to pieces by the operation of the mean, selfish views of the individual powers which composed it. Russia did all she could to establish the seat of war in Saxony, in the hope of

making that duchy her own spoil. Prussia had a strong interest in keeping the war away from Silesia, in order that she might recover there her strong holds; and the great aim of Austria was to rouse the Tyrolese. Each of the powers wanted to destroy Buonaparte, but to destroy him in their own way, and with an exclusive view to their own aggrandizement respectively.

The account of the battle of Leipsic, by the Noble Marquess, deserves to be attentively perused, because it is a sober catalogue of events-a mere collection of items, recording the operations connected with the battle; they are given without embellishment, or any attempt to produce effect, and resemble very much indeed the progress of a real action in the field, which some persons would be astonished to find contained so little of the picturesque. An anecdote connected with this battle deserves to be mentioned. The despatch which brought the account of it to England was, as we remember, written by our author, and he now informs us that it was penned on a stone in the field of battle. In the next place, the copy, we believe the first that arrived in this country, was conveyed, at great personal risk, by a Mr. Solby, a Prussian, extensively connected in England, through the midst of the French armies. During the retreat of the French which ensued, it will be remembered, that the Polish Prince Poniatowski met his death by plunging into the Elster. 'The Prince,' observes Lord Londonderry, urged by what the French call un beau desespoir, was drowned in that river; decked, it was said, with brilliants, and too heavily charged with coin, for a retreat a la nage.' The levity of the noble writer on the fate of Poniatowski, and the facility with which he gives currency to what is evidently no more than a calumnious on dit, may be very well pardoned in one who cannot comprehend the heroic love of freedom, which would induce such a person as Poniatowski to take the only chance-joining the French-that was left of rescuing his country from oppression. Would not the Prince have been able effectually to retain his coins had he, like other princes of his day, turned traitor to the cause which first he had disinterestedly preferred?

But what astonishes us most of all in the history of this retreat is, that whilst Napoleon was retracing the line of his communications even towards France, driven by the allies, we find all of a sudden that Prince Metternich is carrying on an under current of communication with the French Emperor through a Monsieur de St. Aignau, and that too without the consent of England; so that Metternich was already striving to gain an excuse to shuffle out of the war, no doubt well convinced that Russia and Prussia would have also retired from it; and then what was to become of England and all her generous objects for Spain, Portugal, Sicily, and the Bourbons? Like a man holding a lump of fire, our author seems to be in a state of painful impatience whilst handling this matter, which he at last suffers to fall from his hands with most provoking