he would sustain his reputation in the last hour. Amongst others, Sir John Moore felt a strong desire to observe how a kindred spirit would comport itself in such a moment; and here fortunately we can give his sentiments in his own words; for while reading his account, we were so struck with it, as a remarkable testimony to the fine bearing of a man, whose enterprise terminating unfortunately, necessarily gives a handle to his enemies to blacken his character, that we took a full note of it.

The day before I left Dublin, Mr Theobald Wolfe Tone was brought in prisoner, taken on board the Hoche, in the action of the 12th October. I endeavoured to see him, but he was conveyed to the Prevost prison before I reached the castle. He is said to have been one of the principal and first framers of the United Irish. He is the son of a coachmaker in Dublin, but was educated at the college for a lawyer; and, by some writings which are said to be his, he appears to be a man of considerable talent. He was tried by a court-martial at the barracks, the day after his arrival, where I understand he conducted himself with great firmness and manliness. He had prepared a speech, part of which only he was permitted to deliver, the rest being conceived inflammatory. By that part which he delivered, he discovers a superiority of mind, which must gain to him a degree of sympathy beyond what is given to ordinary criminals. 'He began by stating, that from his infancy he had been bred up in an honourable poverty, and since the first dawn of his reason he had been an enthusiast to the love of his country. The progress of an academic and classical education confirmed him still stronger in those principles, and spurred him on to support by actions, what he had so strongly conceived in theory; that British connexion was, in his opinion, the bane of his country's prosperity; it was his object to destroy this connexion; and, in the event of his exertions, he had succeeded in rousing three millions of his countrymen to a sense of their national debasement. Here he was interrupted by the court; and afterwards going on with something similar, he was again interrupted. He then said, he should not take up the time of the court by any subterfuge to which the forms of the law might entitle him. He admitted the charge of coming in arms, as the leader of a French force, to invade Ireland; but said it was as a man banished, amputated from all natural and political connexion with his own country, and a naturalized subject of France, bearing a commission of the French Republic, under which it was his duty implicitly to obey the commands of his military superiors. He produced his commission, constituting him adjutant-general in the French service, his orders, &c. &c. He said he knew, from what had already occurred to the officers, natives of Ireland, who had been made prisoners on this expedition, what would be his fate; on that, however, he had made up his mind. He was satisfied that every liberal man, who knew his mind and principles, would be convinced, in whatever enterprise he engaged for the good of his country, it was impossible he could ever have been combined in approbation or aid to the fanatical and sanguinary atrocities perpetrated by many of the persons engaged in the recent conflict. He hoped the court would do him the justice to

believe, that from his soul he abhorred such abominable conduct. He had, in every public proceeding of his life, been actuated by the purest motives of love to his country; and it was the highest ambition of his soul to tread the glorious paths chalked out by the examples of Washington in America, and Kosciusko in Poland. In such arduous and

critical pursuits, success was the criterion of merit and fame. It was his lot to fail, and he was resigned to his fate. Personal considerations he had none; the sooner he met the fate that awaited him, the more agreeable to his feelings; but he could not repress his anxiety for the honour of the nation whose uniform he wore, and the dignity of that commission he bore as adjutant-general in the French service. As to the sentence of the court, which he so fully anticipated, he had but one wish, that it might be inflicted within one hour; but the only request he had to solicit the court was, that the mode of his death might not degrade the honour of a soldier. The French army did not feel it contrary to the dignity or etiquette of arms to grant similar favours to emigrant officers taken on returning, under British command, to invade their native country. He recollected two instances of this, in the cases of Charette and Sombreuil, who had obtained their request of being shot by files of grenadiers. A similar fate was the only favour he had to ask; and he trusted that men susceptible of the nice feelings of a soldier's honour would not refuse his request. As to the rest, he was perfectly reconciled.

'Next morning it was found that he had endeavoured to avoid public execution, by an attempt to kill himself: he was discovered with his windpipe cut across. His execution was necessarily postponed. A motion has since been made in the Court of King's Bench by Mr Curran, for a Habeas Corpus, directed to the keeper of the Prevost Marshalsea, to bring the body of T. W. Tone, with the cause of his detention. This is so far fortunate, as it is to stop for the future all trials by court-martial for civil offences, and things are to revert to their former and usual channel.'

Such, in the very moment of hostility and excited passion, was Sir John Moore's feeling and liberal mode of describing the last bearing of a man, whose proceedings he was firmly opposed to. His biographer's manner of treating the same event, thirty-three years afterwards, and with this model before him, which, however, he suppresses, is as follows

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Among the prisoners who were taken was Wolfe Tone, the prime fomenter of the Irish rebellion. This man had once before been arrested for treason; but, by dissembled repentance, his forfeited life had been spared by government. On this occasion he tried to escape by legal chicanery; which failing, with his own hand he finished his pernicious life.'

Behold the brothers! How diversified are nature's works!

Immediately after quitting Ireland, we find Sir John Moore engaged in the memorable expedition to Holland. This, at least, as being the mere record of a campaign, we were in hopes Mr. Moore, an unmilitary man, would suffer us to read of in the Gene

ral's language, and that we should have been spared his own remarks, because we like to hear the actors speak of such affairs. But no! the narrative is still the biographer's, and at the very threshold he stumbles upon the following observations, which we do suppose that even the Morning Herald might be proud of:If the Dutch at that time had retained the same love of liberty ⚫ and independence which they had displayed in the sixteenth century against Spain, or in the seventeenth against France, the * plan would undoubtedly have succeeded.”

Ay! No doubt; if we had been aided instead of being opposed by the enemy, we should have been successful. But let us hear Mr Moore again. The Dutch troops, which formed the ❝ most numerous part of the enemy's army, served slavishly under the orders of the French general, and fought against those who 'came to emancipate them. The character of these Dutchmen was very different from that of their ancestors, who had resisted pertinaciously the sanguinary Duke of Alva, the heroic Condé, and Turenne, and inundated their country, rather than submit to foreign subjection.'

We scarcely think it possible that Mr Moore can be so ignorant of history as this observation would imply; but we will, to avoid mistakes, tell him that the olden Dutchmen resisted Spain: to establish a republic; that they resisted Louis XIV. in defence of that republic; and that at this period they received the French as friends and deliverers, because the house of Orange, aided by Prussia, had by fraud and violence destroyed their ancient republic, suppressing their constitution and liberties; and that, consequently, they were then displaying precisely the same love of liberty and independence which their ancestors had done before them. They resembled those ancestors in all things, following exactly their system; for, first, they fought for a republic; secondly, they fought with the aid of foreigners; thirdly, they were successful, and obliged the Duke of York to capitulate. When in these flights of reasoning, Mr Moore puts us in mind of those innocent little birds, called by children black-heads, which being taken and let loose in a room, think to make a dart into the air, and dashing their heads against the windows, fall to the ground. However, we do not find fault with this campaign, nor with the account of the expedition to Genoa and Cadiz, nor with that to Egypt, save that it is Mr Moore, and not General Moore, who speaks; and the latter's criticisms upon the plans and events are not given. This we think a great loss; and we believe our readers will agree with us, when they have read the account of the battle of Alexandria, where Sir John is at last allowed to tell his own story in his own way. We are glad also to perceive that his bio

grapher has not suppressed, nor justified, that act of vandalism, (and of cruelty also, to the poor Copts, whose grounds were swallowed up,)—we mean the cutting of the dyke which kept the sea out of Lake Mareotis. We should, however, have been more pleased if he had thought fit to give us that able fragment written in defence of Sir Ralph Abercrombie's military conduct, by Sir John Moore, in answer to the impudent observations of General Reynier. We should have been pleased to have it, were it only as a specimen of careful composition from Sir John Moore's pen; but, containing, as it does, a vindication of Sir Ralph's military conduct, we desired it more earnestly. But then, alas! it proclaims that English expeditions were seldom successful, and always difficult to conduct, because they were directed by Ministers,' (the Ministers of the day, those favourites of our author,) 'who were ignorant of military affairs, and too arrogant and selfsufficient to consult military men.'

6

From Egypt we are brought home to England, and placed in that camp at Shorn-Cliff, where Moore's skill, in forming troops, was proved to be equal to his daring in leading them. But as many persons have been falsely persuaded that he was a harsh and odious disciplinarian, we seize the opportunity of refuting the calumny by the most irrefragable proof. The officers of the regiments which were then formed by his care, were ever after his warmest admirers; his discipline it has been their object to maintain; his maxims have been their guide; his reputation has been by them considered as a part of their own; his memory is cherished in their hearts to this day, and will be so as long as those hearts retain an atom of a soldier's pride and honour. His biographer knows little of this matter, and we are therefore only treated to a few letters,-interesting, no doubt; yet, we feel quite sure, that they are the least interesting that could possibly be selected from his papers. We have not indeed seen any thing to be able to assert this positively; but from the general turn of Sir John Moore's mind, and his habit of setting down his thoughts, we feel as certain as that we live, he did not let that most critical period of England's fate pass unnoticed. We have, however, the same rapid narrative, the same appearance of wishing to get over work,—a brevity such as we should expect from an official 'precis' writer, who endeavours to earn his salary with the least possible waste of labour;-save and except in those places where the author thinks he can, with or without propriety, write down his own observations and political views: in fine, self always seems uppermost in the biographer's thoughts.

We have a ludicrous instance of this self-consideration in the account of Sir John Moore's appearance at a cabinet council,

held to consider of an attack at Ferrol. What really passed there, is, to our minds, as remarkable a proof of his self-possession, clear judgment, and prompt action, as any that can be found in his whole life; yet certainly nobody could suspect it from the narrative; and, as if the defect on this head were not sufficient, we are favoured suddenly, and as the French phrase goes, à "propos de bottes-with what? Any thing relating to Ferrol, or to war, or policy, to camps or councils? No! nothing of all that. What then? The author's amazement at the errors into which men fall, who, not being medical themselves, do yet talk of medicine!

From Shorn-Cliff and Ferrol the scene changes to Sicily; and as the whole of Sir John Moore's proceedings there were political, and most interesting,-as they showed his sense and judgment in civil affairs to be no whit behind his talents in war,-we have, as a matter of course, nothing but a garbled and impotent abstract of these transactions: we look in vain for the graphic account of his interview with the Queen of Naples, and the final character which he draws of her,-which, by the way, although contrary to the received opinion, is confirmed by the testimony of Mr Palmieri de Micichi in his very entertaining 'Memoirs.' We want to have Moore's disputes with Mr Drummond, also, more clearly told; and his account of the vagaries of Sir Sydney Smith touched upon. We desire to hear his sentiments upon the state of Sicily,-the character and wishes of the people; and something more than a few garbled extracts to show his views relative to a descent upon Italy-that Italy which he was so pressed to invade, but which he never would invade, until he could offer the Italians something better to fight for, than the oppressions and the abuses of the Sicilian Court. His military criticism upon General Fraser's expedition to Egypt, might also, we think, have found a place in the life of a General; and would certainly have been as well placed there, as the very novel information that Archimedes defended Syracuse. But these things are all below his biographer's notice, who yet thrusts forward his own observations upon public affairs, upon tyrants, upon liberty, upon demagogues, and the like fustian, with such a rude determination, that, while reading them, we cannot help admiring the sense of that child, who, when the pig poked its snout into her bowl of milk, said it ought to take a spoon.'

We are told that General Fox, having also the rank of Minister, was sent to supersede that distinguished officer General Stuart; and that, as General Fox was infirm, this double appointment was a strong proof of fraternal affection' in Mr Charles Fox. Now, first, we never heard that Sir John Stuart's conduct