well known, it is to be supposed, in his desire to obtain a legitimate occasion for bringing the black soldier forward, he wished for an action to be fought, and feeling it necessary to curb the arrogance of the lawless tribe up the river-had they not given in-as a soldier he would cheerfully have marched to the king's town; but the battle once fought, and most abject contrition following on the quarter-deck of the Torch, his own conscience and the sense of what he owed to the government of his sovereign, never would have allowed him to refuse peace when once asked, and in this opinion he was supported by the governor of Sierra Leone and the commodore, who were present; it was but natural for the young blood of the army to wish for a continuance of the campaign, but the revengeful feelings of the Gambia merchants is out of place in the present day, and the sequel evinced Colonel D'Arcy's judgment: a despatch arrived from the Duke of Newcastle, fully approving of the governor's policy. The hostages were kindly treated in Bathurst, and in the following August, set at liberty. The government of Baddiboo having paid the value of £600 towards the indemnity, the balance of the fine was remitted on a treaty being signed favourable to trade.

A very few days after the campaign Colonel (now General) Faidherbe, the fiery governor of Senegal, swept to the north like a comet, giving the kingdom of Salem a stern lesson for outrages committed on French traders. It was supposed by the natives that there was combination in the white man's retributive sword, and with many that we have conversed with, one opinion seems to be uppermost in their minds, that the days of pillage are over, and that it is useless to oppose the white man in the field. The expedition melted away in a few days after the return to Bathurst. The Avon took away Lieutenant-Colonel Murray and his six companies of the 1st West India regiment, forming the relief for the West Indies. The commodore hurried to comply with the late Mr. Consul Foote's requisition for an expedition at Porto Novo, taking with him half of the Gambia garrison. The contingent and the militia were sent to their homes, and the earnest governor was off in the Dover with 200 slaves captured in the Clara Windson, to Cotto Bay in British Combo, where, by permission of the Secretary of State, he settled. these poor liberated Africans, as a slight check upon the Mahommedan element so rampant in the newly acquired territory, and also for the purpose of raising vegetables so much required for the Bathurst market.

The question which will naturally arise in the mind of the reader, on arriving so far in this article, is, "Do germs of discontent still exist in Combo, which may cause another war?" and the answer is "Yes, they do." For this reason ten years have developed causes of discontent in the minds of the king and head men, not only of Combo, but of Baccow, and the alliance with Goongour in May, 1860, so promptly severed by the present governor on the quarter-deck of the Prometheus, displayed the tendencies of their policy to endeavour to recover British Combo. The shallow brain of the negro cannot possibly be made to judge of the future from he past. A considerable period has now elapsed since the cession

of the country. Under our rule it has much improved, the bush having been cleared away by the liberated African pensioners and Joliffe settlers we have located on what before was primeval forest. The soil proved to be very suitable for the cultivation of the ground nut and all other kinds of produce, having lain fallow for centuries. A great number of palm trees (six or seven hundred, at least) are developed under native rule; there the palm wine makers would have to pay the king of Combo two dollars for each tree annually. The king's awakened mind* regrets this loss of revenue, and is now anxious to receive back that which eight years ago he gave to the British. In this desire he is joined hand and glove by his late subjects of the town of Baccow. They detest the pensioners and the liberated Africans, although both Governors O'Connor and D'Arcy have acted in the fairest way towards this town. After the cession of 1853 they were confirmed in their clearings, and told that, provided they obeyed the laws, they should not be troubled. Lands adjoining were given to the pensioners by Governor O'Connor, and the boundaries carefully defined. Majieboo embraced the opportunity of the change in governors to claim part of the pensioner's ground, and a very stormy discussion took place in the governor's presence, when he threatened to "fire guns" for the ground, but Colonel D'Arcy was not to be alarmed by threats. On the land being clearly proved to have been given to the pensioners, they were confirmed in their possession. Our Mahomedan subjects of Baccow wish us away in order that they may grow ground-nuts on the pensioners' clearings, and the king of Combo residing at Yundum, only seven miles from Bald Cape, is anxious to get the tax from the Jolahs, who tap the palm trees. Then again the Sabbajee people located on a debateable piece of ground between Sabbajee and Goongour on the seaboard are always begging the governor to be allowed to return and rebuild Sabbajee, but this is sternly refused. Upon lands in a state of bush, joining to the Baccow ground-nut fields, the liberated Africans have been lately located, their settlement is of course looked upon with jealousy by the proud lazy Mandingo, but a ring of British villages extending now from the sea to the river is a strong position, and completely divides Baccow from their friends, and co-religionists at Yundum. It is to be regretted that the king's offer in 1853 was taken, but now it is imperative on the English to abide by it, for many reasons too numerous to relate. It would be highly impolitic and very unjust to the settlers to abandon the territory; it must be held vi et armis, but it is to be hoped that the late war has taught the Combo people also a lesson not likely to be forgotten, and that this interesting part of the colony may not retrograde again ten years by bella, horrida bella.

Our object in stringing together these few details has been to do justice to a decimal of our forces serving on the coast of Africa, where the deadly climate adds to the risk of the service. We have endeavoured to detail faithfully the history of this interesting little colony ab initio to the present time; and naught has been extenuated, or set down in malice.

* Query: Is not this a proof of his growing sapience.

THE SECOND AND THIRD MARQUESSES OF
LONDONDERRY.

"Historia quoque modo scripta delectat." Therefore Sir A. Alison's "History of Modern Europe" may be read with pleasure; and therefore and with some better reason also-we may say the same of the three enormous volumes he has just given to the world, under the title of the "Lives of Lord Castlereagh and Sir Charles Stewart, the Second and Third Marquesses of Londonderry."

The most valuable part of the volumes before us is that which exhibits certain features in the character of Lord Castlereagh, hitherto too little recognised, which ought, in some degree, to redeem his name from the unpopularity which adhered to it during his life. Doubtless no public man is unpopular in England throughout a long political career or favourably appreciated only by a party, and never by the nation-without in the main deserving the ill opinion incurred. Yet Lord Castlereagh was certainly at one period right, as every one will acknowledge at present, when all our leading statesmen and the people were wrong: we mean in his plans for the conduct of the war against Napoleon, after the death of Pitt.

As a War Minister, the truly great man just named seemed always afraid of bold military enterprises on a large scale. But this is what Lord Castlereagh did not flinch from, what he advocated throughout; and there is no doubt that it was by adopting this system of la grand guerre against France that we finally triumphed over the iminense resources of that country wielded by the genius of Napoleon with, at one time, all continental Europe to back him.

Two enterprises especially of Lord Castlereagh have been much blamed, which deserved the highest praise-viz., the capture of the Danish fleet in 1808, and the Walcheren Expedition. Both of these enterprises were directed against the naval power of the Emperor; and we have been apt to depreciate them chiefly on the supposition that that power was completely broken by the victory of Trafalgar But this supposition was, as Sir A. Alison and other historians have shown, a mistake which might have led to very disastrous consequences.

He

After the battle of Trafalgar Napoleon had still, including Dutch and Spanish, one hundred sail of the line at his disposal, and to this force the treaty of Tilsit, which gave him the prospect of the entire command of the maritime force of the Baltic, added fifty more. was building besides twenty or twenty-five sail of the line yearly, and in a few years he expected to have one hundred and eighty sail of the line ready for sea, manned by the whole of the sailors of continental Europe. The importance, therefore, of the capture of the Copen

hagen fleet can hardly be exaggerated. Thereby the conqueror of Friedland was deprived of half the fruit he would otherwise have derived from that victory, and lost twenty first-rate men-of-war, which he intended to array against Great Britain. Add to this, by alimenting hostilities in the Peninsula, the entire fleets of Spain and Portugal were withdrawn from his grasp. Thus stripped of its two wings, the French naval centre alone presented a formidable object of attack, against which the Walcheren Expedition was directed, with every prospect, had it not been confided to incapable hands, of complete success. But the incapacity of Lord Chatham made the failure of this enterprise as signal and disastrous as its issue would otherwise have been decisive and triumphant. Had the instructions given by Lord Castlereagh been duly executed, the fortress of Antwerp, then in a most dilapidated state, and almost ungarrisoned, would have been taken, and the French fleet destroyed before 5,000 men could have been collected for its defence.

In brief, the merit of Lord Castlereagh, as a War Minister, was this: that striking out alike from the policy of petty sugar island conquests pursued by Mr. Pitt, and the entire abandonment of continental alliances recommended by Mr. Fox, and practised by Lord Grey, he assailed at once with the whole combined naval and military force of the country the vital and accessible points of the enemy's territory. The signal success with which this new mode of prosecuting the war was attended in Portugal and at Copenhagen, were inadequate, however, at the time to reconcile the nation to a change of system so entirely at variance with the previous policy of the country, and the strongest recommendations of its ablest statesmen. Men were startled by the adoption of a warfare so different from any which Mr. Fox had recommended, or Mr. Pitt had practised. They could not get over the constant assertions of the Opposition that it was in vain to attempt to contend with France on the Continent, and that the only way was to husband our resources for the defence of our own shores. In this general opinion the retreat from Talavera and the repulse from Walcheren confirmed them; and Lord Castlereagh's ejection from the Ministry in 1809, was the unanimous act of the whole Cabinet, with the approval at the time of a large majority of the people.

The seventeen hundred pages of Sir Archibald's thick volumes, traversing a period of time so superabounding in the most interesting and exciting events, cannot be satisfactorily even skimmed within the limits to which we are confined. The most attractive subjects too, most vividly it must be confessed, treated in this work-the Feninsular war, and the marvellous campaign of Napoleon in France of 1814,-are so well known to the English reader that, though it is hardly possible to repeat them to satiety, we choose to pass them over, in order to dwell a little on a certain crisis of the German campaign of the French Emperor after his retreat from Russia, which has been less noticed, but which exhibits strikingly the avaricious, grasp-all, risk-all, military ambition of that great Captain, who bated not one jot of heart, or hope, or confidence in himself and in his genius when hardest pressed by adverse fortune, his

superb pretensions and sanguine anticipations of success, increasing on the contrary with the difficulties and dangers that surrounded him. Of this he gave the most wonderful example when his capital was in immediate danger of falling into the hands of the Allies; but he displayed the same indomitable temper in a manner almost equally remarkable in Germany. Indeed, we may say that rapacity of conquest, or the game of gain all or lose all was one that he played also in Spain, though not under circumstances so extremely hazardous.

The campaign of 1813 in Germany had been attended with various successes and discomfitures on both sides. At Dresden the Allies had been defeated, but had been partially victorious at the first battle of Culm. Vandame, who commanded the French troops, would thereupon have retreated, but he received express orders from Napoleon to push on to Töplitz, and did so, supposing he would be supported by the young guard 32,000 strong, who were posted twenty miles in his rear, but who had received at the same time orders not to join Vandame. This reinforcement consequently not arriving, the French general deemed himself on the point of being surrounded and cut off by the out-numbering host of Prussians and Russians before him. He resolved therefore to cut his way through the enemy, whilst the allies, under exactly the same mistake, formed the same resolution; and, under this delusion, the two armies equally desperate, precipitated themselves on each other in wild confusion. A scene of matchless horror ensued in a narrow gorge where the conflict took place, and where the French were utterly defeated. Seven thousand prisoners, among whom was Vandame himself, with sixty pieces of cannon and two eagles, fell into the hands of the victors. Thus, by the orders given to the young guard, Napoleon missed the opportunity of striking a decisive blow. "For what would have been the fate of the allied army if, when descending in confusion and disorder the passes of the defile, they had met this force and Vandame, 70,000 strong, prepared to stop their progress? Disaster, great and irreparable, would have befallen the allied armies, and the consequent disunion of their councils would have led to a peace glorious to France, and destructive to the liberties of Europe."

Why then were the young guard kept from joining Vandame? For this reason: Napoleon, not content with the defeat and ruin of the grand army of the allies, which was in a manner within his power, had resolved on a simultaneous attack on Berlin. He thought a great impression would be produced in Europe, and the prestige of his power effectually restored, if, at the same time that he himself defeated and drove back that army, one of his lieutenants routed the army of the Crown Prince, and damped the zeal of the Prussians by the capture of their capital at the very outset of the campaign. His conduct in this instance was quite in accordance with the insatiable thirst for conquest which led him to engage simultaneously in the invasion of Andalusia and Portugal, in 1810, which made him leave Portugal to attack Valentia, when Wellington was threatening Leon in 1812, which occasioned the loss of Spain, and to invade Russia