relieved bp the arrival of Eugene in his camp, who, though he could not bring up his troops in time, hurried to render his personal aid. The two generals resolved to attack the enemy in his position before OUDENARDE. By a bold move. ment they first threw themselves between him and France, and, cutting off his communications, compelled him to fall back. Eager to bring on an engagement, Marlborough pushed forward his forces across the Scheldt; and, while the main body was still half a league from that river, Vendôme, thinking to overwhelm the vanguard which had crossed, drew up hastily in battle array. But the issue of the first encounter made a general action inevitable. The Allies had scarcely completed their dispositions when the tempest burst. The whole right wing of the French rapidly debouching, pressed onward and outflanked their left. The peril was extreme; a few moments and they might be severed from the friendly ramparts of Oudenarde, while behind them was the deep, impassable Scheldt. Leaving Eugene on the right, Marlborough hurried to the post of danger. Every bridge, every ditch, every wood, every enclosure was obstinately contested; and one unbroken line of fire showed the desperate energy of the intermingling combatants. On the ex treme right of the French, Marlborough observed a hill unoccupied, and imme diately ordered his reserve of cavalry to advance and seize it. The movement was executed with promptness, and the horse wheeling in a vast semicircle round the enemy's wing, which in the ardour of victory was pushed far for ward from the centre, completely enveloped it. All resistance was overpowered, and whole regiments were cut down or taken prisoners. Vendôme made a gallant but ineffectual effort to redeem the fortune of the day; and night falling upon the field alone enabled him to withdraw the remainder of his army. As it was, he lost 6000 men in killed and wounded, besides 9000 prisoners and 100 standards, while the Allies were weakened by 5000 men. Marlborough now proposed an immediate advance on Paris, but as it was thought too hazardous, he commenced the invasion by laying siege to LILLE, the strongest and most important frontier fortress. It was garrisoned by Mar shal Boufflers with 15,000 choice troops,

and the Duke of Vendôme, reinforced to 100,000, was at hand ready to interrupt the operations. Communication by water was impossible, and the nearest depôt for ordinary military stores for the Allies was twenty-five leagues off. Sixteen thousand horses were requisite to transport the train, which in a line of march extended over fifteen miles. Prince Eugene, notwithstanding, safely convoyed the moving mass. Lille was invested, and Vendôme advancing to its relief, Marlborough, who commanded the covering army, by a skilful parallel movement defeated his design. Eugene was wounded in an assault on the town, aud for a while the direction of everything was devolved on the Duke: the night he spent in the tent watching Vendôme, the day in the besieging lines. At length, after a brave_resistance prolonged through sixty days, the town surrendered, and, six weeks later, the citadel also.

All parties began now to think of peace, and negotiations commenced; but the rigorous terms imposed by the Allies were more than the pride of the Grand Monarque could endure. He was willing to concede much, but not all. Enormous bribes were offered to Marlborough to secure more favourable proposals, but he turned from them with coldness and contempt. Louis then appealed pathetically to his people, and called on them to sustain the glory of France. The national sympathy and enthusiasm were kindled. All ranks and parties vied in contributing their property and their services to the war; and Marshal Villeroi was soon in the field at the head of 112,000 men. Marlborough at length, after vigorous remonstrances at the general lethargy, appeared with nearly the same num ber-a heterogeneous mass, made one by the recollection of past successes and by confidence in their leader. He first laid siege to Tournay, and took it after a protracted struggle, and the loss of many lives through the explosion of mines. Mons was the next fortress on the road to Paris, and having turned the lines of Villars, he sat down between it and France. An engagement became daily more imminent. Marshal Boufflers hurried to the camp of his companion in arms, to serve as a volunteer under him. The Allies, leaving a few squadrons before Mons, defiled 90,000 strong to

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the undulating ground on the south. Marshal Villars, with 95,000 fresh and eager soldiers, was ready for the fray, marching across the plateau, which was woody and intersected with streams, towards the little plain of MALPLAQUET. Marlborough and Eugene proposed an immediate attack, but were overruled. For two days they lay inactive, hoping for reinforcements, while the enemy diligently threw up intrenchments, and strengthened the natural advantages of their situation by the most formidable defences. We are again," said the soldiers, as at length they advanced, about to make war on moles." The forest of Tasnière lay on the French right, that of Lauière on the left, and there were but two approaches through the woods upon the centre. A demonstration in rear was first made, and meanwhile the position of Tasnière assailed in front and flank. The troops charging the centre left 3000 killed, and twice that number wounded, on the ground, and were only saved from destruction by the reserve supporting them After a severe conflict in the forest of Tasnière, victory declared itself for the Allies. Villars, alarmed at their success, drew his infantry from the centre to reinforce his left. Marlborough saw the weakened point, and ordered the cavalry to charge The intrenchments were broken through, the few defenders beaten down; a grand battery of forty cannon, hastily limbered up, and moving at quick trot, followed the assailants, and, placed in the midst of the enemy, played murderously upon them. Villars was already wounded; Boufflers gallantly endeavoured to restore the day; but finding all in vain, retreated in perfect regularity. The Allies, too exhausted to pursue, laid down to sleep. "The battle of Malplaquet," observes Alison, was a desperate duel between France and England. . . Nothing had occurred like it since Agincourt; nothing occurred like it again till Waterloo." The French loss did not exceed 14,000; the Allies lost in all 18,250, of whom two hundred and eighty-six were officers killed, and seven hundred and sixty wounded.

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The capture of Mons completed the campaign, and left but two fortified places in the possession of the French on the great road to Paris.

In England, Marlborough was again received with great éclát; but it was the

flash of sunshine from between looming clouds. Harley and Mrs. Masham had not ceased their machinations, and an imprudent request to be made captaingeneral for life gave a new handle to their animosity. As the plot thickened, he proposed to resign the command, but was overruled by the counsel of friends. He could not, however, forbear writing a strong letter to the Queen, complaining that all his services could not protect him " from the malice of a bed-chamber woman."

It being resolved to continue the war, the Duke and Eugene met at Tournay in the ensuing spring. The fort of Montagne was taken the first day after operations commenced. Then, by sudden and secret movements, they succeeded in breaking through the French lines and laying siege to Douay. Villars approached within musket-shot of the Allies, yet dared not risk a battle. Douay was taken, and afterwards Bethune. Villars now displayed great skill in constructing new lines, so situated as to impede the progress of his enemy into France; but he still declined fighting, for he waited the issue of intrigues that threatened the overthrow of the Whig Cabinet across the channel. He doubtless thought what Torey had said, "What we lose in Flanders, we shall gain in England." St. Venant next capitulated to Marlborough, who then invested Aire. The loss of a convoy, and the falling of heavy and continuous rains, protracted this siege to an unusual length. Sickness prevailed to a great extent; the troops were for the most part up to the knees in mud and water; and there was no possibility of finding a dry place for their lodging. Take it we must," said Marlborough, "for we cannot draw the guns from the batteries." But the conquest was dearly purchased; seven thousand men were killed and wounded, and the sick had swelled to double that number.

was

These achievements were not sufficiently brilliant to shame the cabals of detractors at home. The national debt, which at the revolution only 664,000l., had already reached 34,000,000l.; and the popular clamour laid the startling fact to Marlborough's charge. Many of the Whigs distrusted him, and perhaps not without reason, after the tergiversations of former years. The Tories made overtures to him, coupled with threats of impeachment,

which he rejected with dignity. Soon the first blow fell upon him. The Duchess was dismissed from her appointment as head of the Queen's household and keeper of the privy purse. He himself was accused of every meanness and crime; his courage even was denied; and he who had been the idol of princes and people, was treated as the lowest of men.

It was with reluctance that Marl borough retained his command of the army; but it was well for his fame. The great aim of the French during the winter months had been to construct a line of defence that should serve them in good stead for their conquered fortresses. A series of field-works had been thrown up, and art and nature made subservient to their strength, which extended over forty miles from Namur to the coast of Picardy. Behind them Villars awaited the opening of the campaign, under orders to avoid a battle, for secret negotiations were in progress with England. The Marshal boasted of his lines as Marlborough's ne plus ultra. He was mistaken; by a succession of manœuvres and stratagems his opponent completely deceived him, induced him to concentrate his forces in the fear of an attack, and then by a night march broke through them to the south without firing a shot. Friends and foes were confounded at this bloodless victory, which was more honourable to Marlborough than a great battle. Mr. Secretary St. John wrote to him, that they would have been "glad to have purchased it with the loss of several thousand lives." Without delay Bouchain was now invested and conquered; Quesnoy only remained to be taken. But on the 28th of September the preliminaries of peace-respecting which the Duke had not been consulted -were signed; and finding that nothing more could be done, deeply chagrined he returned to England. By these preliminaries, afterwards embodied in the famous Treaty of Utrecht, all his labours were brought to nought, and terms granted to France that, as a victor, she could scarcely have secured. In vain he expostulated with the Queen. In her speech to Parliament she said: "I am glad to tell you, that notwithstanding the arts of those who delight in war, both place and time are appointed for opening the treaty of a general peace." Lord Anglesea, in the debate that

followed, spoke of some person whose interest it was to prolong the war." Marlborough rose, and, turning to where the Queen sat, said: "I appeal to the Queen whether I did not constantly, when I was plenipotentiary, give her Majesty and her Council an account of all the propositions which were made; and whether I did not desire instruction for my conduct on this subject. I can declare with a good conscience, in the presence of her Majesty, of this illustrious assembly, and of God himself, who is infinitely superior to all the powers of the earth, and before whom, by the ordinary course of nature, I shall soon appear to render account of my actions, that I was very desirous of a safe, honourable and lasting peace, and was very far from wishing to prolong the war for my own private advantage, as severallibels and discourses have most falsely insinuated. My great age, and numerous fatigues in war, made me ardently wish for the power to enjoy a quiet repose, in order to think of eternity."

This speech made a great impression in his favour; nevertheless, his enemies brought forward an accusation against him of fraud and peculation in the management of the Flemish campaign. His reply demonstrated his innocence; but nothing could avert the threatened stroke, and he was dismissed from every situation he held!

"The dismission of Marlborough," said Louis XIV., "will do all we can desire." And so it was. Although Paris itself was in jeopardy from the Allied arms, the Treaty of Utrecht-that "indelible reproach of the age," as Pitt called it was signed, and the original object of the war ignored by the acknowledgment of a Bourbon as rightful possessor of the throne of Spain.

Marlborough now retired to the continent, not returning till the death of Queen Anne, when he was again restored to his offices, and made captaingeneral and master-general of the ordnance. A few years more, and the changing and eventful scenes of life closed for ever on his view. He died on the 10th of June, 1772, in the 72nd year of his age.

His remains, first interred in Westminster Abbey, now lie in the chapel at Blenheim. Not without faults as a man, but a true patriot, and matchless soldier, that palace is both the monu

purse

was commenced at the public cost when the country echoed with his praises, it

We must run back over a period of nearly seventy years, and leave the cottage for a large house in a country town in the north of Hampshire, where the infant Mary, at the side of a grave and home-loving mother, learned to read before she was three years old. Her father, Dr. Mitford, was a physician; an impulsive, warm-hearted, extravagant man. In his reckless and fitful way he was passionately fond of his only child, often seating her on the breakfast-table, that she might exhibit to some admiring guest her proficiency in letters.

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Her first introduction to literature was through her maid Nancy, who read to her from Percy's Reliques" till her love of the old volumes became so great that when only five or six years of age she poured over them herself, her ringlets overshadowing the time-worn page as she read. When speaking of this, she says with a sigh, Ah, well-a day! sixty years have passed, and I am an old woman, whose nut-brown hair has turned to grey, but I never see those heavily bound volumes without the home of my infancy springing up before my eyes.' she was about ten years of age, she chose for a birthday present a lottery ticket, and it turned up a prize of twenty thousand pounds. This was soon spent by her father. He, however, put her to school in London, and then amused himself by building a large house about four miles from Reading. She returned home at the early age of fifteen, to cultivate in retirement the society of the Muses, and to enter

When

When about three-and-twenty, she had fairly commenced her literary life, launching every year upon public opinion some little volume. With many living literary persons she became acquainted; and her friendship with them was characterised by a beautiful freedom from envy. We can discover no hard thoughts in her heart, no bitterness on her tongue. Her writings were to her a source of constant, healthful, mental exercise, productive of cheerfulness and contentment.

Yet, in spite of her own glad spirit, in spite of the habit so natural to her of looking at the brightest side of everything, the conviction at length forced itself upon her, that her father was not sufficiently careful. All Mrs. Mitford's large fortune was expended-and she did not live long after this sad loss-and legacies left to Miss Mitford by her opulent relations were also frittered away. We can comprehend how an unselfish heart like hers still loved him, still clung to him; but how she could keep the persuasion that he was great and good, we cannot tell. Hitherto she had written for pleasure, just because she could not help it; now necessity urged her to turn her talent to some account. Still in the neighbourhood of Reading, though no longer in the large house built by her father, she pursued her literary career. She wrote for the Annuals, and her name soon ensured her a handsome remuneration. She looked around her on the green fields and murmuring brook, and writing down the secret thoughts they suggested, completed that well-known volume, "Our Village;" which established her literary fame. It appeared first in numbers, in the "Lady's Magazine," after having been rejected by Campbell the poet for the "New Monthly." The style of the work is easy and natural; it is characterised throughout by a healthy elasticity of thought, fresh as the mountain streams which so charm her fancy. abounds in graphic description and

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picturesque touches; and a rustic group, a gipsy encampment, or a wayfaring man she sketches to the life. Though she did not reach the same height in prose that Crabbe did in poetry, there is a similarity between them-both turn from the grand and striking to take their scenes from the common-place things around them. Crabbe had more fervor than Miss Mitford, it is true; but both wrote of cows, and pigsties, and brick-floored rooms; and both, though not in an equal degree, espoused the cause of the poor. As we read "Our Village we almost see the young forest leaves unfolding before us, and inhale the fragrance wafted to us from the cottage gardens. On every page there is a picture perfect in its way. But Miss Mitford is certainly not so familiarly acquainted with human character as with nature. She loses her enthusiasm and is fettered by reserve, when she attempts to pourtray the heart. There is a want of depth and womanliness about her in these delineations, and she deals with them as she deals with the orchards and brooks she so loves dwelling on their appearance, and passing lightly over their tastes, sympathies, sorrows, and joys, which minds of a different mould would so philosophically, so feelingly have exposed. She could not fathom the intensity of passion, and though always thoroughly in earnest, her experience of life lay within a very limited range. In depth and compass of thought she was deficient, but she meets nature as a lover meets his mistress, and always kindles into enthusiasm at the sight of her fair face. Most delicate and graceful are the touches she gives to the trees of the field and the flowers of the sod. A rustic style, a garden door, a low-browed cottage, old chimneys, dusky corners, mouldering palings and hoary apple trees, become beautiful under the magic influence of her pen.

It is saddening to remember that the author of all this pleasant reading was no longer the light-hearted girl, but the toilworn woman. In person Miss Mitford was short and rather stout; in conversation and manner she was in general animated, but her prevailing characteristic was sound sense. She perhaps was a very fair personification of the old English gentlewoman. Day after day she toiled to support her father, and few, as they read her lively stories, would have

dreamed of the sorrowful heart which had given them birth-yet sorrowful we can hardly say, for there was a buoyancy of spirit about Miss Mitford which would not allow her to yield to care. During the long morning she attended on her father as nurse, companion, and friend, and her voice retained its pleasant tone, and her smile its brightness. She received his visitors; she read to him till he was weary; she gave him no lectures on economy; there was no bustling housewifery to suggest the need of it; all was luxury and ease about him-kept so by the midnight toil of his indefatigable and unselfish daughter; and whilst the editors of the Annuals sent her in their ready gold, they did not pity her, for they did not know that laudanum was the stimulus of her labour.

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Miss Mitford also wrote several tra gedies, but, although acted at some of the principal theatres, they were not successful. They were neither impassioned nor impulsive; and though carefully and delicately arranged, they lacked the strength and feeling, the vigour and pathos, necessary in dramatic composition. But when she gets amongst her orchards and her wild flowers, then she is herself again. The green summer light amongst the trees was to her a happiness; spring flowers were her children; mosses, fungi, corals, shells, her pets. said she was prouder of her powers as a floriculturist than as an author, and that her garden rivalled her books. Be this as it may, about the year 1831 she was most cordially received in London; and so courted, flattered, and lionized, that, half-killed by excitement, she was glad to return to the shadows of her own dear elms. She became so celebrated that her cottage was a place of literary pilgrimage. Not only did the talented and illustrious of Great Britain and the Sister Island seek her society, but from the Continent, and from America, she received the visits of able men.

In 1843 her father died, and then she took up her abode at Swallowfield Cottage. His affairs were in such a state at his death, that Miss Mitford was compelled to accept relief from a subscription amongst her friends and zealous admirers. A little while after this she received a pension from the Queen, so that the remainder of her life was free from pecuniary anxiety.

Her works were very numerous and