the place whence they came-but then all that we have to say is, that statesmen should not, like Mercutio, speak more in a minute than they can stand to in a month. We marvel, by the bye, whether Mercutio corrected the reports of what he babbled.

The judges lift up their voices against the licentiousness of the press, as a schoolboy screams murder when he sees the birch in the uplifted hand of the pedagogue-exaggeration is the privilege of feartherefore no one, except perhaps my grandmother or aunt Deborah, believes that the apple-stealing urchin is actually in danger of his life; nor does any body, unless he is paid or expects to be paid for it, the old women aforesaid also excepted, believe or affect to believe the venerable sages of the law, when they proclaim, that the poor dear press is in danger from the excess of its liberty. The spectators understand this better; they know that many of the learned brethren are yet tingling under castigation; they know that others dread the rod which hangs suspended over their heads, that a warning voice whispers in their ears-" woe be to you if you play truant, my boys; here's that which will keep you within bounds!!" It is necessary, however, to watch both the judge and the schoolboy; for when the master's back is turned, both are very apt to filch away a few twigs from their enemy, or pick at the little obnoxious buds which they think will not be missed, and are better off than on. One brat, perhaps, bolder and more impudent than the rest, swears" he won't be flogged; he has no right to be flogged; he'll tell his mamma." The judge, too, demurs to the jurisdiction of public opinion. But neither can escape castigation; whether on breech or bench, whether from press or pedagogue, the culprit must undergo his predestined castigation.

Do not let it be supposed, that one word of this is directed against the venerable and learned Chief Justice of the Common Pleas; he is the best friend the press ever had; he has done it the most important service; he has dragged the dicta of his dependent predecessors to the full light of day in all their original undisguised dirt and deformity, and that too, at the very moment when the public mind is most alive to the reform of legal abuses-exactly at the time when the judgments and opinions of Scroggs, Jeffries, and the rest of the ermined slaves, who prostituted their intellects to despotism, are likely to be received with a contempt equal to the execration in which their acts and memories are held by every lover of his country. It is somewhat late to be sure-it would have been as well to have emancipated the judges from the trammels which the doctrines of their dependent predecessors had thrown around them, when it was professed to free them from the influence of the crown. They have only been half liberated; it is for the present age to strike off their remaining fetters.

JAMES'S NAVAL HISTORY.*

ENGLAND being by nature a dear little island, exceedingly near to the coast of France, and by no means out of the reach of other formidable countries, we are as naturally and instinctively led to launch ships and kidnap sailors, as other animals are to show their tusks, or butt with their horns. Nature, as the philosophical Anacreon remarks, has given appropriate arms to all her children. The horse has his heel; the hare has her speed; the bird flies, and the fish swims; woman, armed more terribly than all, is clothed in beauty. He might have added, but we believe in his time we were only remarkable for our tin, that the Briton hoists his sails, and ploughs the salt sea. Relying as we do so largely on naval armaments for security, and so celebrated as we have long been for the skill, courage, and success of our seamen, it is not a little remarkable that no complete history of our navy has hitherto appeared. To this praise not any of the works we have seen can pretend, though in other respects some of them are entitled to no small share of applause. Captain Brenton has loaded his work with extraneous matter from parliamentary debates, private and public letters, Annual Registers, &c., and has widely departed from the calm and discriminating impartiality which ought to distinguish the historian, in all that relates to the late Earl of St. Vincent. The work of Mr. James is not improperly entitled a Naval History, being neither more nor less than an accurate and strictly impartial account of sea engagements, which, though not itself a history, by the faithfulness with which facts are recorded, by the industry with which they are collected, and by the judiciousness with which the true is separated from the doubtful, and the insignificant from the important, presents the best of all possible materials for a history. The early naval histories are full of the grossest misrepresentations, and abound in the prejudices of national vanity and national animosity. Many of their statements were indeed wilfully exaggerated, under the plea that they were written during an active and vigorous war, when it was necessary to animate the sailors with an unlimited confidence in their own prowess, and to open the hearts and purses of the people, who could not refuse to part with their last shilling to men who were performing such prodigies of valour in their defence. We need not waste words in appreciating the value of such histories. Another species of deception arose out of the rating system, by which ships were classed according to a nominal force considerably below the number of guns actually employed, a practice utterly unworthy of a power pretending to a love of probity and fair-play. The historians, however, jealous of the national honour, and too proud of the wooden walls of Old England, to do justice to an enemy, or to tell the story fairly, invariably forgot to take this circumstance into account. Nor is Captain Brenton quite free from the charge of unfairness in this respect. Mr. James, however, has

* The Naval History of Great Britain, from the Declaration of War by France in February, 1793, to the Accession of George IV. in January, 1820. By William James. A new edition, with considerable additions and improvements, including Diagrams of all the principal Actions. In Six Volumes. London. 1826. 8vo.

drawn the veil aside, and by assigning, with remarkable precision and industry, the real armament to each ship, has conferred a lasting obligation upon the lover of truth. As might have been expected, he has given offence; and he, it appears, knows so little of the world as to be surprized at it. Mr. James has by this time learned that all people think the truth a very disagreeable thing, and the truth-teller a man so completely out of the pale of good-breeding, as to be utterly unworthy of any other chastisement than that of the cudgel. We know nothing that would shock the world much more than to tell them the whole truth. It is a very dangerous and revolutionary practice, a kind of moral Agrarian law, which takes from the rich to give to the poor. Truth-tellers, in all ages, have been the despised of their age. Their contemporaries visit them with the scourge or the stake, and posterity calls them great men, and prints fine editions of their works. The history of our own times which offended no one, would be nothing else than one huge lie.

The absurdity of making a mystery of the true number of guns, or the real weight of shot, is increased by the fact that, though much may depend on it, all does not, nor yet nearly so. Our seamen can afford the truth in this instance, and the writer pays them but a sorry compliment who represents them as having mere cowards to contend with. Victory often depends on the desperate rush of a mere handful of men in boarding, when the characteristic trait of an English sailor, which is vulgarly called bottom, renders him almost invincible. Repulsed at one port-hole, he springs in at another, and, surrounded by a host of assailants, he flourishes his cutlass, and threatens all hands with instant destruction unless they instantly surrender. If compelled to retreat, he swears his return on board is more from a "liking to his own ship," than from a fear of the enemy, and rushes back to the charge, to prove the veracity of his assertion. Again, in the most important of points, that of manoeuvring, the British had attained a great superiority, and they alone know the value of this art who have seen a few general engagements. The captain whose nautical judgment enables him to gain the "point of impunity," generally renders the best account of his adversary. It is what the sailors term “hard hammering," (that is, fighting close alongside, when nearly every gun is brought to bear,) that weight of metal then becomes a serious consideration; when the difference of the size of the shot-holes of the heavier and the lighter vessel is equal to the difference between a man's head and a man's fist.

Another prolific source of error to the historian is a too scrupulous adherence to the official accounts of naval battles, which are seldom to be implicitly relied on. These reports, especially of general actions, are written immediately after the hostilities have ceased, and before any accurate statement can by possibility be drawn up.

On their arrival they are very properly registered in the Gazette, exactly as they stand, and are never corrected. Mr. James has directed his attention particularly to this evil; and his indefatigable industry has succeeded in correcting a multitude of errors in these despatches, in remedying their defects, and in supplying new and authentic matter. Mr. James being a landsman, though something of a sailor, can be but little indebted to personal observation. He has

consequently had recourse to documents, and has derived his information from the purest sources.

Mr. Mill, in his preface to his admirable history of British India, maintains a proposition which appears at first sight paradoxical. It is, that a man is in a better condition to write the history of India from never having been resident in it. It would seem that to be a seaman by profession incapacitates a writer from compiling a good history of seafaring matters; or that, at any rate, he is more likely to perform his duty well if he is not himself a member of the service which is the subject of his pen.

A ship in her quarter-bill always has one officer appointed (generally the purser or clerk) to minute all the occurrences which take place during an action, and these are afterwards copied into the log-book. The log-book has always been considered the most faithful record of the events which happen on ship-board. It is kept by or under the superintendance of the master, and daily submitted to the inspection of the captain; and as each officer commanding a watch is required to subscribe his name to the remarks he makes, no very gross error can possibly be admitted; so that whether in action, or cruizing in chace, the ships' log-book is evidence of the highest authority. Copies of these log-books used to be, and at present the original log-books themselves are transmitted to the Navy Board, to enable the officers to pass their accounts, and are laid up in the log-repository at Somerset House. This log-repository has been Mr. James's studyand his library. It is from this room that he has drawn the most valuable parts of his work. However, he has not only been indebted to the logs of Somerset House. Many naval officers, much to their credit, have, it seems, permitted to him the use of their private journals; and Mr. James has also led the way to a source of information which none but a naval historian would ever neglect-a critical examination of the published statements of the adverse nations.

Mr. James's work is divided into three principal heads: British, French, or other Foreign fleets; light squadrons and single ships; and colonial expeditions; and the whole is arranged in chronological order, and separated into annual divisions. Besides the statement of the effective naval force of the nation, there is an additional table of abstracts, which displays at one view the increase and improvement of our fleets, compiled with considerable skill, and with Mr. James's usual industry. The professional man will find this table invaluable. There are other tables, such as the number of ships captured or destroyed on either side-the number of commissioned officers, (including masters, who hold their rank by warrant)—and the supplies and expenditure for the sea-service for each year. Under the head of encounters of fleets, there is not only a general view of the share of the commanders and the principal ships, but a minute and detailed account of the operations of every ship engaged with the enemy. The second and last comprise boat enterprizes, land attacks, and miscellaneous occurrences, both on the home and foreign stations; and perhaps to the general reader this is the most interesting part of the work, and the best entitled to the name of history.

The publication of Mr. James's book excited, as might have been expected, a very considerable uproar among the profession. There is JAN. 1827.

K

not another class of individuals in society less qualified for the endurance of criticism than the British naval captain. He is accustomed to implicit obedience; observations on his orders is insolence, and murmurs mutiny. He is generally ignorant of letters, and has consequently a horror of them. His notions of what he calls honour, are quick and sensitive, and public opinion highly estimable in his eyes, as he has always been taught to look at home for glory and renown as the rewards of his dangerous services. Moreover, a British sailor is a paragon of perfection. His nautical skill is perfect, his courage marvellous; this is his own belief and that of all his countrymen. When a man so educated and constituted, hears that a big book has been published by a landsman, in which his logs are overhauled, the details of his conduct minutely recorded, and severely criticised, we may conceive his agitation and indignation; and if he has really been sailing under false colours, if he is no lion-heart, but is conscious of having winced in the battle, and of having flinched from contest, or recollects instances of error or ignorance, perhaps of which he thought himself the sole depository, and fancied that the fatal consequences had been observed by himself alone, it is natural to suppose that a cowardly fear will take possession of his breast, and induce him to adopt some plan of attack which should either silence his enemy, or persuade the public that he is injured. Two notable controversies have arisen out of this history. Lord William Fitzroy first levelled a full-charged lawyer at his adversary; when he found his shot had not taken effect, he snatched a pen and boarded him in a cock-boat of a pamphlet. It may be said that the historian not only successfully repulsed his antagonist; but that the latter retired from the contest altogether in a very shattered condition. Then a valorous knight, hight Sir John Phillimore, took the field, armed with his first lieutenant and a club-stick. His brutal violence injured no ore but himself. It is our impartial opinion, that Mr. James is fully borne out in the statements which inflamed the indignation of this eminent cudgelist, and betrayed him into conduct unworthy of a man and a gentleman. Poor Sir George Collier, it is said, showed his sense of Mr. James's narrative in a most melancholy manner. We are inclined, however, to believe in the report which attributes that catastrophe to a more domestic cause: although we are far from thinking that a public statement and examination of failure and error on the part of a commander might not prove amply sufficient to second a constitutional malady, and become the proximate cause of the event to which we allude.

It was through difficulties such as these, and many others, that Mr. James's work had to make its way. The first edition has been sold; and we congratulate the public, civil as well as military, on the appearance of a second, which has not only been enlarged by Mr. James's unceasing industry, but much improved in arrangement, and corrected in many points of unavoidable inaccuracy. We have good reason for believing that it is now making its way very fast, even among the officers of the navy. The truly brave and the truly able have nothing to fear, but, on the contrary, every thing to hope, from the publication of the truth. Education, moreover, and a taste for literature, is making rapid advances among our naval officers, who will be more