hints from the author; but this has never been satisfactorily proved, and we have reason to believe, (in fact, we speak from the authority of an officer now of the highest rank, and then in Rodney's fleet,) that the breaking of the enemy's line was purely incidental, and the thought of the moment. Our ships were closely engaged under the lee of the French line, theirs were dropping down upon us, and an opening presenting itself, Rodney in the Formidable, with his seconds, the Namur and Duke, and immediately supported by the Canada, seized the advantage thus offered to him, and successfully broke through the enemy's line about three ships short of the centre, where De Grasse commanded in the Ville de Paris. The vessels astern followed, and the result is well known. That Clerk had shown the advantages of manoeuvring so as to cut off a part of the enemy's fleet, and fall upon it with a superior force while the remainder was unable to come to their support, there can be no doubt; and many of his observations and tactics are much to the purpose: but, in general, he supposes a degree of 'impassibility' on the part of the enemy which was not shown by De Grasse.

We well remember the extravagant encomiums passed on Clerk's work; it was called 'a magnificent invention,' and the government was cordially abused by our northern brethren, (who are always tremblingly alive to the military glory of their country,) for not bestowing on its author a pension, a peerage, and we know not what besides; whereas, in fact, it is no invention at all, but taken, almost wholly, from the work of Le P. Paul Hoste, Jesuit, published nearly a century before Clerk wrote.* He has a whole chapter on breaking the enemy's line, and he states very particularly the advantages and disadvantages attending it. He appears to consider it as a hazardous manœuvre which, he says, ought never to be resorted to without one of the three following reasons: 1st, In order to avoid a greater evil; 2dly, When the enemy leaves a considerable interval in his line; and 3dly, When some of the enemy's vessels are thrown out of the line. In other respects, indeed, it is not without danger; for, unless the enemy should continue to show that'effrayante impassibilité' exhibited by the combined fleets off Trafalgar, a skilful commander might avail himself of such a manœuvre, by instantly tacking his van, and enclosing the ships which have cut through his line, between two fires. Several examples are given by P. Hoste of breaking the line in the Dutch wars, and particularly in the memorable action of 1666, which lasted four days. Albemarle, who was to windward, bore

* L'Art des Armées Navales, ou Traité des Evolutions Navales, &c. par le P. Paul Hoste, de la Compagnie de Jésus, Professeur de Mathématiques dans le Séminaire de Toulon. Lyon. 1697.

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down upon the Dutch, and cut through their line; but De Rutyer, not chusing to remain passive, manœuvred in such a manner as to bring on a general engagement, and to oppose ship to ship :-thus the two fleets continued to pass through each other's line; and in conclusion, the English were worsted. Thus too, in 1653, when Blake pursued Van Tromp and De Ruyter off the Isle of Wight, as they were protecting a fleet of merchantmen, and formed round them in a crescent, somewhat like that of the French and Spanish fleets off Trafalgar, the English admiral bore down upon their line, broke through it completely, and took several of their ships. We were not aware that the Ordonnance of 1765 was still in force in the French navy. By this, the Admiral commanding in chief is alone authorized to issue orders, to commence or discontinue the fight, to change the order of battle, or to execute any manœuvre; every detail must proceed immediately from him; and as, in action, it must frequently happen that, enveloped in the smoke of the enemy's cannon or his own, he can neither see the ships at a distance nor they him, they are of course often at a loss what to do; and generally, as is common in such situations, end with doing nothing, as was probably the case at Trafalgar.

To remedy this serious evil,' says M. Dupin, an ordonnance has prescribed a rule, the most foolish and the most fatal that the evil genius of our navy could possibly have imagined. According to this instruction, it is necessary for our ships to form a line, for the purpose of being in order of battle. No ship, under any pretext, must quit this line, unless by a regular signal made by the Admiral of the fleet. Thus, every time that this Admiral (while engaging) ceases to be in sight, however evident his own want of support, or the distress of any other part of the sacred line, may be, the Ordonnance is inviolable, the line must be preserved. And those vessels which the manœuvres of the enemy have thrown out of the action, are unable to take any share in it. They must wait until the rest of the fleet, annihilated under their eyes, permits the enemy's ships to proceed, en masse, to give battle to these religious conservators of the stupid line,' &c.-tom. ii. p. 65.

In this respect, M. Dupin says, the French ought to take the English for their example. They ought, as is the case with them, to make the inferior flag-officers responsible for the manoeuvres of their respective squadrons; to give instructions to every flag-officer to observe attentively the conduct of every ship near him, whether of the squadron or division which he commands, or not; and if he shall observe any ship evidently avoiding battle, or not doing her duty in it, to send an officer immediately to suspend the captain of that ship, and to take the command of her in his stead. It is thus,' he observes, that, at every moment of the battle, the captains in the English fleet are

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under the necessity of conducting themselves like heroes, or to see themselves dishonoured on the spot, in the presence of both fleets.' The reverse is the case as far as regards the French fleet in action; and, he adds, this fault in our institution has caused the loss of the most important engagements and the dishonour of our admirals and captains, who, had they been accustomed to manœuvre with the aid of their own lights, might perhaps have covered themselves with glory, in giving a turn in our favour to the fate of the day.' He also bestows high praise on the general instruction for the British fleet, that if a flag-officer be killed in action, his flag is to be kept flying, and the signals made from his ship in the same manner as if he were still alive: it was thus,' he observes, that, in the battle of Aboukir, although Nelson was put hors de combat, and in that of Trafalgar, although he was killed, the action and the victory nevertheless continued their inevitable course.'

A Frenchman of the name of Paixhans, an officer in the corps of Royal Artillery, has just published part of a work which he calls Nouvelle Force Maritime,' the object of which is, first, to prove the inefficiency of a naval force, from the small number of killed and wounded after a general action; and, secondly, that the expense of keeping it up bears no proportion to the paltry service which it renders to a state;-whilst the smallest rock, he shrewdly observes, may split it-the puncture of an insect sink it, and an accidental spark, falling among the ammunition, blow it to atoms. These considerations seem to have inflamed his imagination, and generated the important 'secret' with which he appears to labour. Why then (he asks) may not these natural effects be imitated by He proposes, therefore, not only to make an absolute change in the present mode of attack and defence, but to give to ships such an increased power as cannot fail to make a naval engagement more murderous-the prime object of this Dr. Sangrado of the new school. The name of Dupin, we perceive, is among those appointed to examine this tremendous project,* which, we are well assured, if he can escape the fascinating terrors of the Avocat, will obtain no countenance from him.

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* M. Paixhans sets out with this proposition, which he pledges himself to prove in a future volume, where he is to discover his secret: Il est possible, dans l'état actuel des arts, il serait facile dès aujourd'hui, de construire un très-petit navire, qui, monté seulement de quelques soldats sans expérience, aurait assez de puissance pour détruire le vaisseau de haut-bord le plus fortement armé.' And though the English, he observes, say ironically that a ship of the line speaks all languages, and truly enough they carry orders which are understood by all nations, yet, he adds, we hope to be able to prove that a ship of war, be she what she may, speaks not so loud, but that another may speak still louder, and put her to silence. From the blustering language of M. Paixhans, it would appear as if he had just risen from the spirited dialogue between the brisk lightning' and the bold thunder' in the Rehearsal.

If, M. Dupin says, (as if he had anticipated this crazy revival of Fulton's rejected fooleries,) we would appreciate the real force of a ship of war, we must not say, a ship is a floating battery, with which one can scarcely, in battle, kill or wound more than a fourth, or a fifth, or a tenth of the seamen of another ship of equal force. We should say, a modern ship of war is a floating battery, which can only be compelled to yield to batteries of the same description. It is a fortress, which is able to resist the sea, in all seasons, in the midst of every tempest. It is a fortress, which transports itself with a rapidity infinitely superior to that of the lightest troops of a land-army, in such a way as to run over a fourth part of the great circle of the globe in less time than a continental army can pass from Spain into Poland, or from France into Russia. Now, when such immense marches are undertaken, the naval army experiences neither fatigues, nor privations, nor wants, nor those epidemics which destroy so many land-armies. Without accident to her crew, a ship of war passes the winter in the midst of the polar ice, in a degree of cold exceeding that which caused the destruction of the finest army that modern times have seen. In short, a naval force not only transports itself, exempt from suffering and fatigue; it transports the land-army, and communicates to it its own movements. By means of it, those powers who have only a small number of soldiers, are enabled to multiply them by sudden and unexpected disembarkations on all the vulnerable points of an enemy's coast.'-tom. ii. p. 72.

M. Dupin is right; and his countrymen have had an example of these truths which they will not readily forget. The successful attacks on Copenhagen and Algiers sufficiently prove the efficacy of a naval force when opposed to the most formidable batteries; and the prodigious importance of victories, though gained, to the great disquietude of M. Paixhans, by the loss only of a few hundred men. The victories of Howe, Nelson, St. Vincent, Duncan, which annihilated the navies of the maritime powers of Europe, were accomplished with a waste of human life incomparably small when measured with the result of a single land-campaign: yet how superior the consequences! Let our author himself sum up the splendid account.

'Towards the end of the seventeenth century, the maritime wars were confined, on the part of England, to the fighting of a few battles with one or two fleets; to the making a few cruises, a few detached blockades, or some particular enterprize; and these were sufficient for the labours of a campaign. But, in the naval war, of which the nineteenth century has witnessed the commencement and the termination, England conceived the idea of attacking, nearly at the same moment, the fleets of France, of Spain, of Holland, of Denmark, of Italy, and even of America; she opposed herself to all the maritime powers. She not only blockaded all the military ports which could give refuge to some squadron or some flotilla, she blockaded every commercial port; and this spectacle we have seen, of which, till then, no maritime power

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had afforded an example-the inhabitants of an island, moderate enough in its extent, became enabled to form, with their ships of war alone, a continued line of observation along all the coasts of Europe, of Asia, of Africa, and of America. All the continents of the two worlds were simultaneously besieged, their islands taken by main force, the commerce of the world usurped. In short, after twenty years of fighting, this naval power, which had begun the struggle with thirty millions of subjects, finished it by consolidating her empire over eighty millions of the conquered and conquering. And, moreover, let us recollect that Great Britain has never reckoned, during this period, more than 145,000 seamen and marines, employed in producing these prodigies.' —tom. i. p. 238.

M. Dupin pays a just tribute to the attention given in the British navy to the preservation of the health of the seamen. He says, (what we know to be perfectly true,) that when Lord St. Vincent commanded the fleet which blockaded Brest from the 27th May to the 26th September, 1800, not a single day passed without his reconnoitring the entrance of the harbour; and that, although the seamen had only the ordinary ship's provisions, and consisted at the least of 16,000 men, there were only sent, during the whole of this time, sixteen to the hospital. In fact, by the wise and humane regulations now established in the British navy; by the excellence of the provisions; by the purity of the water since the introduction of iron tanks; and by the pains bestowed to keep the ships dry, well aired and cleanly between decks, the most dangerous diseases, such as the scurvy and typhus fever, which used to be the scourge of the navy, have been totally eradicated from our ships of war: those that remain, as is justly remarked by our author, are of an inflammatory nature, arising from an excess of strength rather than debility. No clearer proof can be desired of the beneficial effect of attention to these regulations, than the fact of Captain Parry having brought home every man in high health, (except one, who carried an incurable disease out with him,) after passing a long and tedious winter in a climate supposed to be uninhabitable by man.

Of the extraordinary improvements which have taken place in British ships of war for the preservation of the lives of seamen, some curious facts are on record. The total number of seamen raised during the American war was 175,990, of whom 18,545 died a natural death, and 1,243 were killed, making in the whole 19,788 deaths in the last five of the war; but the average years number employed was about 70,000, which, for every hundred thousand seamen employed, would give an annual loss of 5,911 men. M. Dupin calculates that in the same number our landarmy lost, in the course of the last war, 5,930 men. The follow