stating that the French fleet "was moored in a compact line," * tells his readers, that the line occupied "an extent of about two miles and a half, leaving a space of two hundred and fifty or three hundred yards from one ship to the other. This distance, proceeds the writer, "was too great." Assuredly it was too great, and so was the real distance, 160 yards : for that very reason, too, the French fleet was not "moored in a compact line." The word "moored" does not seem to be appropriately used. "At single anchor, with springs on their cables," is an expression that accords more with the fact. Unfortunately, the writer who uses this expression is the same that committed the mistake about the Culloden ; the same, in whose work appears the following piece of extraordinary information : "Lord Nelson remarked, at a subsequent period, that he had committed one great error ; namely, by not having directed the ships to heave close to their anchors, and then to have cut (the cables) instead of weighing them ; as in stowing their anchors, the navigation being so intricate and shallow, two of his ships grounded. " � This, to be sure, is contained in a "note," but that note actually forms a part of the text : indeed, the work is almost wholly made up of " NOTES," "REMARKS," and "OBSERVATIONS." Had the attack upon Copenhagen by Lord Nelson in the year 1801 been one of the naval battles noticed by the writer, it is probable he would have found where it was that the rear-admiral had to complain, that two of his ships grounded, for the want of the precaution of cutting, instead of weighing, their anchors.

A French writer, because he is displeased with a highly exaggerated comparison between the force of the Bellerophon and that of the Orient, contained in "Clarke and M'Arthur's Life of Nelson," begins his refutation of the nonsense in this very liberal manner: "Les Anglais, celui peut-être de tous les peoples de l'Europe qui altère le plus la vérité dans ses bulletins, affirmèrent," &c. � It is very unfair, in any case, to consider individual, opinion as the sentiments of a nation ; but with respect to the work, in which the angry Frenchman has discovered the proofs of this national propensity to lying (for that is what his charge amounts to), we can assure him that, in this country, where its merits are of course best known, " Clarke and M'Arthur's Life of Nelson" is not of the slightest authority. The same French writer, who is so severe in his strictures, upon the English, admits that Captain Standelet of the Artémise, in setting fire to his frigate after having hauled down his colours to the Theseus, acted "au mépris des lois de la guerre," but adds, " Les Anglais se sont vivement récriés contre la conduite du capitaine de l'Artémise, oubliant que le capitaine du Bellerophon en avait tenu

* Brenton, vol. ii., p. 305.
� Ekins, p. 243.
� Victoires et Conquêtes, tome ix., p. 94.

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