were almost uniform by land, and considerable, though checkered, by sea-albeit his wars were rarely founded in justice or waged, with mercy. The su premacy of le Grande Monarque and le Grande Nation was established; universal empire was talked of. Philosophers, poets, wits, artists, thronged around the King. Paris and Versailles gave the law to the civilized world, and what is more to the present purpose, the King's wars had enlarged and rounded his dominions and strengthened his frontiers. A little later, and the Pyrenees were removed, in a figure of speech. Yet a little later, and retribution began, and continued to the end. The triumphs of Marlborough and Eugene were more numerous and decisive than any in the first half-century of the great King's reign. If his disasters were not turned into disgraces and carried to more decisive results, it was owing to the treason of Oxford and Bolingbroke. Even as it was, the glories of Louis le Grand had exhausted the country, embarrassed the finances, and laid the foundation, as much as any single epoch can be said to have done so, of the Revolution of 1789, the execution of his descendant, and the expulsion of his race. In a still larger sense it originated an historical tragedy of which the end is not yet visible. like most other French wars, were devoid attended the King's undertakings abroad of profit to the French people. The three and at home. From Condé's first field of great conflicts of opinion already alluded Rocroy, won when Louis had just ascendto, namely, the Revolt of the Netherlands ed the throne at five years old, till the against Philip II., the religious wars of once famous battles of Steinkirk and NerGermany, and the Great Rebellion of winde, in 1693, when Luxembourg de England, not only accomplished their im-feated William III., the successes of Louis mediate purpose, but advanced the principles for which the combatants really took up arms. Few will deny but the cause of what is compendiously termed "civil and religious liberty" was greatly forwarded in each of the three instances. Every one must admit that the main object of the insurgents was attained. It may perhaps be possible to find persons who would maintain that the Dutch were not justified in resisting Philip and Alva. They could not deny that the "rebels" succeeded not merely in throwing off the yoke, but in establishing a national government, civil freedom, and religious toleration. It is difficult to discern what benefit resulted to France from her century of intestine quarrels, or indeed that could have resulted. The Edict of Nantes was a personal gift from Henry IV., or at least a temporary compromise, rescinded by the same uncontrollable "will and pleasure that granted it. The genius and vigor of Richelieu finally succeeded in crushing the substantial privileges of the French nobility and concentrating in the Crown the whole power of the State; but the triumph did not benefit France, for it overwhelmed her with taxation and plunged her into miseries from which even the consequences of the Revolution of 1789 were a relief. Neither was the triumph of any final advantage to the dynasty or the throne, for it resulted in the destruction of both. Yet it can not be argued with any certainty that the triumph of the noblesse would have benefited the people. A sort of Venetian oligarchy in France, with a nominal king at their head, might not have made the condition of the peasantry worse than it is described as having been during the last century. It is extremely doubtful whether it would have made it any better. With the exception of some philosophes, the reign of Louis XIV. was considered by Frenchmen the most distingué in the annals of the world till the great King was eclipsed by the glories of the great Emperor. And a remarkable reign it undoubtedly was. For half a century of its seventy-two years, continued success France was at times engaged in wars during the seventy-four years that intervened between the death of Louis XIV., in 1715, and the capture of the Bastile. But they partook of the narrowness and formality of the century. In Europe the enterprise and ambition of the old régime really centered, as Carlyle observes in his quaintly forcible style, in Frederick the Great. Fontenoy is the French victory which the most readily suggests itself to the English mind, on account of the English defeat. But none of the battles, at least of the French battles, had the spirit or the glory of those of older or of later days. They were quite counterbalanced by defeat; and in point of solid advantage, more than counterbalanced by the loss of Canada and of the East-Indies, and an increase of that financial distress which compelled the assemblage of the StatesGeneral. if not with the meteor-like rapidity and brilliancy of some older times, at least The "glories" of the Republic, the with a series of hard-won victories and Consulate, and the Empire are familiar to substantial successes. The final concluevery one. There is no such enchaining rion who can tell? The material losses historical reading to this generation; on both sides would probably be nearly there are books of all sorts and sizes to equal, but for the Hungarian prisoners; meet the demand, and no wonder; for the sluggish pertinacity of Austria and what exploits, and triumphs, and muta- her long tenacity of purpose is something tions were crowded into twenty years! wonderful; it may be questioned if the GalMore victories than one cares to count; lic nature and the French Emperor's posimore misery and devastation than man tion will bear the tedious difficulties and could apprehend, if he gave his life to the slow delays that seem congenial to the labor. The French flag floated triumph- Austrians. The same moral dangers may antly over every capital in Europe be- threaten Napoleon III. that overwhelmed tween Moscow and Lisbon; kings were his predecessors; for there is an analogy displaced with less ceremony than some between the past and the present. It was men use in discharging lackeys; parvenus not altogether French arms and French were placed on thrones with less pre-valor that overcame Naples and Milan at caution than some men take in hiring lackeys. Flanders and Holland were annexed to France; Italy became an appanage; Frenchmen ruled in Spain, Portugal, and parts of Germany; French influ-lution facilitated the rapid progress of ence was predominant every where, save where the English flag flew in sign of English dominion. Visions of universal empire that Charlemagne, from want of geographical knowledge, could not dream, and hopes that Louis the Great never entertained, were then realized. "But Nemesis is always on the watch." The retreat from Russia, the battles of Leipsic and Waterloo, and St. Helena at last; the flags of many nations dominating in Paris; armies encamped upon the sacred soil of France; curtailed territories, and material losses, and traditional hatreds, such as we see in Germany, outbalanced in the long run the imperial glories. The resultless war mania, whose course for three centuries and a half has been briefly indicated, has now recommenced, the close of the fifteenth century; they were aided by the popular discontent with the actual rulers, just as the hopes mankind entertained of the French Revo General Bonaparte through Italy some sixty years ago. In the dim haze of the future one thing alone is clear, that if the Emperor of the French can succeed in expelling the Austrians from Italy beyond likelihood of return, he will have an opportunity of raising his character such as has fallen to the lot of few rulers. If, throwing aside selfish purposes and French ambition, he disinterestedly applies himself to establish an orderly freedom in Italy, he will acquire a fame and an influence such as no extent of dominion - already so often gained by his predecessors and so quickly lostcould procure. The murky and troubled past can not be obliterated, but the future may be serene and fair. THE life of Thomas Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, and RearAdmiral of the Fleet, (better known by his victorious name of Lord Cochrane,) has been a romance with a dark prelude; a second volume full of powder-blackened and blood-crimsoned leaves, ends, with a burst of trumpets and a great western halo of glory. A cruel fate made Cochrane (we must call him by the well-known name) a sea guerilla, fighting the cause of suffering nations, when a better fortune and a more chivalrous age might have crowned him a sea Cæsar or a Charles the Twelfth, without the cracked-brain fate of that frantic Swede, who was born struggling, and died gnashing his teeth and with his hand on his sword. He who might have shared the sepulchral honor of Nelson in St. Paul's or have earned a dark chamber in the Abbey, has fought the fight of a mere partisan, and will go to his quiet death like any other inglorious paid-off admiral who figures at watering-places, airs himself daily on the marine parade, or frets over the naval debates in the sunny sea-side library. But we must go back and turn over that sunburnt page of the old Sea Lion's life when exulting Freedom saw him help to consolidate the independence of Chili and the liberation of Peru. We give a brief history of Cochrane's daring services during this war, to show France from what a dreadful enemy happy peace preserved her fleets. If there had been war, what Englishman could ever have sufficiently regretted the vile political intrigue and injustice that sent such a dashing Murat of the sea to fritter away his life in shelling small South-America forts-injustice that might have made of a worse man another Themistocles. Shame! that the combining mind and the iron courage should have been wasted in butchering hand-to-hand fights, with Mars and Saturn ever in baneful conjunction over his head. SEA-LION. In 1817 Don José Alvarez, a Chilian government agent, persuaded Lord Cochrane to bring a war-steamer, then on the stocks, to Valparaiso, (the sailors called it Walloperazor,) and to organize a naval force to free Chili from the Spanish yoke, and to sweep the Spaniards from the Pacific. The brave seaman, almost heartbroken by his unjust degradation, and expelled from the British navy, accepted the invitation, and with his usual fiery impetuosity decided not to wait for the lingering steamer, but at once, with Lady Cochrane and his two children, to embark for the seat of war. He found the sky dark and thunderous with coming danger, threatening the young Republic. The angry Spaniards menaced Valparaiso by sea, and holding all the South Continent from Conception to Chiloe, were organizing the painted tribes of Indians to bear down on Chili with fire and sword. The Court of Madrid, too, was urging its sluggish workmen at Cadiz and Carthagena to fit out fresh vessels to strengthen the Pacific squadron and crush the smaller ships of their rebellious colony. On his arrival at Valparaiso, Cochrane met General O'Higgins, son of a patriot Irish officer in the Spanish service, just elected Supreme Director in gratitude for a recent victory over the Royalists. Every where there was an instinct of success. Brave Admiral Blanco Encalada had just brought in his victorious squadron with a captured Spanish frigate, The Maria Isabel, towing, with drooping flag, in his wake. Every day there were fetes and bell-clashing, and noisy powder firing; till the stern Englishman, longing for business, cried out: "General O'Hig gins, I came here to fight not to feast." The man with the wounded heart, turning his back on unkind England, and coming to life again (as it were) under the soft, healing balsam of all this hospitality and welcome, made an oath he would end his days in Chili; but God willed it otherwise, and the prayer, he "demittit in aures." The very day a government | in canvas by the delighted foremast men, commission appointed him naval com- the sailmaker being his tailor. mander-in-chief, a more meditative, worldly, and less sanguine man than Cochrane might have seen incurable mischief brewing. A Spaniard is a Spaniard whether he call himself Royalist or Patriot. Such is a Spaniard's pride. Help Spain and you are his enemy even if you met side by side in heaven. A Spaniard would rather die and be trod to mud than be helped by a foreigner, and have to recognize that help, to own it, and be grateful for it. The Spaniards have not yet forgiven us driving the French out of Spain, and never will in this world. Envy began to sow every where her invisible mildewing sporules. Mutinies broke out. Some caballing English and American officers persuaded the Spaniards (not difficult to convince) that it was disgraceful to see Spaniards commanded by a foreigner; to see Republicans lorded over by an exiled English nobleman-in fact, their cry was: "Two commodores, and no Cochrane !" Away broke the fleet at last, with all these unseen barnacles sticking poisonously and banefully to the ship's coppers. Away over the blue dancing waves, like a pack of beagles eager for the covert; white sails straining out tight and sunny; flags struggling out in rippling ribbons; boastwains silver pipes piping; clear stout voices calling out the soundings as the fleet thread the harbor shallows, and the jagged shark-snouts of the reefs. Once at sea, on his own element, Cochrane, who united the dash of Hannibal with the patience of Fabius, determined to make a swoop at Callao, during the revelry of the Carnival, to try and cut out the Antonia treasure-ship, a galleon bound for Cadiz, in the very teeth of all the guarding forts, with their one hundred and sixty guns, and in the face of two frigates, a corvette, three brigs of war, a schooner, twenty-eight gun-boats, and six heavily armed merchantmen, with a total of threehundred and fifty cannon. This soldier of fortune-no buccaneer, but fighting for the cause he loved-resolved on a daring stratagem. Two American ships were expected at Callao. To mimic these, the O'Higgins and Lantaro frigates were to put on American colors, leaving the other ships hid out of sight behind San Lorenzo; they would then send a boat ashore with dispatches, and make a dash and cut out the frigates. Cochrane was always a sort of winged tiger, and this was to be one of his swooping leaps. Unluckily, accident baffled the scheme, and the genius then tried to patch it up and retrieve it. A nine days' Peruvian fog set in, and sent the vessels groping about, timid and uncertain of every movement. Some salutes, in honor of the Callao viceroy, who was inspecting the batteries, also misled them. The ships hearing the firing, and supposing an engageA singular occurrence attended the ment had commenced, bore down to aid weighing anchor. Lady Cochrane had each other, when lo! puff went away the come from Santiago to Valparaiso, to see fog for a moment, and they discovered Lord Cochrane off, and had just parted themselves floundering about no whither, with tears and claspings, and gone ashore and a Spanish gun-boat, equally surprised, in the last boat. She had reached her close to them. They captured this, and house, and was listening, half out of win-now the mask fell from them. The vicedow, to the last gun summoning all hands, roy, in his itinerant brig, scuttled to sternly and imperatively for the last time shore; the garrison lit their matches, and on board, when she saw her little boy stood to their guns, and the crews of the (only five) mounted on the epauleted men-of-war were beat to quarters. Now shoulders of the first-lieutenant, waving to retreat, of course? No. That was and shouting to the excited mob, not Cochrane's manner. He knew that "Viva la Patria," being hurried down to to produce moral effect is as useful as to the beach. Before she could cry out or win a victory; he knew that daring interfere, the little hero who had insisted frightens, and that the man who first on going with his father, was put in the frightens the other and dazzles his eye is boat and pulled off to the flag-ship, then always the conqueror. under weigh. Lord Cochrane finding no help for it, never looking back when he once put his hand to the plow, took him on; and the boy being without clothes, except those he had on, he had him rigged his сар Cochrane was going to inflict a flesh wound on the Spaniard just as a warning. The wind falling light he did not dare to lay his flag-ship or the Lantaro alongside the Spanish frigates as he longed to do, so he anchored with springs on his cables abreast of the dark-huddled mass of shipping that spread in a double crescent of fire outside the forts. A dead calm followed, and Cochrane bore for two hours a plunging fire from the batteries, but at last silenced and "chawed up" the north angle of the chief fort. Just then a breeze arose, and the English weighed anchor, standing to and fro out from and before the forts, listening to their fire, and asking them questions in flaming telegraphs. The San Martin and Chacchuco, afraid or unable, had never come within fire; Captain Guise of the Lantaro being wounded, his ship sheered off, and there Cochrane stood alone, a perfect St. Sebastian, exposed to all the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Reluctantly as a lion at bay he withdrew unpursued to the island of St. Lorenzo, three miles from the forts, having been for hours under the fire of more than two hundred guns. When the fog cleared away, and the bragging Spaniards found that they had been fighting, not the whole Chilian squadron, but only one rebellious, dogged vessel, they were quite chop-fallen, and instantly dismantled their war-ships, forming a double boom across the anchorage as a turnpike gate that could not be passed, conferring on the dreadful stranger the name of "El Diablo." Every being that came within the orbit of Cochrane's influence seemed to change into a hero. Such is the effect of living with a brave man, who proves to you that he despises and laughs at death. What great roads are open to the man who throws away all such fear. He then becomes a god, only without his immortality. The hero's son had a narrow escape in this his first engagement. When the pounding began, Lord Cochrane had locked his boy in the after-cabin; but the boy wanting to see the fun, like a true cub of the old Sea Lion, wormed through the quarter-gallery window, and joined him on deck, refusing to go down again. There he stood in his miniature midshipman's uniform that the sailors had made for him, handing powder-tins up and down to the gunners as they worked, their faces red as fire, their arms black to the elbows. Presently a bounding round shot tore off the head of a marine next him, and squirted his brains in the child's face. For a moment Lord Cochrane the thought the lad was killed, and stood, telescope in hand, spell-bound in agony, but in an instant the boy ran into his arms, crying, "I am not hurt, papa; shot did not touch me. Jack says, the ball is not made that can kill mamma's boy;" and although ordered below and carried screaming to the cabin, he prayed to remain, and was finally allowed to stand on the deck during the whole action. A few days after, three of Cochrane's launches took possession of the island of San Lorenzo, and released thirty-eight Chilians who had been enslaved there eight years. They had been kept at daily work under a military guard, and slept at night in an unwholesome filthy shed, where they were each of them chained at sunset by one leg to a long iron bar. In some cases the prisoners, to whom the Spaniards had evinced their usual cruelty, had their ankles cut to the bleeding bone by these dreadful manacles, which the slightest lining would have rendered equally safe, and yet quite innocuous. The next step of Cochrane towards victory was to establish a laboratory on the island of St. Lorenzo, where explosion vessels could be packed and stuffed. The first effort to use these floating mines was unsuccessful; a shot struck the bomb-ship, and it instantly foundered luckily for the Spaniards. The second and third attacks with mortar-boats and rocket-rafts were equally useless. One raft blew up and injured thirteen men and an officer. The Spanish prisoners employed to fill the rocket-tubes had secretly mixed sawdust and even dung with the powder; so that with the bad solder employed, and sticks of the wrong wood, the missiles were more deadly to Cochrane's men than to the Spaniards. Twenty men were put hors de combat; one brave hopeful young officer cut in two, and all the result was that the Spaniards kept close to the shore-doubled the boom and improved in their firing; as for the last floating mine they fired at it with red-hot shot, so that it had to be abandoned-blowing up, hurting no one. After an unlucky attack on Pasco, where two hundred thousand gallons of spirits were staved on the beach, to prevent the men mutinying, Cochrane made a swoop on Valdivia, a place of great strength, approached by a difficult channel, and crossed by fires from opposite batteries. |