of each other, head and stern, when the fluke of our spare anchor hooking his quarter, we became so close fore and aft, that the muzzles of our guns touched each other's sides. In this position we engaged from half-past eight till half-past ten, during which time, from the quantity and variety of combustible matters, which they threw in upon our decks, chains, and in short into every part of the ship, we were on fire not less than ten or twelve times in different parts of the ship, and it was with the greatest difficulty and exertion imaginable at times that we were able to get it extinguished. At the same time the largest of the two frigates kept sailing round us the whole action, and raking us fore and aft, by which means she killed or wounded almost every man on the quarter and main decks. About half-past nine, either from a hand grenade being thrown in at one of our lower deck ports, or from some other accident, a cartridge of powder was set on fire, the flames of which running from cartridge to cartridge all the way aft, blew up the whole of the people and officers that were quartered abaft the main-mast, from which unfortunate circumstance all those guns were rendered useless for the remainder of the action, and I fear the greatest part of the people will lose their lives. At ten o'clock they called for quarters from the ship alongside, and said they had struck. Hearing this, I called upon the Captain to know if they had struck, or if he asked for quarters; but no answer being made, after repeating my words two or three times, I called for the boarders and ordered them to board, which they did; but the moment they were on board her, they discovered a superior number laying under cover with pikes in their hands ready to receive them, on which our people instantly retreated into our own ship, and returned to their guns again until half-past ten, when the frigate coming across our stern, and pouring her broadside into us again, without our being able to bring a gun to bear on her, I found it in vain, and, in short, impracticable, from the situation we were in, to stand out any longer with the least prospect of success; I therefore struck (our mainmast at the same time went by the board). The first Lieutenant and myself, were imme...ately escorted into the ship alongside, when we found her to be an

American ship of war, called the Bon Homme Richard, of 40 guns and 375 men, commanded by Captain Paul Jones; the other frigate which engaged us proved to be the Alliance, of 40 guns and 300 men; and the third frigate which engaged and took the Countess of Scarborough after two hours action, to be the Pallas, a French frigate, of 32 guns and 275 men; the Vengeance, an armed brig, of 12 guns and 70 men, all in Congress service, and under the command of Paul Jones. They fitted out and sailed from Port l'Orient the latter end of July, and came North about; they have on board 300 English prisoners, which they have taken, in different vessels, in their way round, since they left France, and have ransomed some others. On my going on board the Bon Homme Richard, I found her in the greatest distress; her quarters and counter on the lower deck intirely drove in, and the whole of her lower deck guns dismounted; she was also on fire in two places, and six or seven feet of water in her hold, which kept increasing upon them all night and the next day, till they were obliged to quit her, and she sunk, with a great number of her wounded people on board her. She had 306 men killed and wounded in action: Our loss on the Serapis was also very great. My officers and people in general behaved well and I should be very remiss in my attention to their merit were I to omit recommending the remains of them to their Lordship's favour. I must at the same time beg leave to inform their Lordships, that Captain Piercy, in the Countess of Scarborough was not the least remiss in his duty, he having given me every assistance in his power, and as much as could be expected from such ship in engaging the attention of the Pallas a frigate of 32 guns, during the whole action. I am extremely sorry for the misfortune that has happened, that of losing his Majesty's ship I had the honour to command; but at the same time, I flatter myself with the hopes, that their Lordships will be convinced that she has not been given away; but, on the contrary, that every exertion has been used to defend her; and that two essential pieces of service to our country has arisen from it; the one in wholly oversetting the cruise and intentions of this flying squadron; the other in rescuing the whole of a valuable convoy from falling into the hands of the enemy,

which must have been the case had I acted any otherwise than I did. We have been driving about in the North Sea ever since the action, endeavoring to make any port we possibly could, but have not been able to get into any place till to-day, we arrived in the Texel. Herewith I enclose you the most exact list of the killed and wounded I have as yet been able to procure, from my people being dispersed amongst the different ships and having been refused permission to muster them: There are, I find, many more, both killed and wounded, than appears on the enclosed list, but their names as yet I find impossible to ascertain; as soon as I possibly can, shall give their Lordships a full account of the whole.

she had fired a gun. The first broadside she gave us, she killed eleven men. Did I say broadside? It was rather more like a salute than a broadside, for she commenced by firing the starboard bow gun and continued one after another till she discharged fourteen twelve pounders, every ball of which went through our cabin windows and out at our bow, and so soon as the ship shot ahead of us, she hove about and discharged the other broadside as before. Again, Pearson says that many of our dead and wounded went down in our ship. It is equally untrue. I don't believe one soul of either dead or wounded went down in the ship. Again he says, that he killed and wounded three hundred and six of our men. Still worse! and in my opinion, makes against Pearson, for if he had killed and wounded that number of us, ought he not to have taken us? Surely he ought, for he says we had only three hundred and seventy-five men, and by that rule how many men had we left? Why sixty-nine men! Handsome business for sixty-nine men to take his Majesty's ship with two hundred and eighty-eight, for he had on his books four hundred men. truth is that we had a hundred men killed and a hundred wounded. Many of the wounded died the next day. The Serapis lost one hundred and one killed and a hundred wounded. This was proved by their ship's books and is, of course, true. But the truth of the matter is this: a British commander could not endure to have it said that one of his Majesty's ships was taken by an American rebel, as they so called us then. But time has changed. The weight is now in the other scale. I will say this for Captain Pearson and his officers; they all fought bravely. But had we not had such a mixed, disaffected crew (when I say disaffected crew, I mean all those that Jones had entered out of French prisons), I really believe we should have taken the ship in one half the time. Captain Pearson was like all other British commanders, when they write to their government. It is not to be expected for them to give the truth. Had he done so, it would have been departing from their principle at least for a century past.

The

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HE long life of André Le Nôtre is one of the most characteristic and best expressions of the time of the "Grand Monarque." He came from the simple middle class, which has given many of her greatest artists to France, as we know from one of the few and meagre notes about his youth that his father, Jean Le Nôtre, was an undergardener at the palace of the Tuileries, although he afterward rose to be "surintendant des jardins du Roi." The boy must have grown up in gardens and among gardeners, since the record of his baptism says that his god-mother was the wife of that Claude Mollet, head gardener of the Tuileries, whose name is associated with a book about the design and making of parterres of all sorts, one of the earliest of its kind and most eagerly sought after by collectors of books on gardening. Little is known about his early life, except that he

is said to have studied painting with Simon Vouët, where he probably met Charles Le Brun and Le Vau, who were later associated with him in his work at Vaux and at Versailles. Although there is a legend that he painted two or three landscapes of great promise, which have since disappeared, the boy cannot have shown real aptitude for painting, because we know that he was still young when he became his father's assistant in the parterres of the Tuileries. We may fancy how, the lad, working in the flowerbeds, began to think of the changes which he was afterward to make in the design of these gardens and to dream of the great vistas and of what Cousin calls his "peculiar magic of infinite perspectives," which has made him worthy of a place by the side of Poussin and Claude.

It is hard to tell whether his apparently bluff and simple personality was a manner

ly declined, as Le Nôtre said that he had one ready made-three snails surrounding a spade and surmounted by a cabbage leaf. As far as we know Le Nôtre asked only one favor of the King in all the years they were associated, which was toward the end of his life, when he begged that his nephew, Claude

Desgots, might succeed him in his place. He died in the year 1700, at the age of eighty-seven, and was buried in the church of St. Roch in Paris. Not much is known of his life between the time he left Simon Vouët's school of painting and rejoined his father in the Tuileries gardens until he was thirty-nine, when he began his first great work at Vaux-le-Vicomte near Melun, although it has been said that he made some designs for Richelieu's chateaux of Reuil and Gaillon. As a young man he seems to have been protected by Mazarin, through whom Fouquet, the powerful and unscrupulous chancellor, probably heard of him, and offered him the splendid opportunity which only a man of high position anxious to display immense wealth and perfect taste could give. Fouquet spent eighteen million francs at Vaux, an enormous sum even for the present day, proving,asa contemporary writer said, that the chancellor served himself with no more economy than he served his King. Twice he pulled down and rebuilt the house before he was satisfied with its beauty and magnificence, and he bought and destroyed three villages in order that there might be room for the immense gardens in the park of eight hundred acres which Le Nôtre had planned as a setting to the chateau. To Le Vau belongs the credit for the house as it stands, although it is said that he stole ideas for his plans from unused sketches belonging to the older Mansart, and Le Brun designed some of the fountains in the gardens and painted two of the ceilings, which rank among the finest of his work. As Sainte-Beuve said, Vaux was in a sense an anticipated Versailles, and evidences of an unbridled luxury were every

sented his familiarity, and who was always his friend. His portrait by Carlo Maratta at Versailles and the bust over his tomb by Coysevox, both show us a keen, earnest face, nervous in its modelling around the mouth, and with fine, frank, wide-open eyes, but emphatically neither sly nor servile. His profession, like that of architecture, is dependent for its expression on the ability of the artist to work through his employer, and these arts are thus more closely knit with personality than any other.

When Le Nôtre was sixty-two the King insisted on making him a chevalier of the Order of St. Michael, and suggested that he adopt a coat of arms; which was laughing