their ranks to carry him away." Siborne's account of his capture is decidedly less poetical: "He (Lieut.Colonel Halkett) darted forward at full gallop to attack the general. When he had come up with him, and was about to cut him down, the latter called out that he would surrender. Cambronne-for he it was then preceded Halkett as he returned to the Hanoverian battalion, but had not gone many paces before Halkett's horse was wounded, and fell to the ground. In a few seconds, however, Halkett succeeded in getting him on his legs again, when he found that his prisoner was escaping in the direction of the French column; he instantly overtook him, seized him by the aiguilette, brought him to the battalion, and gave him in charge to a sergeant of the Osnabruckers, who was to deliver him to the Duke." ap In manipulating numbers, M. Thiers surpasses himself in the course of the battle. He speedily repents of allowing the French 70,000 men, and reduces them to 68,000. When Bulow was proaching, we are told that "merely in place of 75,000 men, he (Napoleon) was about to have 105,000 to combat with 68,000; the chances were fewer, but still great." Next we learn that Napoleon could not retreat, as "he would have been assailed by 130,000 men in flank and rear, to whom 68,000, reduced by the battle to 60,000, could only be opposed." Presently the 130,000 has increased. "Up to this time 68,000 French had made head against one hundred and forty thousand English, Prussians, Dutch, Germans, and had wrested from them the greater part of the field of battle"-till at last "four or five squares of the Guard, in the midst of 150,000 victorious men, are like three or four peaks of rock which the furious ocean covers with its foam." Now let us take what, on M. Thiers's own assumptions, were the numbers. There were 75,000 English, which, he says, were diminished by twenty odd thousands in the battle-in fact, as we have seen, he says the Duke had only 36,000 left at an earlier stage, and must consequently have lost 39,000; but we will regard that as a figure of speech, and take the lesser number,-this would leave about 50,000 of the Duke's men. He tells us that the Prussians after Ligny were 88,000, that Thielemann had 29,000 of these opposing Grouchy, and that 9000 were killed or wounded at Waterloo, which leaves 50,000 Prussians It is well known that Napoleon, after finding shelter from the first advance of the enemy in a square of the Guard, fled in all haste over the frontier. But M. Thiers considers it more proper and dignified that he should perform the whole distance to Genappe in the midst of the square. It is also on record that from Charleroi he sent a hasty message to Grouchy, to tell him that the main army was defeated, and that he must retreat; but Grouchy has asserted that not a word was said as to the point upon which he was to retreat, and that, ignorant of the exact nature of the catastrophe, he was in considerable perplexity before making for Namur, upon which town he retired very skilfully,and withdrew the right wing in safety beyond the frontier. But M. Thiers can neither allow Grouchy to have the credit of select-therefore 50 and 50 make 150. ing the point, nor Napoleon the blame of neglecting to indicate it, and calmly states, "He despatched an officer to Marshal Grouchy, to carry by word of mouth the sad details of the battle of the 18th, and to prescribe to him to retire on Namur." And his geo O M. Thiers! Mercutio says that Thy runs by Genappe." The stream that runs by Genappe is the Dyle, and "Thy" is the name of a village on its bank. We should have gone far indeed beyond our purpose, were we supposed to deny the transcendent military genius of Napoleon. To that we shall always be ready to pay a tribute-truer, because, we hope, more discriminating, than the servile adulation of M. Thiers. English writers may, with the better grace, censure the great soldier where censure is due, because he has received from none more generous praise than from them. It is with redoubled satisfaction that we read Alison's spirited chapter on Waterloo, when contrasting his glowing eulogies on the French troops, his admiration of their great leader and of their generals, with the partial, ungenerous narrative of Thiers. It proves that an English historian at least can celebrate fitly the deeds of his countrymen without disparaging their enemies. Nor do we believe that it is incumbent on a French author, who writes of the glories of the Consulate and the Empire, to treat his subject in the spirit of a Yankee bulletin-to give the world a mixture of impudent misrepresentation, bombastic description, and tawdry sentiment, and call it history. Instructed Frenchmen like Charras, and intelligent Frenchmen like Quinet, have already set the example of refusing to bow down to the graven image that M. Thiers has set up, and which he so abjectly worships. The military fame of France must lose far more than it can gain by the audacious flatteries which it needs nothing but common sense to detect. But if the French people really prefer fustian to fact, and like to have their history written in this way, we propose a subject to some of the great military painters of France, who so congenially celebrate, on acres of canvass, the achievements of their countrymen, and which may appear suitably on the walls of Versailles, "M. Thiers laying vanquished Truth at the Feet of the Eagles." A DEATHLESS LOVE. Он sing that plaintive sang, dear May! There's no in a' the world, dear bairn, And when I fa', I fain wad hae Oh sing again that plaintive sang! There's nane I love like thee, dear bairnThou ken'st nae why, I ween? Thou only hast thy grannie's smile, Thou only her blue een; Thou only wilt the village maids Like her in sang excel; Thou only hast her brow and cheek, Wi' rosy dimple dell. It's mony weary years since she Was 'neath the gowans laid, They say there's music in the storm But he whase house the storm has wrecked, Can breathe a grateful prayer, and feel Sae thought I when her een I closed, Nane think how sadly owre my head But I fu' brawly ken; for, May, And joy and hope were in her smile, Sit near me, May; sit nearer yet! 'Tis sweet to fa' asleep for aye By sic a blithesome rill. My thoughts are wanderin', bairn. The veil The deepenin' autumn gloamin's turned My een grow heavy, May, and dim. It seems a sweeter voice than thine Lean owre me wi' thy grannie's face, Lean kindly owre me, bairn, for nane DAVID WINGATE. * Sain-said. THE CRISIS OF THE AMERICAN WAR. THE past month has brought us to the veritable crisis of the great civil war in America. Brought to bay upon their own soil, the Federals in desperation have invoked to their aid the unutterable horrors of a servile war. With their armies baffled and beaten, and with the standards of the rebel army again within sight of Washington, the President has at length owned the impossibility of success in fair warfare, and seeks to paralyse the victorious armies of the South by letting loose upon their hearths and homes the lust and savagery of four million negroes. The die is cast. Henceforth it is a war of extermination. The North seeks to make of the South a desert-a wilderness of bloodshed and misery; for thus only, now, does it or can it hope to overcome the seceding Confederacy. Monstrous, reckless, devilish as the project is, we believe it will not succeed. But it at least marks the crisis and turning-point of the war. It shows that the North has shot its last bolt,the effects of which we do not yet see, but beyond which there is no other. It proves what every one in this country was loth to believe, that rather than let the Southern States be independent, rather than lose their trade and custom, the North would league itself with Beelzebub, and seek to make a hell of half a continent. In return, this atrocious act justifies the South in hoisting the black flag, and in proclaiming a war without quarter against the Yankee hosts. 66 it is natural that at least something like a crisis should arise amongst the slow-moving minds of her Majesty's Ministers. If they cannot yet agree to act upon their opinions, each member of the Cabinet, we should think, must at least have arrived at some definite opinion of his own. Three weeks ago it was rumoured that before the end of the month Lord Lyons would return to his post at Washington, bearing with him the definite decision of her Majesty's Government. Simultaneously, or immediately in the wake of this rumour, there came Mr Gladstone's speech at Newcastle, where, amid the applause of his audience, he declared that the people of the Southern States were now to be regarded as a NATION. There is no doubt," said the Chancellor of the Exchequer, "that Jefferson Davis and the other leaders of the South have made an army; they are making, it appears, a navy; and they have made what is more than eitherthey have made a nation. We may anticipate with certainty the success of the Southern States, so far' as regards their separation from the North. I cannot but believe that that event is as certain as any event yet future and contingent can be." When Mr Gladstone spoke thus, so plainly and SO strongly, it seemed as if the previous rumours were correct, and that before the month was ended the Southern Confederacy would be officially recognised by the BritAnd ish Government as an independent State. But in a few days more, another member of the Cabinetas is not unusual with that eminently harmonious body-declared himself of an entirely different opinion. Sir G. C. Lewis, at Hereford, said that in his opinion "if the Government were to say that the Southern States have consti thus, within the bosom of civilisation, we are called upon to contemplate a war more full of horrors and wickedness than any which stands recorded in the world's history. When a crisis so manifest and so terrible has been reached in this most melancholy of all civil wars, |