that the ardour and earnestness that we express in warning them of approaching danger, originated in the purest love to their immortal souls; but alas! many conclude otherwise. To such we may adopt the language of Paul, and say, "Am I therefore become your enemy because I tell you the truth?" Suppose an individual saw that you were in imminent danger of being crushed to death by the falling of a rock, or of being drowned by an inundation, or destroyed by the element of fire, would you consider his most earnest and vehement warning intrusive and unnecessary? Could you give him credit for possessing even the common feeling of humanity, if, instead of adopting every possible effort to expose to your view your alarming situation, he were with the greatest indifference to leave you to its ruinous consequence? My dear young friends, if to you we have sometimes appeared too severe and harsh when we presented to your view the vanity of all created things, the infinite value of the soul, and the indispensible necessity of an interest in the blood of atonement, believe us when we affirm, that we have been influenced so to address you, from the purest love to your souls. We wish you in early life to experience the blessedness of religion, and to testify with the godly in all ages, that "Wisdom's ways are ways of pleasantness, and that all her paths are paths of peace!"

4

The possibility that success may attend our future efforts, constrains a faithful minister to persevere in giving mankind warning of their awful danger. Greatly distressed and discouraged as we are, on account of many to whom we have given warning, we cannot despair of their salvation, because we know not to whom the mercy of God may be extended. Probably God may be pleased to employ our feeble instrumentality to the conversion of the most hopeless, profane, and abandoned of our hearers. We may be privileged to see the most hardened heart, the most obdurate will subdued, and the most implacable enmity slain. Having the infinite compassion and illimitable power of Jehovah in our behalf, we will yield to no despondency, but, to the latest period of our lives, will warn you to flee from the wrath to come, and beseech you in Christ's stead to be reconciled to God. Looking to converted characters, we may say, "Such were some of you; but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of our Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God."

"Peradventure, this evening God may give some sinners " repentance to the acknowledging of the truth," and angels may hence have cause to tune their harps of praise." Nothing is too hard for the Lord." The encouragement derived from this consideration induced your Preacher to study a discourse upon this subject, and the same thought has encouraged him to bring it before you upon this occasion. Ah! what should we have felt if, when ascending these stairs this evening, a voice from heaven had said, Warn these sinners no more! Let them alone; I have given them up to final judgment ! Encourage them no more to hope in my mercy, for their doom is fixed! What horror would have pervaded the bosoms of those who have disobeyed the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ! With what

deep remorse would the consciously guilty have exclaimed, Wo is me, for I am undone-eternally undone! But blessed be God, such an awful annunciation has not been heard, and we may encourage the most sinful and abandoned to cherish hope in the mercy of God our Saviour. "Behold now is the accepted time, now is the day of salvation."

The certainty of meeting all our hearers at the final judgement, will constrain a faithful minister to persevere in giving warning to impenitent sinners. We are not accountable to our Lord and Master for the success of our efforts in studying and preaching the Gospel, but we are accountable to him for the fidelity with which we discharge the duties of our office. Let any one imagine himself occupying our station, and taking our situation at the last day, and many who heard us, coming forward to accuse us of unfaithfulness, and saying to this effect, Cursed wretch, you professed to be a minister of Christ, and to instruct us in all things necessary to salvation; to you it belonged to have given us solemn warning;-but this duty you neglected-instead of faithfully warning us of approaching danger, you prophecied smooth things, and have thus been accessary to our destruction." Now by the grace of God, we have resolved that a charge so heart-rending and woful shall not be alleged against us. We hope to confront all our hearers on the last day without fear or shame, and in the presence of an eternal Judge and an assembled world with boldness to say, "I shunned not to declare unto you the whole counsel of God." Who is the individual in this assembly, that will be able to stand forward in that solemn period, and charge us with infidelity? Will the covetous man?-Will the licentious man?—Will the worldly man?-Will the swearer?-Will the adulterer?-Will the fornicator?-To our God and your conscience we can appeal, that we are free from the blood of all men. Ah! perhaps, perhaps OI tremble at the thought-perhaps in this assembly there are some against whom we shall be compelled to witness at the judgementseat of Christ. Will you, my fellow sinner, continue to despise the warning voice?-Will you continue to disregard the melodious accents of mercy?-Will you continue to follow a multitude to do evil? If so, however overwhelming may be the thought, we must establish our fidelity, and testify before an assembled universe, to your rebellion and impenitency. Let Christians adore and praise the God of infinite mercy, that they have been enabled to regard the warning voice, and to escape from the wrath to come. At the day of judgement, we shall meet you with indescribable joy and delight. Concerning many present we can say, "Ye are our joy, and will be our crown of rejoicing in the last great day." Then, with inconceivable rapture we shall exclaim, "Here am I and the children which thou hast given me." Then, in strains of which we can now form no adequate idea, we shall unitedly cry, "Unto Him that loved us and washed us from our sins in his blood, and hath made us kings and priests unto God and his Father, to Him be glory and dominion for ever and ever."-" For what is our hope, or joy, or crown of rejoicing? Are not even ye in the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ at his coming? For ye are our glory and joy." Even so, Amen.

Art. VII. A Narrative of the Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans, under Generals Ross, Pakenham, and Lambert, in the Years 1814 and 1815. By the Author of 'The Subaltern.' 8vo. pp. 377. Price 12s. London. 1826.

ΤΗ
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HERE is something in the very idea of war and variance between Great Britain and the States of North America, that excites in our minds a strange emotion of almost superstitious horror. Allied as we are in the dearest and closest relationships of man's social nature our blood, our language, our laws, both generically and specifically the same-why cannot our political and commercial alliance be equally and inviolably intimate? Are the rancour and antipathy consequent on the war of emancipation, never to die? and are we, the descendants in the second remove, to hold each other in abhorrence, because our grandfathers referred a deadly quarrel to the arbitrement of the sword? That was a disastrous season, when the second American war came to revive the heartburnings and fierce rivalries of the first; and we fear that the feelings of jealousy and mutual defiance then aroused, are not likely to subside until they have provoked a deadlier and more decisive hostility. There seems, too, a fatality about these contests with, we had well nigh said, our fellow-countrymen. Nothing could be more miserably managed than the earlier conflict, excepting the recent struggle. The errors of Howe and Clinton were immeasurably outdone by the unrivalled blundering of Sir George Prevost; and the ineffective system of his employers, deprived them of all right to complain of his timid and indecisive strategy.

The Americans, however, have claimed for themselves a great deal more than they are entitled to, on the score of naval and military superiority. Their victories by sea were, in almost every instance, gained by a broadside weight of metal, against which our more lightly armed frigates had no adequate means of resistance; and their advantages by land were neither of a character nor on a scale to occupy a distinguished station in any other annals than their own. We have, we confess, felt pain in observing the overweening tendencies of our transatlantic brethren, when their national exploits were in question and in few instances have these dispositions been more offensively apparent, than in nearly all their historical narratives of the late war, Skirmishes, that would have scarcely found a place in the official records of continental warfare, are swelled into actions of transcendent importance; and movements of perfect insignificance are placed on a level with the ablest manœuvres of the most profound strategists and tac

ticians. One native writer has seriously placed the successful defence of the entrenchments of New Orleans in comparison with “ the battles of Cressy and Agincourt :' and a Mr. Wright, member of Congress for Maryland, while addressing the House of Representatives on the subject of the war, recommended that whoever should, on that floor, be alluding to Roman ' valour, would be considered as speaking of the second degree, ، and not of the first. Still more absurd than even this, is the anger which we have heard expressed by enlightened Americans, against Englishmen, for believing their own official statements, in preference to those of their enemy. It was vain to remonstrate on the unreasonableness of the requisition, which was maintained with too much positiveness to admit of argument, and too much irritation to allow even a good-natured smile. They have their histories of the late war, some of them exceedingly popular, but, if we may judge of them by the specimens we have seen, full of exaggeration. So far as we know, the only complete work on the subject published in this country, is Mr. James's 'Full and Correct Account,' in two volumes 8vo; a publication highly valuable for research and documentary evidence, but occasionally manifesting an injurious tendency to sarcasm and ridicule.

The narrative' before us is exceedingly interesting. The book is written with spirit and talent, without partiality or exaggeration, but, apparently, with a simple anxiety to give a clear and lively exhibition of events and circumstances as they occurred within the Writer's immediate cognizance. He mixes, in a very agreeable way, what may be termed the domestic scenes of warfare, with details more strictly military. We accompany him on the march, share the hut, the tent, the bivouac, join in the skirmish and the battle, with him and his gallant comrades: in short, he gives us a picture of a soldier's life that is somewhat too much calculated to kindle a dangerous ambition, and to stimulate the young and ardent to a doubtful and hazardous career. He must, we imagine, have been a gallant and accomplished officer, with much of the raw material out of which heroes are made, and bidding fair, with favourable opportunities and unmutilated limbs, to work his way upwards to the head of armies. But, though enthusiastic in his attachment to the soldier's life, he had no relish for home-quarters and the mere duties of drill and parade. Peace came, and he resigned; passing, if our information be correct, from the eager pursuit of military honour and advancement, to the peaceable discharge of clerical duties.

The Narrative' commences with a partial repetition of descriptions previously given at the close of the Subaltern;' a

volume which we should have noticed ere now, but for the circumstance that it had been originally made public through the medium of a popular periodical. It will be enough to state, of the latter work, that it contains a most animated description of the later events, commencing with the siege and storming of St. Sebastian's, of the war in Spain and the south of France. All that refers to these transactions, in the present volume, we shall at once pass over, and touch but slightly on all that occurs previously to the landing on the American coast. The regiment to which our Author belonged, was ordered from the Garonne to the Chesapeake, and sailed on the 2d of June, 1814. The voyage is pleasantly described. The Azores afford opportunity for some good painting; they have, however, been so often exhibited in this way, that we shall take in preference, the following sketch of the Bermudas.

• To reach St. George's, the capital of the colony, you are obliged to row, for several miles, up a narrow frith called the ferry, immediately on entering which the scenery becomes in the highest degree picturesque. Though still retaining its character of low, the ground, on each side, looks as if it were broken into little swells, the whole of them beautifully shaded with groves of cedar, and many of them crowned with country houses, as white as the drifted snow. But the fact is, that this appearance of hill and dale is owing to the prodigious number of islands which compose the cluster, there being in all, according to vulgar report, not fewer than three hundred and sixty-five, of which the largest exceeds not seven or eight miles in diameter. Yet it is only when you follow what at first you are inclined to mistake for a creek, or the mouth of a river, that you discover the want of valleys between these hills; and even then, you are more apt to fancy yourself upon the bottom of a lake studded with islets, than steering amid spots of earth which stand, each of them distinct, in the middle of the Atlantic ocean. There is something bewitchingly pretty, for pretty is perhaps the most appropriate epithet I could use, in every one of the many views which you may obtain from different points. The low and elegant cedar, the green, short turf, the frequent recurrence of the white and dazzling rock, the continual rise and fall of the numerous small islands, but above all, the constant intermingling of land and water, seem more like a drawing of fairy-land, than a reality.'

The armament which rendezvoused in the Chesapeake, included twenty sail of ships of war and about four thousand troops; an amount which, in the Peninsula, would have been considered as only constituting a brigade, but in the present instance, passed as an army formidable for its numbers as well as discipline.' The landing was effected without opposition on the banks of the river. Patuxent, with a corps of about four thousand five hundred men, including sailors, divided into three brigades, the whole under the command of General Ross.