the asylum of the world, powerful and great monarch, transactor of all good actions, the best of men, the shadow of God, director of good order, king of kings, supreme ruler of the world, emperor of the earth, emulator of Alexander the Great, possessor of great forces, sovereign of the two worlds and of the seas, Mahmoud Kahn (may God end his life with prosperity, and his reign be everlasting and glorious!), his humble and obedient servant, actual sovereign governor and chief of Algiers, submitted for ever to the orders of his Imperial Majesty's noble throne OMAR PASHA (may his government be happy and prosperous.),

"To his Majesty, the Emperor of America, its adjacent and dependent provinces and coasts, and wherever his government may extend, our noble friend, the support of the kings of the nation of Jesus, the pillar of all Christian sovereigns, the most glorious amongst many lords and nobles, the happy, the great, the amiable JAMES MADISON, Emperor of America (may his reign be happy and glorious, and his life long and prosperous), wishing him long possession of the seal of his blessed throne, and long life and health. Amen. Hoping that your health is in good state, I inform you that mine is excellent, thanks to the Supreme Being, constantly addressing my humble prayers to the Almighty for your felicity.

"After many years have elapsed, you have at last sent a squadron, commanded by Admiral Decatur, your most humble servant, for the purpose of treating of peace with us. I received the letter, of which he was the bearer, and understood its contents. The enmity which was between us having been extinguished, you desired to make peace, as France and England have done. Immediately after the arrival of your squadron in our harbour, I sent my answer to your servant, the Admiral, through the medium of the Swedish consul, whose proposals I was disposed to agree to, on condition that our frigate and sloop of war taken by you should be returned to us, and brought back to Algiers: :-on these conditions we would sign peace according to your wishes and request. Our answer having thus been explained to your servant the admiral, by the Swedish consul, he agreed to treat with us upon the above mentioned conditions; but having afterwards insisted upon the liberation of all American citizens, as well as upon a certain sum of money for

several merchant vessels made prizes of by us, and of other objects belonging to the Americans, we did not hesitate a moment to comply with his wishes, and in consequence of which we have restored to the said admiral your servant, all that he demanded from us. In the meantime, the said admiral having given his word to send back our two ships of war, and not having performed his promise, he has thus violated the faithful articles of peace which were signed between us, and by so doing a new treaty must be made.

"I inform you, therefore, that a treaty of peace having been signed between America and us, during the reign of Hassan Pasha, twenty years past, I propose to renew the said treaty on the same basis stipulated in it, and if you agree to it our friendship will be solid and lasting. I intended to be on higher terms of amity with our friends the Americans than ever before, being the first nation with whom I made peace; but as they have not been able to put into execution our present treaty, it appears necessary for us to treat on the abovementioned conditions. We hope that, with the assistance of God, you will answer this our letter immediately after you shall have a perfect knowledge of its contents. If you agree, according to our request, to the conditions specified in the said treaty, please to send us an early answer. If, on the contrary, you are not satisfied with my propositions, you will act against the sacred duty of man, and against the laws of nations.

Requesting only that you will have the goodness to remove your consul as soon as possible, assuring you that it will be very agreeable to us, these are our last words to you, and we pray God to keep you in his holy guard.

"Written in the year of the Hegira 1231, the 20th day of the month Dge Mazirl Covei, (April 24, 1815).

"Signed in our well-beloved city "of Algiers, OMAR, "Son of Mohammed, Conqueror and

Great."

As the conditions, to which the Dey refers in this letter, included the payment of tribute, they were of course rejected, and a treaty, founded on the American proposals, was finally concluded; but not until Algiers had been humbled to the dust by the British bombardment, under Lord Exmouth, which took place the following year.

of hot water and sugar, one glass of smuggled Irish whiskey (for after all, the only way to procure the real, pure, unsophisticated, and unadulterated native, in London, is by smuggling it), and, having placed another jug of hot water before him, and filled out a second glass, while his eye twinkled with humour, and scintillated with conscious satisfaction of the inward man, he proceeded to tell the following story :

I love

"We have been talking a great deal this evening about the army. the army as an Englishman I am proud of its achievements, and I am almost as fond of the sight of a red-coat as a woman is. I respect a soldier, I reverence an officer, and I almost idolize a general. They all seem so grand, with their feathers, and their gold lace, and have such a killing look, with their swords, their guns, and their cannons, that I would long since have purchased a commission for myself but for two reasons-first, the Horse-Guards give very bad interest for the money, and next, I feel that I have so little bravery about me, that had it been my misfor

tune to have been at Waterloo, I should never have worn the medal; for I should have died of the fright. To say the truth, gentlemen, I would defy all the craniologists in the world to discover on the cranium of a true-born Hart the bump of combativeness. We are infected with none of your rash bull-dog-like valour that makes men volunteer in a forlornhope' or face a chevaux-de-frise. No, we are a quiet peaceable race, and have not had even a single 'affair of honour' on our hands. Few of us have ever handled a loaded pistol-one or two venturesome spirits, I am told, were upon a time enticed into a shooting gallery, and their courage was tried there, but they missed the mark, and were near hitting their own toes.

"There was a single exception to the amiable placability of the Harts; he of whom I speak, was indeed a hero, and died like Wolfe, and Abercrombie, and Picton in the red field of fight.' This distinguished soldier was my great-greatgrand-uncle, Brigadier Hart. Bless his old head! but his picture-for I have seen it a thousand times, is the very picture of a martial hero. I think I see the pattern of chivalry standing before me-his hair white with powder, and erect with pomatum, stuffed into a black equilateral triangle, decorated with a fiery little red feather, that looks as angry as a burning cinder in a coal-box. His face as brown as an old boot top, and relieved by a cocked up nose, the smallness of which is greatly compensated for by its determined rosy hue. His neck was long as a swan's, and from the lace cravat, as white, and as stiff as a drum-stick his red coat almost lost, in the width and extent of its blue and gold facings; and then his nethermost man encased in boots as dark and bright as a raven's wing, and reaching to the middle of his thighs, while above them his spotless, his white, his never-to-beforgotten, his ever-to-be-mentioned unmentionables. With those subligacula breeches, pantaloons, or whatever else you choose to call them, I should premise to you, that a sad and melancholy story is connected. Poor, dear, brave, lamented chevalier, there was nothing in the world respecting which he was so particular as his pantaloons-they were composed of the best buck-skin, they were white as the driven-snow, not a wrinkle was to be seen in them, not a spot to be noted on them, and yet in what a sad plight have they been transmitted to posterity!

"Brigadier Hart, from his boyhood, was so very brave, in fact, so outrageously courageous, that he never could procure an opportunity of displaying his valour. There was pugnacity in his eye, destruction on his brow, and death in his fist. And then he spoke so boldly, and so magnanimously, and challenged his playmates to box, so ferociously, that all shrunk from him, and would never even gratify him with a pugilistic encounter. He talked with such transcendent courage of splitting sculls with slates, flattening noses with leaden ink-bottles, and ripping up stomachs with pen-knives, that even his preceptors feared to lay their ferule on his shoulders, when it was his will and pleasure not to learn any of the lessons prescribed to him. As he grew up, his delight was in blood-he was great in shooting birds, and he was awful in a cock-pit, where he insisted on having the pleasure of killing every cowardly dunghill that ran when once it felt the steel. His exalted chivalric bravery exhaled upon such occasions in magniloquent execrations against even a dumb creature, because nature had not endowed it with his own enduring and never-tobe surpassed courage. As if he were, however, possessed of a prophetic intimation of his ultimate fate, he never indulged in hunting, although he had been often heard to declare, that he delighted in feats of dangerous horsemanship.

"All the peaceful professions of life were estimated by the young Brigadier as being beneath the dignity of manly virtue, and those who devoted themselves to such occupations, were regarded by him as so many poltroons. He contemned commercial men, denounced both lawyers and churchmen, there was no restraining his military ardour, 'he would be a soldier,' and accordingly a commission was procured for him, as soon as he could poise a sword, and almost before he could write his name legibly. At seventeen years of age he entered the British army, then commanded by Lord Churchill, afterwards created Duke of Marlborough.

So exuberantly brave was the bold Brigadier, that he broke his first sword against the palings of his father's park, in shewing to the fear-stricken tenantry with how little remorse he would cut through an entire troop of French cavalry. He maintained the same character for his readiness to perform gallant achievements to the very termination of his career. Even "the great duke" it is positively asserted has admired him

at a review. He was a most rigid disciplinarian. There was not a man in his company who was not exactly five feet nine inches high, and who had not been flogged, at least three times. A buckle misplaced, a button lost, were offences for which the Brigadier was sure to bring the culprit to the halberts. His men were as like one another as if they had been all cut out of the same block, and there was as little difference between them in appearance, as between so many candlesticks of the same pattern-all were the same height-all were of the same stiffness, and all were ornamented in the same manner. They were as like as nine-pins, and intended for the same purpose, to hold their places in a field until a ball should knock them down.

"As long as the regiment remained in England, the Brigadier was the admiration of the officers, the wonder of the men, the fear of the women, and the terror of all the vagabond boys that lurk round a regiment at home, as in time of war vultures and other unclean birds hang on the skirts of an army. My great-great-great grandfather calculated, nay, he boasted, that the Brigadier would return (if any chance shot should take off the Duke of Marlborough) the commander-in-chief of the English forces; as amongst them, my venerated ancestor was aware, that not a single officer or even soldier spoke so minaciously as the undaunted Brigadier was wont to do, Terror plumed his three-cornered hat, victory seemed to rest upon his sword, war rustled in his epaulettes, fear fled trembling before him, and fame appeared to hurry after him, that she might present him with the baton of a field marshal. Thus in all the pomp, pride, and circumstance of war' did Brigadier Hart sail with his regiment from England. But alas, and a lack-a-day! the course of war is like love's, 'it never did run smooth.' When once the army got into the field, the character of the Brigadier began to diminish. Upon the shores of his native land it shone with all the undiminished effulgence of the full-moon. It lost a portion of its brilliancy at Schellenberg, became still less at Hochstadt; my great-great-grand-uncle being prevented by a sudden illness in both places, from aiding the Duke in his defeat of the French and Bavarians; it was almost totally obscured at Ramilies, where a sore foot confined the warrior to his camp, and it was in its last quarter at Oudenarde, upon which occasion a bowel complaint precluded my renowned

ancestor from wielding his redoubted sword, and thus expediting the victory of England over France. It was said, (in our family) that the Duke of Marlborough had heard of the anticipations entertained respecting the future fame of his son, by my great-great-great grandfather, and therefore, instead of making the young man a major-general at least, he returned to his home at the close of the war, still a simple Brigadier.

"Here was a great man labouring against misfortune, and my soldier-like ancestor endured it with the most magnanimous patience. He always consoled himself for not having been promoted, by abusing in the most christian-like manner the Duke's mode of warfare. He declared that he possessed none of the qualifications of a general-that he was a mere soldier, only fit for fighting, and would never give any of his officers the opportunity of displaying their tactics, nor of himself creating materials for such a work for posterity, as Xenophon's retreat of the ten thousand.'

"An officer of the gallant bearing of the Brigadier could not be permitted to remain in tranquillity, and inglorious ease' at home. Upon the death of the Duke of Marlborough, whom he always estimated as his rival, he was recalled to the service, and he again left England, promising to obtain for himself, by some unheard-of glorious achievement, an undying renown. Sad promise! and alas, too faithfully observed! He was in the English army under the command of Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick at Bergen. The climate there was unhealthy, and by a sad coincidence of misfortunes he was not able to partake of the dangers of the day, or most assuredly the English army would on that occasion have been saved from the check' as we term it, but as the French had the impertinence to designate it, the defeat' then suffered. Although not sufficiently strong to be in the battle, the Brigadier exhibited to the admiration of the entire army, his noble management of his favourite manœuvre in the retreat, and led on his men in such gallant style from Bergen to Minden, that the French were never able to come up with him, so that his muster-roll was complete, and at the latter place he had all his men fresh and fit for another battle.

"I come now to the last sad scene of all-flushed with all the triumph of the gallant deed he had performed, my valorous progenitor encamped at Minden. Woe's the day! he was there to fall a victim to his impetuous bravery. I do

not mean to describe the battle of Minden -sufficient is it for me to state that the Brigadier was in the field that day, and had as little idea he should have been engaged in it, as the celebrated Lord George Sackville, who upon the same occasion commanded the cavalry, and refused to bring them into action, as he said he had received contradictory orders, and like my ancestor, was too good a disciplinarian to fight without being directly, and positively, and unequivocally commanded so to do.

"The Brigadier, who always paid particular attention to the safety of his men, had them drawn up under the shelter of a scanty wood, when unexpectedly a body of French carabineers and gendarmerie turned the wood and fronted the hero and his soldiers. Prince Ferdinand saw the French were unsupported, and directed the Brigadier to charge them. Nothing could equal the delight of my great-great-grand-uncle upon receiving such an order-he actually turned pale with pleasure. He waved his sword over his head, cut six with it, dashed his spurs into his horse's side, and called on his men to follow him. At that moment the French appeared to be retreating, the Brigadier shouted victory,' and hurried after them. What a splendid figure of a warrior he presented at that moment! his hat martially cocked on his head, the tails of his red coat streaming behind him, his bright sword flashing, his big boots thundering at his horse's side; and the most chivalrous curses in his mouth, as he charged upon the French. They however, with their national treachery, wheeled unexpectedly round-their polished bayonets blazed suddenly in the eyes of the Brigadier's horse-a nasty, stubborn, wilful, headstrong, hard-mouthed, obstinate animal; for, instead of running on the bayonets of the French, as the rider no doubt wished, despite of all the efforts of my great-great-grand-uncle to control it, its back was in an instant to the faces of the foe, and at that sad moment the French fired-the shot struck with an unerring aim. The Brigadier, in order that he might the better bring round his horse, had his head drawn as low as possible on its neck; in fact, some say his head was as low as its chest, and thus that very portion of his person which he never contemplated should be seen by an enemy was the very place in which his death-wound was inflicted! Achilles was mortal in his heel, and my uncle there. The skirts of his coat were

shot to nothing, and the back part of his pantaloons as full of holes as a sieve! Thus died the bravest of the brave'— thus mutilated were those white buckskin pantaloons, which theretofore were immaculate. Such gallantry has not been unrewarded-these mutilated remains of the most dauntless valour are still to be seen in the Tower. I have been told that it is in contemplation of the Garter King-at-Arms, that, at the next coronation, they shall be worn by our future Queen, or at most presented to her, as a suitable testimonial of the devotion of our modern soldiers to their female sovereigns. My only surprise is, that a monument has not been erected in Westminster Abbey to this brave soldier. What a noble subject would it not be for the chisel of Chantry, to depict the Brigadier at the very moment in which he was killed, and in the very attitude in which he was thus inhumanly shot by the French soldiers, whom he was so resolved upon cutting to pieces!

"At the conclusion of the day's engagement the body of the Brigadier was found lifeless, pale, and cold ;'-the frown of outraged heroism was still upon his brow, and he was almost as destitute of a nether garment as a Highlander. But, will it be believed, that he who had thus fallen, was assailed in his gory tomb by the resurrection-like, calumnious tongues of envious Burkers. They had, I assure you, the audacity to assert that he was running away when he was killed!!! He, the most undaunted, valorous spoken gentleman that ever described a fight, or cried out

Victory' (as he supposed) after a retreating foe! No; he was eager for the fray;' his courage was strong, but his hand was weak, or his horse could never have placed him in a position in which he might be killed. It was alleged, in proof of his want of courage, that the wound was in the posterior portion of his person; but if it were, he was only the more like that great general, Marshal the Duke of Berwick, who states in his memoirs, he never was in all his life wounded but once, and that was in the back.

"Gentlemen, my sad tale is concluded. The Allies won the battle of Minden; but they lost Brigadier Hart."

* Je reçus une grosse contusion à l'épine da dos; c'est l'unique blessure que j'ai eue de ma vie.-Mémoires du Maréchal de Berwick