’Artemus Ward, Francis Dana, Oliver Prescott, Samuel Baker, while a very suitable sermon on the occasion is preached by the Rev. Mr. Stillman of Boston.’  How familiar the names all sound!  Then the thanks of the Members of Congress are given to ’General Lee, Colonel Moultrie, and the officers and soldiers under their command who on the 28th of June last Repulsed with so much Valour the attack that was made that day on the State of South Carolina by the fleet and army of his Britannic Majesty.’

There is an irresistible spirit of old-world pigtail decorum and dash about it all.  We read of our ‘grand fleet’ waiting at Corunna for the Spanish; of 80,000 men on the coast of Brittany supposed to be ready for an invasion of England; of the Prince of Conde playing at cards, with Northumberland House itself for stakes (Northumberland House which he is intending to take).  We read the list of Lottery Prizes, of the L1000 and L500 tickets; of the pressing want of seamen for His Majesty’s Navy, and how the gentlemen of Ireland are subscribers to a bounty fund.  Then comes the narrative of James Caton of Bristol, who writes to complain that while transacting his business on the Bristol Exchange he is violently seized by a pressgang, with oaths and imprecations.  Mr. Farr, attempting to speak to him, is told by the Lieutenant that if he does not keep off he will be shot with a pistol.  Mr. Caton is violently carried off, locked up in a horrible stinking room, prevented from seeing his friends; after a day or two he is forced on board a tender, where Mr. Tripp, a midshipman, behaves with humanity, but the Captain and Lieutenant outvie each other in brutality; Captain Hamilton behaving as an ‘enraged partisan.’  Poor Mr. Caton is released at last by the exertions of Mr. Edmund Burke, of Mr. Farr, and another devoted friend, who travel post-haste to London to obtain a Habeas Corpus, so that he is able to write indignantly and safe from his own home to the London packet to describe his providential escape.  The little sheet gives one a vivid impression of that daily life in 1779, when Miss Edgeworth must have been a little girl of twelve years old, at school at Mrs. Lataffiere’s, and learning to write in her beautiful handwriting.  It was a time of great events.  The world is fighting, armies marching and counter-marching, and countries rapidly changing hands.  Miss Seward is inditing her elegant descriptions for the use of her admiring circle.  But already the circle is dwindling!  Mr. Day has parted from Sabrina.  The well-known episodes of Lichfield gaieties and love-makings are over.  Poor Major Andre has been exiled from England and rejected by Honora.  The beautiful Honora, whose “blending charms of mind and person” are celebrated by one adoring lover after another, has married Mr. Edgeworth.  She has known happiness, and the devoted affection of an adoring husband, and the admiring love of her little step-daughter, all this had been hers; and now all this is coming to an end, and the poor lady lying on her death-bed imploring her husband to marry her sister Elizabeth.  Accordingly Mr. Edgeworth married Elizabeth Sneyd in 1780, which was also the year of poor Andre’s death.