to concede his claim to them, and that no historian has as yet admitted that claim.[133] It was unfortunate for Sir George that he was called upon to wage war against the United States, as his natural and excusable sympathies in favor of a people among whom he had been born, and at least partly educated, may have influenced his judgment without any conscious betrayal of the great charge entrusted to him; and this remark applies with double force to his school-fellow, Sir Roger Sheaffe, whose entire family and connexions were American.  In any case, it was hard on Sir Isaac Brock, after being retained in Canada by Sir James Craig, when he was so anxious to serve in the Peninsula, because that officer could not spare him, and after at length obtaining leave to return to Europe for that purpose—­it was hard, we repeat, when hostilities did at last break out in America, that his energies should have been so cramped by the passive attitude of his superior.  Remembering, however, the maxim, de mortuis nil nisi bonum, the editor has refrained from transcribing aught reflecting on the memory of that superior when he could do so consistently with truth, although he feels acutely that the death of Sir Isaac Brock—­hastened as he believes it was by the defensive policy and mistaken views of Sir George Prevost—­was an irreparable loss to his many brothers,[134] who were at that period just rising into manhood, and in consequence required all the interest for their advancement which their uncle would probably have possessed.  One especially, who closely resembled him both in appearance and character, and who would have been an ornament to any service, was compelled to embrace the profession of arms, for which he had been educated, under the banners of a foreign and far distant country.  In that country, Chile, Colonel Tupper cruelly fell at the early age of twenty-nine years; and if the reader will turn to the memoir of this daring soldier in the Appendix, necessarily brief as it is, he will probably agree with the British consul who wrote, that he had “for many years looked upon his gallant and honorable conduct as reflecting lustre upon the English name;” and he will think with the French traveller, who, after highly eulogizing him, said:  “N’est-il pas deplorable que de tels hommes en soient reduits a se consacrer a une cause etrangere?”

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As Tecumseh was so conspicuous in the annals of this war for his fidelity and devotion to the British crown, and as his name has occurred so often in these pages,[135] a concluding and connected notice of him will surely be deemed but an act of justice to his memory.