In a despatch which Wolfe had written to Pitt, Admiral Saunders conceived that he had ascribed to the fleet more than its just share in the disaster at Montmorenci; and he sent him a letter on the subject.  Major Barre kept it from the invalid till the fever had abated.  Wolfe then wrote a long answer, which reveals his mixed dejection and resolve.  He owns the justice of what Saunders had said, but adds:  “I cannot leave out that part of my letter to Mr. Pitt which you object to.  I am sensible of my own errors in the course of the campaign, see clearly wherein I have been deficient, and think a little more or less blame to a man that must necessarily be ruined, of little or no consequences.  I take the blame of that unlucky day entirely upon my own shoulders, and I expect to suffer for it.”  Then, speaking of the new project of an attack above Quebec, he says despondingly:  “My ill state of health prevents me from executing my own plan; it is of too desperate a nature to order others to execute.”  He proceeds, however, to give directions for it.  “It will be necessary to run as many small craft as possible above the town, with provisions for six weeks, for about five thousand, which is all I intend to take.  My letters, I hope, will be ready to-morrow, and I hope I shall have strength to lead these men to wherever we can find the enemy.”

On the next day, the last of August, he was able for the first time to leave the house.  It was on this same day that he wrote his last letter to his mother:  “My writing to you will convince you that no personal evils worse than defeats and disappointments have fallen upon me.  The enemy puts nothing to risk, and I can’t in conscience put the whole army to risk.  My antagonist has wisely shut himself up in inaccessible intrenchments, so that I can’t get at him without spilling a torrent of blood, and that perhaps to little purpose.  The Marquis de Montcalm is at the head of a great number of bad soldiers, and I am at the head of a small number of good ones, that wish for nothing so much as to fight him; but the wary old fellow avoids an action, doubtful of the behavior of his army.  People must be of the profession to understand the disadvantages and difficulties we labor under, arising from the uncommon natural strength of the country.”

On the second of September a vessel was sent to England with his last despatch to Pitt.  It begins thus:  “The obstacles we have met with in the operations of the campaign are much greater than we had reason to expect or could foresee; not so much from the number of the enemy (though superior to us) as from the natural strength of the country, which the Marquis of Montcalm seems wisely to depend upon.  When I learned that succors of all kinds had been thrown into Quebec; that five battalions of regular troops, completed from the best inhabitants of the country, some of the troops of the colony, and every Canadian that was able to bear arms, besides several nations of savages, had