We have a naval combat in the second volume, in which a French frigate is attacked by two English line-of-battle ships, one of which she sinks, and receives in return the entire point-blank broadside of the other, a three-decker; which broadside, we in our ignorance of nautical matters, should have thought sufficient to blow her either out of the water or under it.  It has not that effect, however, and the frigate is captured; the captain of her, when he has hauled down his flag in order to save the lives of his men, stepping into his cabin and blowing his brains out.  All this is very pretty, whatever may be said of its probability.  But there are two subjects on which the majority of Frenchmen indulge in most singular delusions.  These are, their invincibility upon the sea, and the battle of Waterloo.  M. Dumas has not escaped the national monomania.

Our author is very hard upon the poor English in this book.  He attacks them on all sides and with all weapons.  Nelson and Lady Hamilton occupy a prominent position in his pages.  The execution of Admiral Carraciolo, an undoubted blot on the character of our naval hero, is given in all its details, and with some little decorations and embellishments, for which we suspect that we have to thank our imaginative historian.  Nelson’s weakness, the ascendency exercised over him by Lady Hamilton, or Emma Lyonna, as M. Dumas prefers styling her, her intimacy with the Queen of Naples, and subservient to the wishes and interests of the Neapolitan court, are all set forth in the most glowing colours.  This is the heavy artillery, the round-shot and shell; but M. Dumas is too skilful a general to leave any part of his forces unemployed, and does not omit to bring up his sharpshooters, and open a pretty little fire of ridicule upon English travellers in Italy, who, as it is well known, go thither to make the fortunes of innkeepers and purchase antiquities manufactured in the nineteenth century.  Strange as it may appear, we should be heartily sorry if M. Dumas were to exchange his evident dislike of us for a more kindly feeling.  We should then lose some of his best stories; for he is never more rich and amusing than when he shows up the sons and daughters of le perfide Albion.  In support of our assertion, take the following sketch:—­

“During my stay at Naples an Englishman arrived there, and took up his quarters at the hotel at which I was stopping.  He was one of those phlegmatic, overbearing, obstinate Britons, who consider money the engine with which every thing is to be moved and all things accomplished, the argument in short which nothing can resist.  Money was every thing in his estimation of mankind; talent, fame, titles, mere feathers that kicked the beam the moment a long rent-roll or inscription of three per cents were placed in the opposite scale.  In proportion as men were rich or poor, did he esteem them much or little.  Being very rich himself, he esteemed himself much.