and gory; dying and delirious, as he felt himself, with misery from exhaustion and wounds, he swam rivers, threaded enemies, and moving day and night, came suddenly upon an army of Kandyans; here he prepared himself with pleasure for the death that now seemed inevitable, when, by a fortunate accident, for want of a fitter man, he was selected as an ambassador to the English officer commanding a Kandyan garrison—­and thus once more escaped miraculously.

Sometimes, when we are thinking over the great scenes of tragedy through which Europe passed from 1805 to 1815, suddenly, from the bosom of utter darkness, a blaze of light arises; a curtain is drawn up; a saloon is revealed.  We see a man sitting there alone, in an attitude of alarm and expectation.  What does he expect?  What is it that he fears?  He is listening for the chariot-wheels of a fugitive army.  At intervals he raises his head—­and we know him now for the Abbe de Pradt—­the place, Warsaw—­the time, early in December 1812.  All at once the rushing of cavalry is heard; the door is thrown open; a stranger enters.  We see, as in Cornelius Agrippa’s mirror, his haggard features; it is a momentary king, having the sign of a felon’s death written secretly on his brow; it is Murat; he raises his hands with a gesture of horror as he advances to M. l’Abbe.  We hear his words—­"L’Abbe, all is lost!"

Even so, when the English soldier, reeling from his anguish and weariness, was admitted into the beleaguered fortress, his first words, more homely in expression than Murat’s, were to the same dreadful purpose—­“Your honour,” he said, “all is dished;” and this being uttered by way of prologue, he then delivered himself of the message with which he had been charged, and that was a challenge from the Kandyan general to come out and fight without aid from his artillery.  The dismal report was just in time; darkness was then coming on.  The English officer spiked his guns; and, with his garrison, fled by night from a fort in which else he would have perished by starvation or by storm, had Kandyan forces been equal to such an effort.  This corporal was, strictly speaking, the only man who escaped, one or two other survivors having been reserved as captives, for some special reasons.  Of this captive party was Major Davie, the commander, whom Mr Bennett salutes by the title of “gallant,” and regrets that “the strong arm of death” had intercepted his apology.

He could have made no apology.  Plea or palliation he had none.  To have polluted the British honour in treacherously yielding up to murder (and absolutely for nothing in return) a prince, whom we ourselves had seduced into rebellion—­to have forced his men and officers into laying down their arms, and sueing for the mercy of wretches the most perfidious on earth; these were acts as to which atonement or explanation was hopeless for him, forgiveness impossible for England.  So this man is to be called