accounted for, by the effect of two years' confinement, during which he was overwhelmed with every indignity that oppression could lay upon the subject of its displeasure.

The above is the substance of a quotation from a very valuable publication, but it says too much. It appears, by the foregoing narrative, that Sir Sidney had, during the greater part of his imprisonment, free intercourse with his friends, an unrestricted correspondence, and, at intervals, much personal liberty. That he suffered, at times, most of the miseries of captivity, is certain, but never to the extent of bringing upon him the extreme incarceration for which the author of this paragraph would solicit our pity. Mrs. Cosway, her picture and her poem, are almost totally forgotten, though her subject is so worthy of immortality; and we have only mentioned this fact, in order to show the intense interest which everything connected with Sir Sidney Smith excited at the time.

It was in May, 1798, that Sir Sidney so unexpectedly arrived in London, where he was welcomed by the universal congratulations of the people. So rigid had been the care with which he had been confined, and knowing the value that the French Directory placed upon the boast of having the most active commodore in the English

service in their prison, his arrival was looked upon, in some measure, as a miracle, which, at first, but few could prevail upon themselves to believe. We need not state, that he immediately became the first lion of the day.

His sovereign took the lead in these demonstrations of interest, and received him with the warmest affection, and showed in what estimation he held him, not only by his behaviour on his public presentation, but by honouring him with an immediate and private interview at Buckingham-house.

That these demonstrations were more than the offspring of policy, may be proved by the interest that his Majesty took for his officer's liberation, before he effected it so cleverly for himself. He had permitted M. Bergeret, the captain of the Virginie French frigate, which had been captured by Sir Edward Pellew, to go to France and endeavour to negotiate an exchange between Sir Sidney and himself; but, as we have before seen, being unable to succeed, he very honourably returned to England. The King, to give the French Directory a lesson in generosity, commanded his Secretary of State to write to M. Bergeret, to inform him, that, as the object of his mission to his own country was now obtained, his Majesty was graciously pleased, seeing the trouble to

which he had been put, and as a mark of satisfaction which his conduct had afforded him, to restore him to liberty, and permitted him to return to his country without any restriction whatever.

CHAPTER XII.

Sir Sidney appointed to the command of the Tigre-Made joint Plenipotentiary to the Turkish Court-Arrives at Constantinople-His appointment gives umbrage to Earl St. Vincent.

We are now approaching the most brilliant epoch of Sir Sidney's martial career. It was necessary on the part of the English government to do all that lay in their power to oppose the aggrandising principles and the propaganding spirit of the French republic. That republic would fain have had but one nation in Europe, and that nation the French, but with many thrones and many kings at Paris. Had these visionary schemes succeeded, the civilised world might have been excellently ruled by the departmental demagogues assembled in the French metropolis; but every man out of France, who prized his nationality, and felt an honest glow at the simple

words, "My country!" was ready to arm and to die in opposing this generalising and regenerating system.

After much diplomacy and infinite trouble, the obtuse Turk was made to see that if the republican power were not efficiently opposed, shortly everything within its scope would be French in name, and the subject and the slave to democrat France in reality. With all his faults, the Turk is obstinately national. He prepared to fight for what the new philosophy deemed a foolish prejudice.

In the September of 1798, the Sublime Porte began to show unequivocal symptoms of having awakened to a proper sense of his own position, and to the interests of the nation entrusted to his government. His new political feelings were energetically developed by a vigorous measure of reprisal against all the persons and property of the French that could be discovered in his dominions, and by fulminating a manifesto of extraordinary bitterness against the self-constituted government established in Paris.

This welcome display on the part of the Ottoman Porte caused the most active preparations in London for the speedy conclusion of a treaty of alliance, offensive and defensive, between Great Britain and Turkey. The more effectually to