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Even in the presence of the enemy before Bayonne, when cantonned in Vieux Mouguères, we must recollect that while your table groaned under the weight of a welcome visitor-a formidable British Baron-private theatricals would enliven the evenings, although at the risk of meeting the foe, the very next moment, in buskin or in female attire, when the Frenchmen might have believed that rival Joans of Arc had taken the field to avenge St. George's cause !

That your Lordship may long enjoy health and happiness to recollect those times and all the good that your Lordship has done during your many well spent days, when grateful memory may ultimately soothe the final passage to that eternal abode of bliss which awaits the just,

Is the sincere prayer

Of your Lordship's

Obliged and devoted servant,
THE AUTHOR.

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INTRODUCTION.

Ir is difficult to say, whether a state of peace or of war affords the best means of becoming acquainted with the real character of nations. In an open state of hostility, there is less need of professing friendly sentiments that are not felt, or of dissimulating our animosities. In peace, on the contrary, the assumption of a benevolent disposition becomes politic; and while we husband our resources for a future war, we avail ourselves of every means that intimacy affords to add a moral strength to our future physical exertions.

It is during the international communication of tranquil days, that we attain a knowledge

of the nature of those domestic broils and struggles for a power that party intrigues daily weaken. It is then that we are enabled to discern the most vulnerable points of attack— more open to the skilful diplomatist than the battered breach to the engineer's approachesthat we learn how we can best avail ourselves of intestine feuds, to cripple a country's resources, and upon what fulcrum, in the hour of need, we can rest most effectually the mighty levers of interest, pride, and party hostility, civil and religious discord, and unprincipled speculation.

With the verbiage of patriotism and national honour upon his lips, the diplomatist, who is out of place, exerts every nerve to shake the influence of his more successful competitors in the national markets, and to depreciate their actions by pointing out every error that might endanger the country's safety in the event of future wars, actually affording more useful information. to our natural and common enemies, than bribery could obtain for them, when hostilities might commence.

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