non-combatants and broken troops would have been violently dashed against the first division, to intercept its fire and break its ranks, and the battle would have been lost. No such effort was made, the plain was soon cleared, the British cavalry took post behind the centre, and the light division formed a reserve on the right of the first division, having its riflemen amongst the rocks to connect it with Houstoun, who had reached Frenado and been there joined by Julian Sanchez. At sight of this new front, so deeply lined, the French stopped short and opened their guns, tearing the close masses of the allies; but twelve English guns soon replied so briskly that the violence of the French fire abated, and their cavalry drew back out of range. A body of infantry then attempted to glide down the ravine of the Turones, but they were repulsed by the riflemen and the light companies of the Guards, and the action on this side resolved itself into a cannonade.

Meanwhile a fierce battle was going on at Fuentes Onoro. There Drouet was to have carried the village when Montbrun's cavalry had turned the right of the line; he delayed his attack for two hours and thus marred the combination; but finally he assailed with such fierceness and vigour, that the three British regiments, over-matched in numbers and unaccustomed to the desultory fighting of light troops, were pierced and divided. Two companies of the Seventy-ninth were taken, Colonel Cameron of that regiment was mortally wounded, and the lower part of the village was lost: the upper part was however stiffly held, and the rolling of musketry was incessant. Had the attack been made earlier, and all Drouet's division thrown frankly into the fight, while the sixth corps moving through the wood closely turned the village, the passage must have been forced and the left of the new position out-flanked. But now Wellington, having all his reserves in hand, detached considerable masses to the support of the regiments in Fuentes; and as the French continued also to reinforce their troops, the whole of the sixth corps and part of Drouet's division were finally engaged. At one time the fighting was on the banks of the stream and amongst the lower houses, at another on the rugged heights and around the chapel, and some of the enemy's skirmishers penetrated completely through towards the main position; yet the village was never entirely abandoned by the defenders, and in one charge the Seventy-first, Seventyninth, and Eighty-eighth regiments, led by Colonel M'Kinnon,

broke a heavy mass near the chapel, and killed a great number of French. This fighting lasted until evening, when the lower part of the town was abandoned by both parties, the British remaining at the chapel and crags, the French retiring a cannon-shot from the stream. After the action a brigade of the light division relieved the regiments in the village, a slight demonstration made by the second corps, near Fort Conception, was checked by a battalion of the Lusitanian Legion, and both armies remained in observation. Fifteen hundred men and officers, of which three hundred were prisoners, constituted the loss of the allies. That of the enemy was estimated at five thousand, upon the erroneous supposition that four hundred dead were lying about Fuentes Onoro. All armies make rash estimates on such occasions. Having had charge to bury the carcases immediately about the village, I found only one hundred and thirty bodies, one-third being British.

(From the Same.)

literature.

Writes on 184 Cute

THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK

[Thomas Love Peacock, a species of novelist in himself, was born at Weymouth, on 18th October 1785. His father was a merchant, his mother's relations, the Loves, were chiefly naval, and his grandfather had a leg shot off in Rodney's great action near Dominica. His father died when he was three years old, and he was brought up by his mother, going to no school (except a private one at Englefield Green) and to no University. Notwithstanding this irregular education, he was a more than competent classical scholar, and a man of great general reading and knowledge. He began in literature with poetry, but his more ambitious efforts in verse (though the songs scattered in and out of his novels are of the very first class) are not extremely good. After a disappointment in love, he served for a short time as under-secretary to Admiral Sir Home Popham, on board the Venerable; but gave this up very soon, and returned to poetry and pedestrianism. He sojourned much in Wales, and there met his future wife (whom, however, he did not marry for some time). There, too, he made the acquaintance of Shelley, of whom he has left by far the best and most trustworthy accounts at first hand that we possess. Headlong Hall, his first novel, with a Welsh subject, was published in 1816; and in each of the next two years he published another-Melincourt in 1817, Nightmare Abbey in 1818. In 1819 he was offered and accepted a clerkship in the East India Company, which became a very valuable appointment, and after thirty-six years' service gave him freedom and a competent pension. He married in 1820, published Maid Marian in 1822, the Misfortunes of Elphin in 1829, and Crotchet Castle in 1831. Then, till nearly the close of his service with the East India Company, he wrote nothing at all, and never produced more than one other book, the last of his novels, Gryll Grange, which appeared in 1860. Between 1850 and this date, however, he wrote a good many essays and articles. He died on 13th January 1866 at Halliford, where he had lived for many years. After being long difficult to obtain, his novels, with his poems and a certain number of miscellanies, were collected in 1875, in three vols. More recently (1891-2) there has appeared a very pretty edition of the novels, edited by Dr. Garnett, without the poems, but with a slightly different selection of prose miscellanies, and with the fragments of what might have been a very interesting fantasy-novel entitled Calidore.]

FOR some years past, since owing to the effects of divers critics Peacock's very remarkable novels have recovered public attention,

and especially since the two collected editions of him above referred to have been venal at the stall, there has been a kind of quarrel, not by any means wholly amicable, as to his and their merits. And this is not surprising. For if he has, in some respects to a very eminent degree, the qualities which suit a period of not altogether genuine "culture," he has others which expose their possessor to the risk of offending more than he attracts. There is no obscurity in Peacock; there is no gush; and there is a great deal of very active and poignant ridicule of gush, of obscurity, and of affectation. Accordingly it is found that more than a few persons altogether decline to give him welcome. "It may be possible," they say in effect and sometimes in almost textual expression, "for literary critics to enjoy him; but the great heart of the people cannot away with him." This is very possible; and it is at least creditable to the great heart of the people that it should not pretend to away with him when it cannot. But in such a notice as the present, it is clearly impossible to deal with the very abundant and very peculiar idiosyncrasy of Peacock's matter. He was, from a certain point of view-limited, occasionally unfair, distinctly Voltairian, but still elevated and unique the satirist of many of the small vulgarities (to adopt the old distinction between the great vulgar and the small) of his time. And he accompanied his satire with such an exquisite adaptation of the attitude of similar satirists of old-Aristophanes, Lucian, and in a softened and milder degree Rabelais as could not but appeal to all kindred spirits, and revolt all spirits not kindred. He began by making fun of the times of our grandfathers, he ended by making fun of times which are almost, if not quite our own; and if, as perhaps he did, he showed himself rather obstinately blind to many of the higher aspects of life in general, he saw what he did see with an unmatched clearness of vision, and expressed the ironic results of his sight with wonderful distinction and scholarship.

I have never yet seen noticed, though it must certainly have struck others besides myself, the following extraordinary parallelism, or as some, with whom I would have nothing to do, say, plagiarism. Here are two passages which the reader may

compare :

In one of those beautiful valleys through which the Thames, not yet polluted with the tide, the scouring of cities, or even the minor defilement