rbons! and, tempting France by the ambition
of military success, inflicted upon her the heaviest mortality, and
the deepest shame known in any kingdom, since the fall of the Roman
empire. Whether this were that direct retribution for innocent blood,
which Providence has so often inflicted upon guilty nations; or
whether it were merely one of those extraordinary casualties which
circumstances make so impressive; there can be no question, that the
man came from Corsica who inflicted on France the heaviest calamities
that she had ever known; who, after leading her armies over Europe, to
conquests which only aroused the hatred of all nations, and after
wasting the blood of hundreds of thousands of her people in victories
totally unproductive but of havoc; saw France twice invaded, and
brought the nation under the ban of the civilized world!

France is at this moment pursuing the same course in Algiers, which
was the pride of her politicians in Corsica. She is pouring out her
gigantic force, to overwhelm the resistance of peasants who have no
defence but their naked bravery. She will probably subdue the
resistance; for what can be done by a peasantry against the
disciplined force and vast resources of a great European power,
applied to this single object of success? But, barbarian as the Moor
and the Arab are, and comparatively helpless in the struggle, the
avenger may yet come, to teach the throne of France, that there is a
power higher than all thrones; a tribunal to which the blood cries out
of the ground.

The death of Secker, Archbishop of Canterbury, excites a few touches
of Walpole's sarcastic pen. He says, "that his early life had shown
his versatility, his latter his ambition. But hypocrisy not being
parts, he rose in the church without ever making a figure in the
state." So much for antithesis. There is no reason why a clergyman
should make a figure in the state under any circumstances; and the
less figure he made in the state, as it was then constituted, the more
likely he was to be fitted for the church. But the true censure on
Secker would have been, that he rose, without making a figure in any
thing; that he had never produced any work worthy of notice as a
divine; that he had neither eloquence in the pulpit, nor vigour with
the pen; that he seems to have been at all times a man of extreme
mediocrity; that his qualifications with the ministry were, his being
a neutral on all the great questions of the day; an