man; looking
out else-whither, with those eyes A FLEUR DE TETE, and nothing of
insoluble admitted into the brain that dwelt inside.

What became subsequently of the Spanish War, we in vain inquire of
History-Books. The War did not die for many years to come, but neither
did it publicly live; it disappears at this point: a River Niger, seen
once flowing broad enough; but issuing--Does it issue nowhere, then?
Where does it issue? Except for my Constitutional Historian, still
unpublished, I should never have known where.--By the time these
disastrous Carthagena tidings reached England, his Britannic Majesty
was in Hanover; involved, he, and all his State doctors, English and
Hanoverian, in awful contemplation on Pragmatic Sanction, Kaiserwahl,
Celestial Balance, and the saving of Nature's Keystone, should this
still prove possible to human effort and contrivance. In which Imminency
of Doomsday itself, the small English-Spanish matter, which the Official
people, and his Majesty as much as any, had bitterly disliked, was quite
let go, and dropped out of view. Forgotten by Official people; left
to the dumb English Nation, whose concern it was, to administer as IT
could.

Anson--with his three ships gone to two, gone ultimately to one--is
henceforth what Spanish War there officially is. Anson could not meet
those Vernon-Wentworth gentlemen "from the other side of the Isthmus of
Darien," the gentlemen, with their Enterprise, being already bankrupt
and away. Anson, with three inconsiderable ships, which rotted gradually
into one, could not himself settle the Spanish War: but he did, on his
own score, a series of things, ending in beautiful finis of the Acapulco
Ship, which were of considerable detriment, and of highly considerable
disgrace, to Spain;--and were, and are long likely to be, memorable
among the Sea-heroisms of the world. Giving proof that real Captains,
taciturn Sons of Anak, are still born in England; and Sea-kings, equal
to any that were. Luckily, too, he had some chaplain or ship's-surgeon
on board, who saw good to write account of that memorable VOYAGE of his;
and did it, in brief, perspicuous terms, wise and credible: a real Poem
in its kind, or Romance all Fact; one of the pleasantest little Books
in the World's Library at this date. Anson sheds some tincture of heroic
beauty over that otherwise altogether hideous puddle of mismanagement,
platitude, disaster; and vindicates, in a pathetically potential way,