ble kindred. One of these men,
connected with this country by no circumstance of birth,--not related to
any distinguished families here,--recommended by no service,--endeared
to this nation by no act or even expression of kindness,--comprehended
in no league or common cause,--embraced by no laws of public
hospitality,--this man was the only one to be found in Europe, in whose
favor the British nation, passing judgment without hearing on its almost
only ally, was to force (and that not by soothing interposition, but
with every reproach for inhumanity, cruelty, and breach of the laws of
war) from prison. We were to release him from that prison out of which,
in abuse of the lenity of government amidst its rigor, and in violation
of at least an understood parole, he had attempted an escape,--an escape
excusable, if you will, but naturally productive of strict and vigilant
confinement. The earnestness of gentlemen to free this person was the
more extraordinary because there was full as little in him to raise
admiration, from any eminent qualities he possessed, as there was to
excite an interest, from any that were amiable. A person not only of no
real civil or literary talents, but of no specious appearance of
either,--and in his military profession not marked as a leader in any
one act of able or successful enterprise, unless his leading on (or his
following) the allied army of Amazonian and male cannibal Parisians to
Versailles, on the famous 6th of October, 1789, is to make his glory.
Any otter exploit of his, as a general, I never heard of. But the
triumph of general fraternity was but the more signalized by the total
want of particular claims in that case,--and by postponing all such
claims in a case where they really existed, where they stood embossed,
and in a manner forced themselves on the view of common, shortsighted
benevolence. Whilst, for its improvement, the humanity of these
gentlemen was thus on its travels, and had got as far off as Olmuetz,
they never thought of a place and a person much nearer to them, or of
moving an instruction to Lord Malmesbury in favor of their own suffering
countryman, Sir Sydney Smith.

This officer, having attempted, with great gallantry, to cut out a
vessel from one of the enemy's harbors, was taken after an obstinate
resistance,--such as obtained him the marked respect of those who were
witnesses of his valor, and knew the circumstances in which it was
displayed. Upon his arrival