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136 Revieivs of Books of impartiality which when carefully scrutinized turns out to be a mere absence of enthusiasm. Let us first take an example or two of gratuitous assumption. On page 52 is the account of Nelson's behavior at Copenhagen ; given here as a conclusion from contemporary knowledge, yet standing exactly as it might have been written with the imperfect knowledge and national, patriotic enthusiasm of an earlier generation. The facts as stated on that page are dubiously questioned by every recent critic, and for sound reasons : the evidence is easily accessible in the second volume of Mahan's Life of Nelson. Again, on p. 235, it is calmly stated that after the treaty of Tilsit information regarding the secret articles " reached the ministry " and led to the second bombardment of Copenhagen : a declaration which, granting some credibility to hearsays and fictions, is even then misleading, and in the light of cold reason almost certainly untrue. The paragraph on pp. 297 and 298 gives a better and very different impression of the circumstances. Another assumption of simi- lar character which caught the writer's eye is on p. 507, where it is stated that the Napoleonic wars depopulated France; this is a fiction based solely on a priori reasoning and long since exploded by careful investiga- tions, easily accessible to any one. Should these be the only instances of so grave a fault, the reviewer would be amazed, for he did not set out to search for them, but fell upon them unawares. In a similar way contradictions of a rather startling kind force them- selves upon the attention. Regarding the events subsequent to the treaty of Amiens, the reader may, for instance, compare pp. 80, 103 and 244. On the first of these, Bonaparte foresaw and foretold the coming struggle ; on the second is given the Tory account of the Wentworth scene, with the curious remark that Napoleon had no belief in the warlike intentions of England ; on the third is, if not a flat contradiction, at least a very cautious hedging as to Napoleon's plans for war. In- cidentally, in the last passage it is stated that in England trade was prosperous and credit good, while only two pages earlier the figures are given which show the ravages on British commerce begun in 1803, in- creased more than fifty per cent, in that very year 1804, and steadily growing until in 1810 and 181 1 the country was on the verge of famine and ruin. Such confusing paradoxes are inevitable in two accounts by different authors from opposite points of view. The treatment, or rather the varying treatments, of Napoleon's Bou- logne camp is, however, on the whole the most bewildering and puzzling example in this volume of how " too many cooks spoil the broth ". Some of the authors take for granted that Napoleon really intended the in- vasion of England ; one gives minutely the successive stages in the evolu- tion of his plan; others are uneasily conscious that the whole thing was a perpetual menace to wear out British patience and exhaust British resources; another judges that Napoleon as usual, so in this case, desired " faire toujours son theme en deux faqons ". and thinks the preparations