“I, of course, have happened to come a good deal in contact with them abroad, my dear sir,” added he, “particularly in North America, during the late war, and I assure you they have many generous, noble, and honourable qualities, peculiarly their own, which would perhaps be lost in any forced imitation of us. When I was taken prisoner by our own rebels there, I really believe, Thorpe, that but for the clear and gentlemanly conviction of some French naval officers, who came up at the time, I should have been summarily hanged on the spot as a spy. I had sought to escape in the uniform of a dead Frenchman, from a band of savages, and colonials more brutal by far—though, among my captors, there were some who ought to have known better. Nothing saved me, in fact, but the ready quickness of these officers, whom I had never in my life seen before. They immediately claimed me as a prisoner who had broken parole from their frigate, by swimming to the river bank—a charge which I, of course, indignantly disowned. I was, however, taken on board in their boat, when the assertion was persisted in by the captain, a French nobleman, on the suggestion of his officers, so that the ship set sail with me beyond colonial reach. In the fleet of Count de Grasse I was indebted for the utmost kindness to the captain of the frigate; and when, not long after, at the defeat by Lord Rodney, he himself, with his ship, was captured, I was enabled, in some degree, to repay the obligation. We contracted the warmest friendship. Indeed, I regret not having heard from the Count for many years, and his estates, I believe, are not near Paris.” “Observe, however,” persisted Mr Thorpe, stubbornly, “the extreme want of principle which, in the bulk of the population, must be a thousand times more egregious. A Protestant, Sir Godfrey, would rather have”—