Mr Fullom has not told this anecdote quite correctly. Sir Howard was more closely questioned as to the mode of conveyance for the guns, and answered more pertinently, than is here set down. He suggested that the 24-pounders should be dismounted, the guns placed in the boles of trees hollowed out, and the carriages run forward by themselves. Thus the narrowest track through woods and round rocks would suffice for the conveyance of the former, while the latter, being comparatively light, would offer no formidable resistance wherever men or bullocks could travel. Lord Wellington, however, adhered to his own plan, and sustained the only reverse which marks the progress of an experience in war extending wellnigh over a quarter of a century. It is just towards both parties to observe, that the baffled hero was too magnanimous not to acknowledge his error. “Douglas was right,” he exclaimed, as he mounted his horse to begin the retreat; “he was the only man who told me the truth.” Sir Howard returned to England, and there resumed his occupations as a military instructor; but his mind was full of a project for forcing attention to gunnery on the chiefs of the navy; and the disastrous results of the first frigate-actions in the American war not a little quickened his zeal. He had a more herculean task before him, however, than he himself imagined. Strange to say, his disinclination to the study of pure mathematics had never been overcome; and now he found himself obliged to master all the arcana of the science, so far as these had any relation to the movement of a vessel through water under all possible contingencies. While pursuing these studies he effected such improvements in the reflecting circle and semicircle for land and marine surveying as attracted the attention of the Royal Society, which immediately elected him a member; and then he gave himself up steadily to the object for which all this abstruse study had been only the preparation. He produced a treatise in which every point connected with the theory and practice of artillery was handled. He discussed not only the power and range of various kinds of ordnance, with the uses of their several parts, and the effects of transit, windage, recoil, and suchlike, but he explained how a school of naval gunnery could be established, and submitted the whole in MS. for the consideration of the Lords of the Admiralty. Weeks and months passed by, however, without bringing him so much as a written acknowledgment of its receipt; and then, and not till then, he wrote privately to his friend Sir Graham Moore. Sir Graham made such apology as the case would admit of, and did his best to fix upon the subject the attention of his colleagues; but a year elapsed before any decided steps were taken. At last the scheme was adopted; and in 1819, Sir Howard, having first of all obtained the sanction of the Government, gave his valuable treatise to the world. It