These places, and the incidents at which I have rapidly glanced, were, at the close of the last century, as familiarly known in England as those of the Peninsular war are at present. While the issue of the revolt was yet undecided, the eloquence of Parliament, and the conversation of fashionable circles, kept them continually before the world: and long after the termination of the contest, mutual recriminations and impassioned self-defence would not suffer their memory immediately to die. Succeeding events enabled men to forget America for a long while; and when they again recurred to her affairs, it was with no disposition to contend with the award of Providence which had made her a nation. The history of America was English history no more. Yet there is a period in her history up to which an Englishman should be familiar with it; for he who reads the speeches of Burke and Chatham, or reverts to the Johnsonian age of literature, will otherwise be often at a loss how to regard events and facts to which the men of those days always referred with the warmth of political party, but which we can now examine with candour, and judge without prejudice or passion. No man of that day is more entitled to the candid retrospect of posterity than General Burgoyne, for no one suffered more than he from the heat of contemporaries. I have no other interest in his memory than what has been inspired by my visit to the scenes of his misfortunes, and by the observation that he is respectfully remembered in America, while no one ever hears of him in England. I have, therefore, nothing to present in his defence, but the narrative of his expedition, as illustrating the journey I have described.