the army, its strength, the formation of its magazines, preparations for cutting down or blowing up bridges, &c., they would at least tell their correspondents not to publish these letters in newspapers, unless it was certain that the publication could not prove injurious to the army and to the public service.” ♦APPREHENSIONS EXPRESSED IN ENGLAND.♦ There was cause for this reproof. The effect of such agueish predictions in Portugal could only be to make the Portugueze believe we should forsake them, and thus dispose them for submission to the enemy; while, in England, they assisted the party of the despondents, whose journalists were labouring to strike their country with a dead palsy. “We had been lulled,” they said, “into the most dangerous confidence. Massena was only waiting for the advance of his flanks, that he might, with his whole combined army, either force our handful of men to a battle, or surround them: all that could be expected was, that the survivors might be enabled to retire to their ships with eclat.” By the next dispatches it appeared, that it was more easy for a journalist to imagine such a manœuvre, than for Massena to execute it; but this had no other effect than to make them change the note of alarm. “If Massena,” they then said, “did not destroy Lord Wellington’s army by fighting, it could only be because he meant to destroy it by not fighting; for Massena was the most consummate captain of all Buonaparte’s generals. And did ministers anticipate with complacency the continuance of our army in Portugal through the winter? The rainy season was approaching; might it not be the deep policy of this arch-statesman and conqueror to keep our army there? He would be content to devote Massena and his troops to destruction, if it would facilitate some ulterior plan; he might mean to ruin us by the expense of our forces there; and what should we say, if it were really a part of his policy to keep them there, while he, having possession of the Dutch, the Danish, and the Swedish fleets and ports, made a descent upon England or Ireland? They trusted ministers were upon their guard, and that they destined their troops at home for a service more imminent than the reinforcement of Lord Wellington.” ♦NEY SUMMONS THE GOVERNOR OF ALMEIDA.♦