man close to him: the ball entered on the right side between the fourth and the fifth rib, passed through the great artery immediately above the heart, and so out at the left side, breaking the left arm. Major Cocks was a young officer of the highest promise. He was the eldest son of Lord Somers, and by the demise of his maternal grandfather, in possession of a large landed estate; but preferring the military profession to the peaceful enjoyment of good fortune, and to the pursuits whereto his station in society invited him, he devoted himself to the study of that profession with an ardour, of which an ordinary observer would not, from his mild manners and habitual composure, have supposed him capable. Entering early into the service, and leaving his regiment in England, he joined the army at Lisbon in the spring of 1809, for the purpose of acquiring the Portugueze and Spanish languages. He was in the south of Spain when the French attempted to surprise Cadiz, and he it was who gave Alburquerque the first information of their movements, by which timely advice that magnanimous Spaniard was enabled to prevent their design and throw himself into the place. He read much, and let no opportunity pass unimproved of perfecting by practice the knowledge which he acquired from books: and thus he had distinguished himself on so many occasions, that the promotion which his rank and fortune might have commanded was not more rapid than his conspicuous merit had deserved. When the dispatches relating the capture of the horn work on S. Michael’s reached home, his commission as Lieutenant-Colonel was immediately sent out; but before these dispatches arrived in Spain, his career was closed. On the day preceding his death he was field-officer of the trenches: the day was very wet, and he went round to every sentry to see that the orders were clearly understood, ... a duty generally left to the serjeant who posts them, and not often attended to by a subaltern having only a picket of twenty men; but Major Cocks never spared himself, and never left anything which depended upon him undone. The death of such a man (for such men are rare) was justly regarded in the army as a national loss. He was buried in the camp ground of his regiment near Bellema, Lord Wellington, Sir Stapleton Cotton, Generals Anson and Pack, with the whole of their staffs, attending his funeral, and the officers of the 79th (his own regiment) and of the 16th light dragoons.