2º. The reviewer says, the mountains round Madrid do not touch the Tagus at both ends within the frontier of Spain, that river is not the chord of their arc; neither are the heights of Palmela and Almada near Lisbon one and the same. This is very true, although not very important. I should have written the heights of Palmela _and_ Almada, instead of the heights of Palmela _or_ Almada. But though the mountains round Madrid do not to the westward, actually touch the Tagus within the Spanish frontier, their shoots are scarcely three miles from that river near Talavera, and my description was general, being intended merely to shew that Madrid could not be approached from the eastward or northward, except over one of the mountain ranges, a fact not to be disputed. 3º. It is hinted by the reviewer that lord Melville’s degrading observation, namely, that “the worst men made the best soldiers,” was picked by me out of general Foy’s historical fragment. Now, that passage in my history was written many months before general Foy’s work was published; and my authority was a very clear recollection of lord Melville’s speech, as reported in the papers of the day. The time was just before his impeachment for malversation. General Foy’s work seems a favourite authority with the reviewer, and he treats general Thiebault’s work with disdain; yet both were Frenchmen of eminence, and the ennobling patriotism of vituperation might have been impartially exercised, the weakness of discrimination avoided. However general Thiebault’s work, with some apparent inaccuracies as to numbers, is written with great ability and elegance, and is genuine, whereas general Foy’s history is not even general Foy’s writing; colonel D’Esmenard in his recent translation of the Prince of Peace’s memoirs has the following conclusive passage upon that head. “_The illustrious general Foy undertook a history of the war in Spain, his premature death prevented him from revising and purifying his first sketch, he did me the honour to speak of it several times, and even attached some value to my observations; the imperfect manuscripts of this brilliant orator have been re-handled and re-made by other hands. In this posthumous history, he has been gratuitously provided with inaccurate and malignant assertions._” [Sidenote: See Memoirs of Manuel Godoy, translated by Colonel D’Esmenard.] [Sidenote: See also London & Westminster Review No 1.]