‘This is a part of the system on which _all the Spanish authorities have been acting_, to induce us to take a part in the desultory operations which they are carrying on. _False reports and deceptions of every description are tried_, and then popular insults, to show us what the general opinion is of our conduct.’ ‘The Spaniards take such bad care of their posts, and have so little intelligence, that it is difficult to say by what troops the blow has been struck.’ ‘It is strange that the governor of Ciudad Rodrigo should have no intelligence of the enemy’s movements near his garrison, of which we have received so many accounts.’ ‘We hear also a great deal of Blake’s army in the Alpujarras, and of a corps from Valencia operating upon the enemy’s communications with Madrid; but I conclude that there is as little foundation for this intelligence as for that relating to the insurrection of Ronda.’ ‘I enclose a letter from General Carrera, in which I have requested him to communicate with you. I beg you to observe, however, that very little reliance can be placed on the report made to you _by any Spanish general at the head of a body of troops_. They generally exaggerate on one side or the other; and _make no scruple of communicating supposed intelligence, in order to induce those to whom they communicate it to adopt a certain line of conduct_.’ The reader must be now somewhat tired of quotations; let us therefore turn for relaxation to the reviewer’s observations about light troops,—of which he seems indeed to know as much as the wise gentleman of the Admiralty did about the facility of sailing up the St. Lawrence to Lake Ontario; but though that wise gentleman did not know much about sailing-craft, the reviewer knows something of another kind of craft, namely misrepresentation. Thus he quotes a passage from captain Kincaid’s amusing and clever work as if it told in his favour; whereas it in no manner supports his foolish insinuation—namely, that the 43d and 52d regiments of the light division were not light troops, never acted as such, and never skirmished! Were he to say as much to the lowest bugler of these corps, he would give him the fittest answer for his folly—that is to say, laugh in his face. ‘There are but two kinds of soldiers in the world’ said Napoleon, ‘the good and the bad.’