“Victory is not always a certainty even with the ablest Generals in command of the best troops. Many unreflective admirers of Wellington, military men as well as civilians, have asserted that he never engaged in battle but with the certainty of success. He has himself affirmed the contrary, and what he said should be treasured as words of caution to over confident officers in command of armies or detachments. Writing to Sir Charles Stuart, British Envoy at Lisbon, in March, 1811, previous to a new campaign, he said:—“I have but little doubt of success; but as I have fought a sufficient number of battles _to know that the result of any one of them was not certain_, even with the best arrangements, I am anxious that the Government should adopt preparatory arrangements and take out of the enemy’s way those persons and their families who would suffer if they were to fall into the enemy’s hands.” WHERE WAS CANADA DRIFTING IN 1863?—The following passage from the CANADIAN ILLUSTRATED NEWS of May, 16, 1863, was widely reprinted in British newspapers, its sentiments meeting the popular British opinion of that time, as it expressed the opinions of the press and people of Canada with but few exceptions. It is given here that Americans who peruse this Book of the Fenian invasion, may see that sympathy for the people who were loyal to the legitimate authority in the United States was in Canada a fact in the years of the war, not an after-thought in this year of the Fenian trouble, 1866, as some of them now allege. One of the exceptions just noted, a Brantford paper, had jeered at the American army then on the Potomac; and spoke lightly of a rupture which it said, “might occur between England and the Federal States at any time.” A rejoinder of rebuke by the present writer, which accorded with the popular voice of Canada, was in these terms, necessarily now abbreviated: