Our recent successes by land and sea, the territories and victories won by our armies in America, the East and West Indies; the almost daily processions through the streets of London, escorting Spanish treasure to the Tower or to the Mint, accompanied by the captured ensigns of French and Spanish admirals, gradually filled all Britain with a fiery enthusiasm, and fanned the passion of glory in the usually phlegmatic breast of John Bull to such a degree, that nothing now was talked of but war and conquest, and the strange resolution was come to of carrying hostilities into the heart of France! There were mustered on South sea Common, sixteen regiments of the line, nine troops of Light Horse (ours included) six thousand marines, and three companies of artillery, the whole under the Duke of Marlborough, with Lieutenant-Generals Lord George Sackville, and William, Earl of Ancrum, K.T., with four Major-Generals, Dury, Mostyn, Waldegrave, and Elliot, the future Lord Heathfield, and "Hero of Gibraltar," who led the Light Horse, six hundred in number. The noble harbour of Portsmouth, which is so deep and so sheltered by high land that the largest ships of the line may there ride out the roughest storm without touching the ground even at the lowest ebb of the tide, presented a scene of unusual bustle and preparation. It was crowded by craft of every description; ships of the line, frigates, gun-brigs, tenders, store-ships, and transports; its waters being literally alive with man-of-war boats, barges, and launches, skimming to and fro, filled with seamen and marines, or laden with stores, water-casks, and ammunition which were being conveyed from the town or arsenals to the fleet. Twelve flat-bottomed boats, each capable of holding sixty-three men, were prepared. These were to be rowed by twelve oars each, and were not to draw more than two feet of water. Meanwhile a vast number of scaling ladders, sandbags to form batteries, baskets for fascines, waggons for the conveyance of wounded, of stores and plunder, had been brought to Portsmouth from the Tower. Several launches and many bridges, each sixty yards in length, together with floats and stages, for landing the troops, horses, and horse artillery, were made in all haste. Nothing was omitted that might ensure the success of this daring expedition, for which the departure of Lord Alison's fleet to Brest was certain to open the way, as we had long since swept the fleet of France from the seas; and so great was the enthusiasm in London, that Viscount Downe, Sir John Armytage, Sir James Lowther, and many other English gentlemen of distinction joined the fleet and army to serve as private volunteers. And there, amid that bustling scene in Portsmouth harbour, lay the _Monarque_, on the quarter-deck of which, the brave Admiral Byng had been judicially murdered, in the preceding year, not as his sentence had it, "for an error in judgment," but to cloak the errors of a ministry!