With all the reluctance which one must feel to charge with atrocious crimes, a man whose talents (not always ill employed) have raised him to the highest station and power that any human being ever attained, it is yet impossible to think of his cruel and unprovoked attack on the Spanish crown and people without indignation--without feeling, that Divine Justice must charge to his account, all the ruin by fire, famine, and the sword, which his unparalleled injustice has visited upon that unhappy country. St. XIV. l. 23.--_The murder’d heir of Bourbon._ The seizing the Duke D’Enghien in a neutral state, dragging him to a tribunal to which he was, in no view, amenable, condemning him by laws to which he owed no obedience, and finally, putting him to death by a hasty and cowardly execution by _torch-light_, are stains on Buonaparte’s character, of such violence, injustice, and cruelty, as no good fortune, no talents, no splendour of power, or even of merit, can ever obliterate. St. XV. l. 7.--_Self inflicted pang._ -------- Cur tamen hos tu Evasisse putes, quos, diri conscia facti, Mens habet attonitos, et surdo verbere cædit, Occultum quatiente animo tortore flagellum? _Juvenal, Sat. 13._ St. XV. l. 11.--_Spain erect and proud._ The author has feared to indulge any very sanguine hope of the final success of the Spanish cause, particularly since the retreat of the French from Madrid, and behind the Ebro, was turned to so little solid advantage by the Spaniards. But that their efforts and their example in a great degree have already crippled and distracted the power of France, and afforded a considerable chance for the emancipation of Europe; that the victories of Baylen and Talavera, the defence of Saragossa and Gerona, have been of one great advantage (exclusively of any other) in dissipating the spell of French invincibility, cannot be denied. Undoubtedly Buonaparte will come out of the Spanish contest, even though he should finally succeed in placing his brother on the throne, with diminished reputation and more precarious power. It is singular that in the succession war, a century ago, the French were obliged in like manner to retire from Madrid behind the Ebro, and that the negligence of the other party, in not dislodging them from that position, eventually placed the French competitor on the throne of Spain. _See Carleton’s Memoirs._ 1809. It is now upwards of two years since this note was written, and it must be confessed that the French cause is not now, to all appearance, in so promising a condition as it was then. Hopes that the author once considered as too sanguine, have been more than realized, and the final deliverance of Spain from the atrocious usurpation of France, seems every hour less improbable. 1812. St. XVII. l. 12.--_Leopards._