Major-General Charles Lee, a Welshman by birth, and a soldier of fortune, who had fought in Portugal and Poland, mettlesome and waspish in temper, was despatched in April with other troops to New York, where, after a neck-and-neck race with Sir Henry Clinton, accompanied by a large British force from England, he arrived only two hours before his competitor. Sir Henry, although anxiously expected on shore by several British friends, at length concluded that it was too early in the season to alight so far north, and so cruised southward for a milder climate and reception. Sailing leisurely down our wave-dented shores, he joined the squadron of his old boon companions in arms, Admiral Sir Peter Parker and Earl Cornwallis, with some two thousand five hundred jolly dogs, hired at fourpence a day to come out and inspect our country. Strolling on together pleasantly in a warm latitude, with flying-fish to amuse them on the outside, and broiled fish inside the ships, they touched land at last near Charleston. The restless, waspish Lee, who had been also flying down southwards over the land, hovering on quick wing and watching the jolly dogs to see where they would come ashore, no sooner found that they thought of landing at Sullivan’s Island, and visiting a military summer-house there, built of palmetto wood, and called Fort Moultrie, than he lit upon them, stung two hundred of them more or less uncomfortably, and compelled them all to go off wholly from that place, the pleasure of reaching which depends so much upon the feelings of those to whom the visit is proposed. New England and the South were now alike freed from British tourists and German musket-holders. Where Sir Henry and his jolly dogs, constituting one party, and Lord Howe with his lively squad, still enjoying themselves at Halifax after their rapid journey from Boston, making up the other British set, would next prospect, much concerned the Continental Congress, George Washington, Charles Lee, and the colonial people generally. The uncertainty was soon ended. Lord Howe, sailing from Halifax, June 11th, reached Sandy Hook on the 25th of the same month, and dropping anchor off Staten Island, July 2d, was soon joined by Sir Henry and his jolly dogs, feeling a little uneasy of stomach, and somewhat less merry than when they left England nearly three months before, and vowing, ’pon honor, that Sir Henry had somewhat taken them in at Charleston, although, in fact, the real trouble was that he had not taken them in at all there. Truly the Revolutionary wheel was now well started, and began to get in earnest motion. CHAPTER II. JULY FOURTH, 1776, AND SO FORTH.