return, and after setting fire to the ropeyard at Portsmouth, he went to London, and waited on Dr. Bancroft, to whom he had a verbal recommendation from Mr. Deane, but that the doctor gave him no countenance, and did not approve of his conduct. When general Lee’s capture came to be known by the gazette of February the 25th, the rejoicing in Great-Britain on the occasion, was great. Personal animosities contributed not a little to the triumph and exultation it produced. But the same gazette furnished more than a counterpoise to the joy, in the accounts it contained of general Washington’s successes at Trenton and Princeton. The name of Lee reminds me of Mr. Arthur Lee. The latter received timely notice of the acts of congress, so as to withdraw and get to Paris a few days after Dr. Franklin’s arrival. While in England he was particularly commissioned by a certain body, and that under every sacred promise of secrecy, to make discoveries and transmit them to America; he was also personally consulted by Monsieur _Caron de Beaumarchais_, upon a project which the latter had formed, of establishing a commercial house, sufficiently powerful and spirited to hazard the risks of the sea and enemy in carrying stores and merchandise for the American troops. A correspondence was afterward opened between them; and on the 21st of June, 1776, Mr. Lee, under the name of Mary Johnson, wrote in cyphers to Mr. Beaumarchais, that the army of Great-Britain in America, would consist of forty thousand men, and their fleet of a hundred ships, and but two only of seventy-four guns. He advised the dispatching secretly ten large ships of war to the Cape or Martinico; and their joining the American fleet, scouring the American coast, and destroyiag the whole British fleet, dispersed as it would be, upon which success the land army could be easily defeated. “By this stroke,” says he “the English fleet will be mortally wounded. Do you fear that this will kindle a war between the two nations? But how will England be able to support a war without fleets, without colonies, without seamen, without resources? On the contrary, if you suffer America to fall again under the dominion of England, the latter will be forever invincible.” If this proposal was communicated to the French minister, it was adjudged too venturous to be prosecuted. Though France must, for her own interest, wish to have the American states perpetually separated from Great-Britain, yet the court will be cautious of risking a war with this country till the prospects of success are extremely encouraging. This accounts for the French king’s issuing out, about the month of February, a proclamation, prohibiting the sale of English prizes taken by American privateers, in any of the ports of France; but as the purchase of them is not prohibited, and the sale of them only in the ports, the Americans will find no difficulty in disposing of them to Frenchmen. The police of