"I beg leave to present to your royal highness, Captain Hardy, late of the Foudroyant: an officer of the most distinguished merit; and, therefore, highly worthy of your notice. He will tell you of all my arduous work in this country; and, that all my anxiety is, at present, taken up with the desire of possessing Malta. But, I fear, notwithstanding all my exertions, that I shall not get any British troops from Minorca: without which, the business will be prolonged, perhaps, till it is relieved; when all the force which we could collect would be of little use, against the strongest place in Europe. I am anxiously waiting the arrival of General Fox; and hope he will not consider the order for the removal of one or two regiments, of such great consequence as the reduction of Malta, by keeping them for two months longer in the Mediterranean. On the one hand, they must, in England, or on the continent, be like a drop of water in the ocean. By staying here, and employed, they would liberate us from our enemy close to our door; gratify the Emperor of Russia; protect our Levant trade; and relieve a squadron of our ships from the service: besides giving us one eighty-gun ship, two forty-gun frigates, a Maltese new ship of the line ready for sea, and two frigates. With these in the scale, I cannot comprehend that a moment can be lost in deciding. But, Sir, I find, few think, as I do--that, to obey orders, all perfection. To serve my king, and to destroy the French, I consider as the great order of all, from which little ones spring; and, if one of these little ones militates against it--(for, who can tell exactly, at a distance?)--I go back to obey the great order, and object; to _down_, _down_, with the damned French villains! Excuse my warmth; but my blood boils at the name of a Frenchman. I hate them _all_; royalists and republicans. "My late letters from Egypt are, that Sir Sidney Smith is hurt at the notorious cowardice and want of discipline in the Turkish army; and I find, that General Koehler does _not approve_ of such irregular proceedings, as naval officers attacking and defending fortifications. We have but one idea; to get close along-side. None but a sailor, would have placed a battery only a hundred and eighty yards from the Castle of St. Elmo: a soldier must have gone according to art, and the zig-zag way; my brave Sir Thomas Troubridge went straight, for we had no time to spare. Your royal highness will not believe, that I mean to lessen the conduct of the army. I have the highest respect for them all. But General Koehler should not have wrote such a paragraph in his letter. It conveyed a jealousy which, I dare say, is not in his disposition.