I had allowed every passage to stand which expressed the opinion of the Author upon public matters, nor did I expunge those complaints of personal inconveniences which a man, for the first time placed in my brother’s situation, naturally feels, and as naturally describes in his letters to his family. It has been too much the fashion to garble such Journals to suit the public taste; but my aim was to give the truth, and the whole truth, of all that my brother witnessed and described in his Journal. This rather uncommon fidelity is, I believe, one of the chief merits of the work, and one of the chief causes of its success. If my brother, in commenting upon the want of selfcontrol and irregular habits and propensities of the British soldiery (defects which the Duke’s own Despatches, his proclamation upon the retreat from Burgos, and the uniform testimony of the writers upon the Peninsular War unfortunately confirm), had omitted to notice their many redeeming qualities, he might have been partly open to the rebuke of the writer alluded to; but throughout his narrative Mr. Larpent bears the strongest testimony to the undaunted courage, the immoveable steadiness of the British soldiers under the severest fire, and the perfect reliance the Duke always placed upon the bravery of his army. The truth is, that the conscription in France forced into the ranks of its army a more intelligent and more intellectual class of persons than those who volunteered into our service. Thus the moral conduct of the French soldier was perhaps more correct; but the stubborn courage, the _pluck_, if I may use such an expression, of the British soldier, guided by officers taken from the _élite_ of our gentry, and almost fastidiously alive to the sense of honour and of duty, enabled them in the Peninsula, at Waterloo, and wherever British troops have been called into action, to maintain a decided superiority over their opponents. It has been remarked, that I have never mentioned the lady to whom these Letters were addressed. She was my much honoured and loved mother; but I deprived myself of the pleasure of noticing her many excellent qualities, lest it should be thought that, in praising her, I sought to confer credit upon myself, or to gratify my own vanity. She was the daughter of Sir James Porter, in his day a distinguished diplomatist, successively employed in the Netherlands and Germany, and for many years ambassador to the Ottoman Porte. She married my father when my brother was very young, and became a second mother to him. There never was the slightest distinction between him and her own children, and had we not been told that we were by different mothers, we should never have known the fact from her conduct. That she possessed my brother’s warmest affections, these letters would have abundantly shown, had I not thought it better to omit many passages, which, however gratifying to her to whom they were addressed, could be of no interest to the public.