peninsular, and the sublime sea-fights of Aboukir and Trafalgar, calls "one of the most brilliant expeditions carried into execution by any nation." "Ille crucem, scelenis pretium tulit, hic diadema." The news was received in England with the liveliest demonstrations of joy. The Lord Mayor of London ordered the Park and Tower guns to be fired at noon, in honor of a victory, which he pompously declared was "worth an illumination." The official account was translated into French, German and Italian, and scattered over the continent. Mr. Clay and Mr. Russell were in the theatre at Brussels when the news arrived. The secretary of the legation, Mr. Hughes, had overheard an English officer in the lobby saying--"We have taken and burned the Yankee capital, and thrown those rebels back half a century"--and going to their box told them there were reasons why they should leave the theatre, which he would disclose at their hotel. He had observed some of the British legation present, and the announcement of such tidings would be embarrassing to the American embassy. They were exceedingly annoyed by the news, especially next morning, when the English embassadors sent them a paper giving an account of the act; and they returned, mortified, to Ghent. It was received on the continent, however, with marked disapprobation. Even a Bourbon paper, in Paris, declared that notwithstanding the atrocities charged on Napoleon, he had never committed an act so degrading to civilized warfare as this. The vessels designed to coöperate with the movement on Washington, reached Alexandria the same evening the British army left the former place, and after levying a contribution on the inhabitants, seizing twenty-one merchant vessels, sixteen thousand barrels of flour, a thousand hogsheads of tobacco, and whatever else was valuable, departed. In their descent, they were harassed by Porter and Perry from the shore, but the guns of the latter were too light to effect much damage. Commodore Rodgers also hovered with fire ships around their flight, but it was too rapid to allow the concentration of a sufficient force to arrest them.