with the English poet, whom we daresay he has never looked into, that beauty is

'a living presence of the earth, Surpassing the most fair ideal forms

Which craft of delicate spirits hath composed

From earth's materials.'

And his delight is to read in the book of the sunrises and the sunsets, and to wander about all seas, escaping thus from the petty miseries of time into an aërial world of skies and

waters.

But, though a rebel to conventions, he puts no large philosophy in their place. The human will, so powerful in fact, so splendid a resource as it ought to be in literature, is with him of small account. Like oil floating on water, which slips over it but does not mingle with it, the human ego, in these great circles of sky and sea, emerges, floats for a little, is dissipated one knows not how, and Nature alone remains, a triumph and a mystery. Passive enjoyment, passive contemplation, yielding sorrow, these make the Eastern temper, which is that of M. Loti. Compare with it the Greek artist's principle of energy, resistant or creative, and let us see what that has done in the world. With the cultivation of inward moods, there is no slight tendency in pity to become self-pity, and the natural impulses may be trained as on the stage to play a part in which the acting is everything. Nor do we believe that M. Loti's Pessimism will guarantee him against these consequences. Its arrogance may be a protest on behalf of man that there is in him a spirit, a character, which does not deserve to be mocked by the dead things that shine and kill,' by the world of blind forces now too strong for him. But the Supreme is not a mocker; and 'Baal' and Shiva, whom M. Loti

6

we learn from the quaint little story of Suleima-is inclined to worship, are false gods. The terror of the unknown is one thing; quite another is the melancholy of the Unknowable. It is astonishing that M. Loti should not perceive either in science or in faith a lifting over his head of the spiritual heavens with their infinite azure, when he has always the eyes, and very often the heart, of a child. Like Amiel, disgusted with the real, he cannot frame to himself an ideal from the Bible or the Book of Nature. We pity him, even while we admire the tender and exquisite pictures he has been showing us; for the finest things in his volumes are but reminiscences of these.

ART.

ART. VII.—1. La Campagne Maritime de 1692. Par J. de Crisenoy. (Extrait de la Revue Maritime et Coloniale.) Svo. Paris, 1865.

2. M. de Bonrepaus, la Marine et le Désastre de la Hougue. Par A. de Boislisle. (Extrait de l'Annuaire-Bulletin de la Société de l'Histoire de France.) 8vo. Paris, 1877.

3. Essai sur l'Histoire de l'Administration de la Marine de France, 1689-1792. Par Lambert de Sainte-Croix. Svo. Paris, 1892.

4. Les Guerres Navales de Demain. Par le Commandant Z. et H. Montéchant. Avec une Préface de M. le Contre-Amiral Réveillère. 8vo. Paris, 1891.

4. The Dimensions of Modern War-Ships. By Capt. S. M. Eardley Wilmot, R.N. (Extract from the Journal of the Royal United Service Institution.) 8vo. London, 1892. 6. The Naval Annual. Edited by T. A. Brassey. London, 1892.

8vo.

URING the thirties' of the present century the beggars of Valetta, sitting on those stairs which Byron so aptly rhymed to swears,' used to whine to naval officers hurrying down to the dinner-boat, Carità, Signori, carità! nix mangiare since the battle of Navarino'-which, during the forties,' was changed into 'since the battle of St. Jean d'Acre.' In the early part of the eighteenth century, the battle of La Hogue was an era, not for the Maltese beggars, then practically unknown to Englishmen, but for the great as well as the small of England's navy. A bold and free pamphleteer, writing of the miscarriage' off Toulon on February 11, 1744, said: 'I myself heard the song about the battle of La Hogue sung by almost every man on board one ship the day of the battle of Toulon with very good effect, till the infamous behaviour of some in the fleet put an end to their song and changed their praises of the dead into curses of the living; and, upon enquiry, I had reason to believe it was sung in every ship in the fleet with the same effect.' *

Even so late as 1747, after the victory off Cape Finisterre which won him his peerage, Anson wrote to the Duke of Bedford, 'This is the best stroke that has been made upon the French since La Hogue.'† In comparison with La Hogue, the battle off Cape Finisterre was a mere skirmish; but the one

* Three Letters relating to the Navy, Gibraltar, 'and Port Mahon' (8vo, 1757), p. 18.

+ Correspondence of John, fourth Duke of Bedford,' vol. i. p. 215.

and

and the other ceased to be much talked of after 1759 and the more brilliant victory of Quiberon Bay. But now, as the march of years brings round the completion of the second century since the great battle of 1692, it is worth while once again to recall the circumstances which rendered it famous, not only in the history of our country, but in the history of our navy. Lord Macaulay rightly dwelt on the facts that it was the first great check that had ever been given to the arms of Lewis the Fourteenth,' and 'the first great victory that the English had gained over the French since the day of Agincourt'; but, far more than this, that it ensured the safety of England.

'The pleasant pastures, cornfields, and commons of Hampshire and Surrey would not be the seat of war. The houses and gardens, the kitchens and dairies, the collars and plate-chests, the wives and daughters of our gentry and clergy, would not be at the mercy of Irish Rapparees who had sacked the dwellings and skinned the cattle of the Englishry of Leinster, or of French dragoons accustomed to live at free quarter on the Protestants of Auvergne. Whigs and Tories joined in thanking God for this great deliverance; and the most respectable non-jurors could not but be glad at heart that the rightful king was not to be brought back by an army of foreigners.'

Allowing for the florid colouring, this is the true signification of the lasting memory of the battle; this is what takes it out of the list of mere brilliant achievement, glorious victory, and strategic gain, and places it in the higher scale of national deliverance; comparable in that with Quiberon Bay or Trafalgar, or even superior to these, as relieving the country from a still more intolerable tension, a still more cruel terror. In 1759 and in 1805, when the threat of invasion hung over us, we were, at least, a united people; in 1692, we were rent by faction, by treachery, and by suspicion. The titular king, in France, had many adherents in England, and no one could say how far these were prepared to go in his behalf; it was the time of known treasons and forged accusations, and no one could say how far even the Queen's Ministers were to be trusted; it was certain that many of the highest officers of the fleet had been tampered with; it was believed that some of them had been seduced, and no one could say how far the disaffection had spread. For the moment, La Hogue settled these doubts. It proclaimed aloud that, in spite of faction or party, the navy was still the wall and fence of the kingdom,' and that, whether partisans of James or not, the officers of the navy were not in a mind to suffer the French to triumph over us in our own seas.' This was the immediate and political view of the result. In reality, however, it was much more than this.

The war

had

had been, till then, a struggle for the command of the sea: neither side could be rightly said to hold it. Ranke, whose detailed account of the campaign is not distinguished by his usual accuracy, has compared the battle to Lepanto, in which the supremacy passed over from one side to the other. The comparison is inexact; for the supremacy, being non-existent, could not pass over. But for the time, the victory settled the question; it gave the command of the sea to the victors; the more so because it was won by England over France rather than by the English fleet over the French, and still less by Russell over Tourville.

So far, indeed, as the two admirals were concerned, the advantage lay with Tourville, who was, in every respect, Russell's superior as a seaman, an officer, or an honest man. By slow degrees and hard fighting, Tourville had won the position he held as Vice-Admiral of France. Russell, on the other hand, had seen little service, and that as a young lieutenant or captain, several years before: his rank as Commander-in-chief was the reward of treason, revolution, and tortuous intrigue. He was ready enough to fight, when it suited his own interests, but he had no conception of tactics, no knowledge or experience of the art of handling a fleet. Intelligence more than usually accurate enabled him to sail from his anchorage off Culver Cliff on May 18, 1692, so as very exactly to intercept the French fleet off Cape Barfleur on the morning of May 19; but his line was badly formed; and though the whole of the blue squadron, twenty-nine ships strong, under Sir John Ashby, was some distance astern and to leeward, he made no attempt to join it; so that when Tourville, having the weather-gage, attacked with little more than half the number of ships, he did so with a local superiority which, for a time, permitted him to press the English hard, and might have enabled him to retire without disadvantage had not the weather happily fought against him. French writers are fond of dwelling on the early stages of the battle and on the prodiges de valeur' by which the French withstood the English for so many hours. There is no doubt that the French fought well; but during the greater part of the time it was the English who were over-matched. They won in the end because they were able to endure; and when the wind shifted, the numerical odds in their favour more than counterbalanced the blundering incapacity of their admiral.

6

When once the tide of battle had turned in their favour,

*History of England,' v. 44-50. Vol. 176.-No. 352.

+ Französische Geschichte,' iv. 44. 2 H their

their seamanship and their knowledge of Channel pilotage enabled them to use their opportunity. Russell, indeed, was personally ignorant of these as of every other technical point; but he was fortunate in the captain and master of the fleet, David Mitchell and Benbow, both men who had followed the sea from boyhood to middle age, and were thoroughly acquainted with the mysteries of the tides and half-tides round Cape Barfleur and Cape de la Hague. The moment that the fog lifting showed Tourville to be attempting to retire, the signal was made for the fleet to chase, and word was sent to all the ships near the flag, that the enemy were running.' From the very first they were thus hustled along and scattered. A few got away to the north, and made good their escape to Brestfour of them, after passing round Scotland and Ireland; but the greater number, being forced to the westward, were off Cherbourg and between that and Cape de la Hague on the evening of the 20th May. It was then determined, as a chance of shaking off the pursuit, to risk the passage through the Race of Alderney. It was a terrible venture, but some twenty-two of them succeeded and so got into St. Malo. Mr. Browning's spirited ballad of 'Hervé Riel' has probably made this incident of the battle the most familiar to English readers. It is therefore as well to say that Mr. Browning's details are not history; that D'Amfreville did not command the flying French ships; that there was no ship named 'Formidable' in the fleet ; and that the English did not follow down to St. Malo, nor, in fact, to the southward of Cape de la Hague. That in the very remarkable navigation which they certainly made-past the Ecréhos, the Anquettes, the Minquiers-they must have had most skilful pilots, is self-evident. Hervé Riel,' when it first appeared in the Cornhill Magazine,' was dated from Croisic, so that we may suppose the poet merely gave life and vigour to a local tradition, without troubling himself about its historical

accuracy.

Meantime the rest of the fleet had been caught by the floodtide and obliged to anchor in the Race. But the holding ground was bad; the anchors dragged, the cables parted, and the ships were carried back by the flood and swept to the eastward in shore of the English, who were at anchor between Cherbourg and La Hague. Three of the largest French ships, including the 'Soleil Royal,' which had carried Tourville's flag on the day of the battle, were forced into the Bay of Cherbourg, and after a stout defence were burnt there by a squadron under the immediate orders of Sir Ralph Delavall. The rest got round Cape Barfleur and into the Bay of La Hogue; and

there,