despondency of his own countrymen--a task, however, which he
accomplished by management and address, and an alternation of real
firmness with apparent yielding. During many months he remained the
only Englishman who did not think the siege hopeless, and the object
worthless. He often spoke of the time in which he resided at the
country seat of the grand master at St. Antonio, four miles from
Valetta, as perhaps the most trying period of his life. For some
weeks Captain Vivian was his sole English companion, of whom, as his
partner in anxiety, he always expressed himself with affectionate
esteem. Sir Alexander Ball's presence was absolutely necessary to
the Maltese, who, accustomed to be governed by him, became incapable
of acting in concert without his immediate influence. In the
outburst of popular emotion, the impulse which produces an
insurrection, is for a brief while its sufficient pilot: the
attraction constitutes the cohesion, and the common provocation,
supplying an immediate object, not only unites, but directs the
multitude. But this first impulse had passed away, and Sir Alexander
Ball was the one individual who possessed the general confidence. On
him they relied with implicit faith; and even after they had long
enjoyed the blessings of British government and protection, it was
still remarkable with what child-like helplessness they were in the
habit of applying to him, even in their private concerns. It seemed
as if they thought him made on purpose to think for them all. Yet
his situation at St. Antonio was one of great peril; and he
attributed his preservation to the dejection which had now begun to
prey on the spirits of the French garrison, and which rendered them
unenterprising and almost passive, aided by the dread which the
nature of the country inspired. For subdivided as it was into small
fields, scarcely larger than a cottage garden, and each of these
little squares of land inclosed with substantial stone walls; these