Continental troops will be treated as the descendants of Englishmen! The
guns at Saratoga will be Colonial guns; the incapacity of the Fleet will
not be touched upon. Here again, as in the case of the Battle of
Hastings, all will be for the best, and there will be a few touching
words upon the passionate affection now felt for Great Britain by the
inhabitants of the United States. The defensive genius of Wellington
will be represented as that of a general particularly great in the
offensive. Talavera will be a victory. The Spanish Auxiliaries in the
Peninsula will be contemptible. No guns will be abandoned before Coruna,
but what are left at Coruna will be mentioned and re-embarked. The
character of Nelson will receive a curious sort of glutinous praise; Emma
Hamilton, not Naples, will be the stain upon his name; the Battle of
Trafalgar will prevent the invasion of England.

This is a lengthy but not unjust description of what this gentleman
would write; it is rubbish from beginning to end. It would sell, because
every word of it would foster in the reader the illusion that the
community of which he is a member is invincible under all circumstances,
that effort and self-denial and suffering are spared him alone out of
all mankind, and that a little pleasurable excitement, preferably that
to be obtained from his favourite game, is the chief factor in military
success.

I have omitted Alfred. Alfred in such a book will be the "teller of
truth"--but he will not go to Mass.

Given that the name is sufficiently well known, there is hardly any
limit to the sale of a book modelled upon these lines. Contrast with its
fate the fate of a book, written no matter how powerfully, that should
insist upon truths, no matter how valuable to the English people at the