The Cossacks have confirmed what began to be evident at the battle of Albuera, where the Polish

Nations. The ancient Parthians, and the modern Cossacks, are both hunters and shepherds, uniting the numbers of the one, to the athletic habits of the other; and their skill in aiming at an enemy, their rapidity in pursuit or in retreat, together with their uncommon powers of bearing privation and fatigue, are astonishing.

The modes of making war, taking it posterior to the shepherds and hunters, have been various. The Grecian mode at the siege of Troy is well described by Homer, and perfectly intelligible. It was the same mode, probably, that prevailed during the dark ages, when the feudal system was in its greatest integrity.

All the warriors wore armour of defence, and wielded arms of offence of a weight and length proportioned to their strength. The strongest men were surrounded by a set of myrmidons or assistants who carried death and destruction into the ranks of the enemy, till one chief and his myrmidons became opposed to another, and then came the " tug of war:" then the common ranks of warriors often drew breath, and stood still to witness the mighty contest. The Grecians, when they afterwards had to fight with the Romans, who depended on numbers and discipline, (probably because there were not many great strong men in Italy), laid aside this mode of fighting, and invented the phalanx, by which at first they gained the victory; but the Romans, so inventive in war, soon, by their deep columns, and by adopting the phalanx likewise, gained a superiority. Great armies continued to fight with swords, lances, bows and arrows, and slings, till the fall of the, Roman empire. It appears as if, since then, amongst the feudal barons, wars very

lancers were the most formidable to the English. They have proved the superiority of the lance

similar to those of the Grecians in early ages, were carried on, where strong athelic men acted as chiefs, and wore stout and heavy armour. This is worth observing. When the world was Occupied by large kingdoms, numerous armies, well disciplined, decided the fate of war; but when the feudal system again divided mankind into small principalities, or dukedoms, and baronies, the ancient mode of warfare was again resorted to, and prevailed.

The manner in which the standing armies of kings overturned feudal power is well known; and then again the same mode of determining the contest by numbers and discipline, that prevailed in the time of the Romans, was adopted. It was just at this period that the use of fire arms was introduced, which gave a new turn to affairs, and the strong and powerful had not the same advantage and superiority that they had in either of the former modes of warfare. Then it was that the French rose to importance; and, as has been shewn in the portrait of General Graham, their power rose precisely in the same proportion as musketry and cannon were employed in preference to the arme blanche, or swords, lances, and bayonets.

It is only from the return to the use of the lance, that the French can in any permanent manner, be kept within bounds; and it is at least the interest of all the powers of Europe to make the experiment which has been so admirably begun.

We know that with the bayonet the French lose their superiority, and still more with the lance; it is therefore not a matter of doubt, but of certainty, that the revolutionary war never could have succeeded on the part of France, so long and so well, had it not been for the use of musketry and cannon.

where the combatants come to close quarters, over every other weapon; and they may, in time, be the occasion of that weapon, on an improved plan, being again employed in European armies.

Under the portrait of General Sir Thomas Graham, we have shewn, that it is since the lance was laid aside in battle that the French have become superior to the neighbouring nations. Montesquieu was the first to notice the advantage the French had over their neighbours with the musket; and the present war will probably so far open the eyes of military men in Europe to the truth, as to bring that " queen of weapons" more and more into use. The Cossacks, for their hardiness in their manner of living, for their indefatigable labour, and their dexterity, are not more remarkable than they are for their fidelity and attachment to their chiefs; and amongst all the brave generals of the Emperor of Russia, there is not one that surpasses, for zeal in the cause of his sovereign and country, the leader of the Cossacks, who has contributed his full portion to the liberation of mankind.

The Cossacks, and their brave chief, have been indefatigable; and though they were at first objects of ridicule to the French, they soon became their greatest object of terror. They have owed this success partly to a military error, into which all Europe fell.

War had become so systematical, and modern tactics had assumed so regular a mode of proceeding, that the French jacobin armies, in 1792, deranged them completely by new modes of fighting; and finding success, they persisted in new stratagems and methods, while their enemies persisted most obstinately in their regular mode of fighting and being beat. Modern tacticians appeared to have forgot that in new devices and stratagems consists principally the art of war; and that men, weak and feeble of frame, slow in their motions, and defenceless by nature, have overcome all the beasts of the field, and of the forest, merely because those beasts fight always in the same way, whereas man uses art and stratagem. Lions and tigers fight as they did three thousand years ago, but man adapts his plans of fighting to circumstances, and governs the whole.

The same principle of adapting the mode of fighting to the manner of the enemy, is necessary. European nations have at last made that discovery, and France is overcome, though in no case were the French so much deranged as by the irregular and desparate warfare carried on by General Platoff and his brave and faithful Cossacks.

SIR THOMAS PLUMER.

THE attorney-general, a good sound lawyer, and much more pacific than his predecessor. He does not approve of ex officio proceedings, which never ought to be tolerated but when absolutely necessary. For this subject the reader is referred to the portrait of Sir Vickary Gibbs. The latter, when attorneygeneral, was like a comet at its nearest approach to the sun, when the great Sir Isaac Newton calculated its heat at fifty thousand times the heat of red-hot iron.

Perhaps the great Newton rather over stated the business, unless some sort of material could be found that would bear such a heat, without being dissipated or evaporated. But leaving that to natural philosophers, we may safely say that Sir Vickary was as hot as a comet ought to be, and much too hot for the attorney-general of so good a man as his present majesty; but Sir Thomas is