EGIS OF ENGLAND; OR THE TRIUMPHS OF THE LATE WAR, AS THEY APPEAR IN THE Thanks of Parliament, PROGRESSIVELY VOTED TO THE NAVY AND ARMY; AND THE COMMUNICATIONS EITHER ORAL OR WRITTEN ON THE SUBJECT. CHRONOLOGICALLY ARRANGED, WITH NOTICES BIOGRAPHICAL AND MILITARY. BY MAURICE EVANS, NAVY AND ARMY AGENT. I am sure I speak the language of the House, when I say that it is impossible to London: PRINTED FOR THE AUTHOR. SOLD BY LONGMAN AND CO.; BALDWIN AND CO.; OTHER BOOKSELLERS. 1452.4 Br2095164 HARVARD COLLEGE 下 London: PRINTED BY A. J. VALPY, TOOKE'S COURT, CHANCERY LANE. 1817. PREFACE. THE volume now presented to the public possesses more extensive and important claims to attention than will be immediately obvious to the reader. Of these claims, referring chiefly to the subject, it may be allowed to speak without diffidence. While the judgment and taste of Athens and of Rome have been consulted for the erection of silent temples in honor of the late war, these pages offer as it were a colonnade in which the living forms of the victors, as they progressively arose, are seen receiving the high and peculiar martial tribute of modern Britain; and either in their own persons, or in the transcript of their minds exhibiting, each after his own characteristic manner, the grateful sense-the dignified feeling-the glowing energy—the heroic fervor with which they were inspired, in recollection of the past and contemplation of the future: here also the dead speak -those mighty dead who in one short life have exemplified many ages. 13 How much of instruction and of delight 'may be derived from such a contemplation is too obvious to require description; cold and indifferent indeed must be that eye which could contemplate without advantage the various excellencies that mark the eventful period of the late war-from the exercise of the mature courage of a Howe to the distinguished policy of a Hastings; through hosts of heroes, crowned by the consecrated valor of Nelson and the living triumphs of Wellington! all the best passions are awakened, all the virtues called forth; youth animated, and age consoled. Uncertain as are the forms of the honors of antiquity, of which none approach nearer to those of the present time than the laureated tablets permitted to the Roman generals, and those metrical compositions of the soldiery, which Livy, while he recorded, could not admit to his pages; the value of just eulogy is every where recognized. The wisdom of Greece proclaimed that "the voice of praise is sweet!" The delicate Pliny, in the most fastidious age of Rome, attri |