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"I never encouraged him," said Susan Carr. "Oh, I am so sorry, for I like him so much!"

She put her hands behind her, and began again to pace up and down the room. Philip's coming and this letter made her think of his uncle, Donald Shore. She and Donald were to have been married, but Philip came into his uncle's life, an orphan nephew, whose support was so much of a consideration that the quiet, prudent Donald felt it necessary to put the wedding off a year, and then two years, and after that another year. Then the postponement of eternity came between them, and Donald died. Susan Carr had felt no bitterness towards Philip. She loved him, at first because he was Donald's nephew, and then for his own sake. Indeed, even while he postponed her marriage, he made another tie between herself and her slow and sober lover, whose affec

tion for his nephew seemed to reconcile him to the delay of winning the hand of his "admirable Susan," as he called her. When he died, she felt as though Philip belonged to her: it was she who made it possible for him to go abroad and study when he had finished college; she who rejoiced with practical good sense when he married Cecil, who had plenty of money; and she who watched the unsatisfied, disappointed look deepening in his eyes, with the pang that his mother would have felt, had she lived. And through all these years the old love for Philip's uncle lay fragrant in her heart. But now came this letter from Joseph Lavendar.

"I can't understand it," said Miss Carr, reading the letter over again, the color deepening in her cheeks. "And it's too bad, for I do like him so. Well, I won't give him 'an opportunity'! That is the only kind thing I can do."

Margaret Deland.

THE name of Howe, albeit that of a stranger to the land, has a just claim upon the esteem and cordial remembrance of Americans. The elder brother of the subject of this sketch, during the few short months in which he was brought into close contact with the colonists of 1758, before the unlucky campaign of Ticonderoga, won from them not merely the trust inspired by his soldierly qualities and his genius for war, - the genius of sound common sense and solidity of character, but got a deep hold upon their affections by the consideration and respect shown to them by him, traits to which they had been too little accustomed in the British officers of that day. Nor was this attitude on his part only a superficial disguise assumed by policy to secure a needed

support. The shrewd, suspicious provincials would soon have penetrated a veil so thin, that covered only the usual supercilious arrogance which they had heretofore encountered. Lord Howe, almost alone among his military contemporaries, warmly greeted them as fellow-countrymen, men of no alien or degenerate blood. He admitted at once the value of their experience, sought their advice, and profited by both; thus gaining, besides the material advantage of methods adapted to the difficulties before him, the adhesion of willing hearts that followed enthusiastically, confident in their leader's wisdom, and glowing with the unaccustomed sense of being appreciated, of receiving recognition long withheld, but now at last ungrudgingly accorded. "The army felt him, from

general to drummer boy. He was its soul; and while breathing into it his own energy and ardor, he broke through the traditions of the service, and gave it new shapes to suit the time and place. . . . He made himself greatly beloved by the provincial officers, and he did what he could to break down the barriers between the colonial soldiers and the British regulars.” 1

In campaign, Lord Howe adopted the tried expedients of forest warfare, associating with himself its most practiced exponents; and on the morning of his death, in one of those petty skirmishes which have cut short the career of so many promising soldiers, he discussed the question of Ticonderoga and its approaches, lying on a bearskin beside the colonial ranger, John Stark, to whose energy, nineteen years later, was due the serious check that precipitated the ruin of Burgoyne's expedition. Endeared as he was to American soldiers by the ties of mutual labors and mutual perils gladly shared, and to all classes by genial bearing and social accomplishments, his untimely end was followed throughout the Northern colonies by a spontaneous outburst of sorrow, elicited not only by the anticipated failure of the enterprise that hung upon his life, but also by a sense of personal regret and loss. Massachusetts perpetuated the memory of her grief by a tablet in Westminster Abbey, which hands down to our day "the affection her officers and soldiers bore to his command."

Captain Richard Howe of the Royal Navy, afterwards Admiral and Earl, succeeded him in the Irish viscounty which had been bestowed upon their grandfather by William III. Of a temperament colder, at least in external manifestation, than that of his brother, the new Lord Howe was distinguished by the same fairness of mind, and by an equanimity to which perturbation and impulsive injustice were alike unknown. There seems to have been in his bear1 Parkman's Montcalm and Wolfe, ii. 90.

But

ing something of that stern, impassive gravity that marked Washington, and imposed a constraint upon bystanders; but whatever apparent harshness there was in the face only concealed a genuine warmth of heart, which at times broke with an illumining smile through the mask that covered it, and was always ready to respond to the appeals of benevolence. If, as an officer, he had a fault conspicuously characteristic, it was a reluctance to severity, a tendency to push indulgence to undue extremes, into which may perhaps have entered not merely leniency of disposition, but the weakness of loving popularity. To be called by the seamen, as Howe was, the "sailor's friend," is in the experience of navies a suspicious encomium, involving more of flattery to a man's foibles than of credit to his discretion and his judgment. at the time when the quarrel between Great Britain and her colonies was fast becoming imbittered, the same kindliness, coupled with a calm reasonableness of temper, ruled his feelings and guided his action. Although by political creed a moderate Tory, he had none of the wrong-headedness of the party zealot; and the growing alienation between those whom he, like his brother, regarded as of one family, caused only distress and an earnest desire to avert coming evils. Influenced by these sentiments, he sought the acquaintance of Franklin, then in London as a commissioner from the colonies; and the interviews between them, while resultless by reason of the irreconcilable differences of opinion severing the two parties to the dispute, convinced the wary American of the good will and open-mindedness of the already distinguished British seaman. The same qualities doubtless suggested the selection of Howe for the mission of conciliation to America, in 1776, where his associate was his younger brother, Sir William, in whom the family virtues had, by exaggeration, degenerated into

an indolent good humor fatal to his military efficiency. The admiral, on the contrary, was as remarkable for activity and untiring attention to duty as he was for amiability and resolute personal courage, traits which assured adequate naval direction, in case conciliation should give place, as it did, to coercive measures.

It is to be regretted that the methods of naval biographers and historians of the past century have preserved to us little, in detail and anecdote, of a period whose peculiarities, if not exactly picturesque, were at least grotesque and amusing. The humor of Smollett has indeed drawn in broad caricature some of the salient features of the seaman of his day, which was that of Howe's entrance into the navy; and those who are familiar with the naval light literature based upon the times of Nelson can recognize in it characteristics so similar, though evidently softened by advancing civilization and increased contact with the world, as to vouch for the accuracy of the general impression conveyed by the earlier novelist. It is, however, correct only as a general impression, in which, too, allowance must be made for the animus of an author who had grievances to exploit, and whose great aim was to amuse, even if exact truthfulness were sacrificed at the shrine of exaggerated portrayal. Though not wholly without occasional gleams of light, shed here and there by recorded incident and anecdote upon the strange life of the seamen of that period, the early personal experiences of individuals have had scant commemoration; and with the exception of St. Vincent, who fortunately had a garrulous biographer, we learn little of men like Hawke, Howe, Hood, and Keppel, until, already possessors of naval rank, they stand forth as actors in events rather historical than biographical.

Of Howe's first services, therefore, not much record remains except a bare sum

mary of dates of promotions, and of ships to which he was attached — until 1755, the beginning of the Seven Years' War, when he was already a post-captain. Born in 1725, he entered the navy in 1739, at the outbreak of the war with Spain which initiated a forty years' struggle over colonies and colonial trade. With short intervals of peace, this contest was the prominent characteristic of the middle of the eighteenth century, and terminated in the conquest of Canada, the independence of the United States, and the establishment of British predominance in India and upon the ocean. This rupture of a quiet that had then endured a quarter of a century was so popular with the awakened intelligence of England, aroused at last to the imminent importance of her call to expansion by sea, that it was greeted by a general pealing of the bells, which drew from the reluctant prime minister, Walpole, that bitter gibe, “Ay, to-day they are ringing their bells, and to-morrow they will be wringing their hands." Howe embarked with Anson's squadron, celebrated for its sufferings, its persistence, and its achievements, to waste the Spanish colonies of the Pacific; but the ship in which he had started was so racked in the attempt to double Cape Horn that she was forced to return to England. The young officer afterwards served actively in the West Indies and in home waters, and was posted just before the close of the war, on the 20th of April, 1747, at the early age of twenty-two. Thus he was securely placed on the road to the highest honors of his profession, which were, however, not beyond the just claim of his already proved personal merit.

During the first thirty months of the Seven Years' War, Howe was closely engaged with, and at times in command of, the naval part of combined expeditions of the army and navy, fitted out to harass the French coasts.

The chief, though not the sole aim in these undertakings was to effect diversions in favor of Frederick the Great, then plunged in his desperate struggle with the allied forces of Russia, Austria, and France. It was believed that the latter would be compelled, for the defense of her own shores against these raids, — desultory, it is true, but yet uncertain as to the time and place where the attack would fall, to withdraw a number of troops that would sensibly reduce the great odds then overbearing the Prussian king. It is more than doubtful whether this direction of British power, in partial, excentric efforts, produced results adequate to the means employed. In immediate injury to France they certainly failed, and it is questionable whether they materially helped Frederick; but they made a brisk stir in the Channel ports, their operations were within easy reach of England in a day when news traveled slowly, and they drew the attention of the public and of London society to a degree wholly disproportionate to their importance relatively to the great issues of the war. Their failures, which exceeded their achievements, caused general scandal; and their occasional triumphs aroused exaggerated satisfaction at this earlier period, before the round of unbroken successes under the first Pitt had accustomed men, to use Walpole's lively phrase, to come to breakfast with the question, "What new victory is there this morning? The brilliant letter-writer's correspondence is full of the gossip arising from these usually paltry affairs; and throughout, whether in success or disaster, the name of Howe appears frequently, and always as the subject of praise. "Howe, brother of the lord of that name, was the third on the naval list. undaunted as a rock, and as silent, the characteristics of his whole race. He and Wolfe soon contracted a friendship like the union of cannon and gunpowder." "Howe," he says in another place,

He was

"never made a friendship except at the mouth of a cannon."

Of his professional merits, however, professional opinions will be more convincing. A Frenchman, who had acted as pilot of his ship, the Magnanime, when going into action, was asked if it were possible to take a lighter vessel, the Burford, close to the walls of another fort farther in. "Yes," he replied, "but I should prefer to take the Magnanime." "But why? it was rejoined; "for the Burford draws less water." "True," he said, "mais le capitaine Howe est jeune et brave." Sir Edward Hawke, the most distinguished admiral of that generation, gave a yet higher commendation to the "young and brave" captain, who at this time served under his orders, one that must cause a sigh of regretful desire to many a troubled superior. Fifteen years later he nominated Howe for a very responsible duty. The appointment was criticised on the ground that he was the junior admiral in the fleet; but Hawke answered, in the spirit of St. Vincent defending his choice of Nelson, "I have tried Lord Howe on most important occasions. He never asked me how he was to execute any service entrusted to his charge, but always went straight forward and did it." Some quaint instances are recorded of the taciturnity for which he was also noted. Amid the recriminations that followed the failure at Rochefort, Howe neither wrote nor said anything. At last the Admiralty asked why he had not expressed an opinion. In the somewhat ponderous style that marked his utterances, he replied, "With regard to the operations of the troops I was silent, as not being at that time well enough informed thereof, and to avoid the mention of any particulars that might prove not exactly agreeable to the truth." The next year, an army officer of rank, putting several questions to him and receiving no answer, said, “Mr. Howe, don't you

It was during the continuance of these petty descents upon the French coast, in 1758, that Howe was directed to receive on board, as midshipman, and for service in the fleet, the Duke of York, a grandson of the reigning monarch; in connection with whom arose a saying that was long current, perhaps is still current, in the British navy. The young lad of nineteen, before beginning his routine duties, held a reception on board Commodore Howe's ship, at which the captains of the squadron were presented to him. The seamen, unpracticed in ceremonial distinctions other than naval, saw with wonder that the midshipman kept on his hat, while the rest uncovered. "The young gentleman," whispered one, "isn't overcivil, as I thinks. Look if he don't keep his hat on before all the captains!' "Why," another was heard to reply, "where should he learn manners, seeing as how he was never at sea before?"

It is likewise from this period of Howe's career that two of the rare personal anecdotes have been transmitted, illustrative of his coolness and selfpossession under all circumstances of danger, as well as when under the enemy's fire; one of them also touched with a bit of humor, not a usual characteristic of his self-contained reticence. The service involved considerable danger, being close in with the enemy's coast, which was indifferently well known and subject to heavy gales of wind blow ing dead on shore. On one such occasion his ship had anchored with two anchors ahead, and he had retired to his cabin, when the officer of the watch hurriedly entered, saying, "My lord, the anchors are coming home, - the common sea expression for their failure to grip the bottom, whereupon the ship of course drags toward the beach. "Coming home, are they?" rejoined Howe.

"I am sure they are very right. I don't know who would stay abroad on such a night, if he could help it." Yet another time he was roused from sleep by a lieutenant in evident perturbation: "My lord, the ship is on fire close to the magazine; but don't be frightened; we shall get it under shortly." "Frightened, sir!" said Howe. "What do you mean? I never was frightened in my life." Then, looking the unlucky officer in the face, he continued, "Pray, Mr. —, how does a man feel when he is frightened? I need not ask how he looks."

The

During the Seven Years' War, the French navy, through the persistent neglect of the government and its preoccupation with the continental war, a misdirection due mainly to the intrigues of the Pompadour, - reached the lowest depths of material insufficiency that it has ever known. official staff and the personnel generally were far better than in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic period, but the matériel had dwindled to impotency. To this was due the loss of Canada, with its far-reaching effects upon the feeling of independence in the British colonies which became the United States; to this the impunity with which the French coasts were harassed, the British squadrons having no cause to fear for British interests elsewhere; and to this also that the period in question, though one of great naval activity, was marked by no great naval battle, a sure indication of the overwhelming predominance of one of the contestants of the sea.

There was, however, one great naval action, if not fully entitled to the name "battle," characterized by an extreme of daring upon the part of the British admiral engaged, and accompanied by every element of terror and sublimity that the phases of the sea can present, in which Howe was privileged to bear a conspicuous part. In 1759, after four years of disaster