he great military history of Sir William Napier,
printed in the approved luxurious style which the good examples of the
Cambridge University Press have made a necessity with all intelligent
book-purchasers, calls at the present time for a special word of
recognition. Of the merits and character of the work itself it is
scarcely required that we should speak. An observer of, and participant
in, the deeds which he describes, cautious, deliberate, keen-sighted,
candid, and unsparing, General Napier's book has qualities seldom united
in a single production. Southey wrote an eloquent history of the War in
the Peninsula, perhaps as good a history as an author well-trained in
compositions of the kind could be expected to produce at a distance.
But that was its defect. It lacked that knowledge and judgment of a
complicated series of events which could be acquired only on the field
and by one possessed of consummate military training. On the other hand,
we can seldom look for any laborious work of authorship from a general
in active service. Men of action exhaust their energies in doing, and
are usually impatient of the slow process of unwinding the tangled skein
of events which at the moment they had been compelled to cut with the
sword. It is by no means every campaign which furnishes the Commentaries
of its Caesar. To Sir William Napier, however, we are indebted for a
work which has taken its place as a model history of modern campaigning.
The protracted struggle of the Peninsular War through six full years
of skilful operations, conducted by the greatest masters of military
science, in a country whose topographical features called out the rarest
resources of the art of war, at a time when the military system of
Napoleon was at its height, summing up the experience of a quarter of
a century in France of active military pursuits,--the story of sieges,
marches, countermarches, lines of retreat and defence, followed by the
most energetic assaults, blended with the disturbing political elements
of the day at home and the contrarieties of the battle-field amidst a
population foreign to both armies,--certainly presented a subject or
series of subjects calculated to tax the powers of a conscientious
writer to the uttermost. To furnish such a narrative was the work
undertaken by General Napier. Sixteen years of unintermitted toil were
given by him to the task. He spared no labor of research. Materials were
placed at his disposal by the