ns occupied the last week of December and
a part of January. An army had been collected for an attack on that town
under the command of General Kean, which, with the assistance of Admiral
Cochrane, was disembarked without resistance on the 23rd December. On
the 25th, General Sir Edward Pakenham arrived and assumed the chief
command. On the 27th, the enemy's picquets were driven in within six
miles of the town, where their main body was found most strongly posted,
and supported by a ship of war moored in such a position as to enfilade
the assailants. The result was that the assault of the British was
delivered under so withering a fire from every part of the enemy's line,
that General Pakenham was killed, Generals Keane and Gibbs wounded,
while over 2,000 men and officers were killed, wounded, or made
prisoners. Colonel Thornton, indeed, had crossed the river during the
previous night and captured a flanking battery of the Americans on the
other side; but the report made by him to General Lambert was of so
discouraging a character that he decided not to persevere with the
attempt, and in the end the whole army re-embarked, leaving a few of the
most dangerously wounded behind them, but carrying off all their
artillery, ammunition, and stores. The concluding operation of the war
was the capture of Fort Mobile, which surrendered to the British on the
11th of February.

1815. ROMEO COATES.

A remarkable figure puts in an appearance in the caricatures of the
early part of the century. This was the renowned "Romeo" Coates, a vain,
weak-minded gentleman, who had an absolute passion for figuring on the
boards as Romeo, Lothario, Belcour, and other romantic characters, for
which his personal appearance and lack of brains altogether unfitted
him. His "readings," like himself, being of the most original character,
his vagaries afforded endless amusement to the coarse public of his day.
The gods befooled him "to the top of his bent;" his overweening vanity
failing to show the poor creature that he was exciting ridicule instead
of applause. The fun (?) culminated in the tragic scene, Romeo, to their
delight, responding to the encores of his audience, by repeating the
dying scene so long as it suited the managers to prolong the sorry
exhibition. Macready, whose dramatic genius and refined sensibilities
revolted at a spectacle so degrading, describes him as he appeared at
Bath, in 1815: "I was at the theatre," says the tragedian,