e
surrender of an enemy three times his strength, entrenched in a
protected fort, and seized 60,000 square miles of United States mainland
and islands.

To the American people the news came as a thunder-clap. President
Madison's chagrin was indescribable. After all the insulting remarks and
bombastic prophecies of himself and Clay, Calhoun, Eustis and others,
the humiliation was as gall and wormwood. Clay, the apostate, later on
swallowed his words and signed the treaty of peace. Eustis, the
Secretary of War, had boasted that he would "take the whole country and
ask no favours, for God has given us the power and the means." But God
saw fit to confound the despoiler. Hull was, of course, made a
scapegoat. Tried by court-martial, he was found guilty of cowardice and
neglect, and sentenced to death, but pardoned by the President. His son
died fighting at Lundy's Lane. The officers of Hull's command, who were
almost united in opposing surrender, as brave men felt their position
keenly. Never let us forget that no one race holds a monopoly in
courage, that no nation has exclusive control of the spirit of
patriotism. Fortunate it is indeed for most of us that the loftier
qualities of man can not be copyrighted by the individual. A share of
these has been bestowed in wise proportion upon all members of the human
family. To those who seek to emulate the character and deeds of the
world's famous men, certain essential qualities of mind may even be
acquired and developed by all, but to possess the "fullness of
perfection" cannot be the lot of every man.

Having finished "the business" that took him to Detroit, our hero did
not waste an hour. Leaving Procter in command, he started before morning
of the next day for Fort George, anxious to carry out his plans and
assume the offensive on the Niagara frontier.

He embarked in the _Chippewa_, a small trading schooner, with seventy of
the Ohio Rifles as prisoners, and took, as a guard, a rifle company
commanded by his young friend, Captain Robinson, subsequently Chief
Justice Robinson, "again winning golden opinions from the men by his
urbanity."

On Lake Erie he met the _Lady Prevost_, of fourteen guns, the commander
of which, after saluting the hero of Detroit with seventeen guns,
boarded the _Chippewa_, handing him despatches that notified him of an
_armistice_, which Sir George Prevost had actually concluded with the
American general, Dearborn, on August 9th! Brock's mortifica