is fatal battle with Caesar, sent letters to all the
provinces and cities of the Romans, describing with greater courage than
he had fought, so that a report generally prevailed that Caesar had lost
the battle: Plutarch informs us, that three hundred writers had
described the battle of Marathon. Many doubtless had copied their
predecessors; but it would perhaps have surprised us to have observed
how materially some differed in their narratives.

In looking over a collection of manuscript letters of the times of James
the First, I was struck by the contradictory reports of the result of
the famous battle of Lutzen, so glorious and so fatal to Gustavus
Adolphus; the victory was sometimes reported to have been obtained by
the Swedes; but a general uncertainty, a sort of mystery, agitated the
majority of the nation, who were staunch to the protestant cause. This
state of anxious suspense lasted a considerable time. The fatal truth
gradually came _out in reports changing in their progress_; if the
victory was allowed, the death of the Protestant Hero closed all hope!
The historian of Gustavus Adolphus observes on this occasion, that "Few
couriers were better received than those who conveyed the accounts of
the king's death to declared enemies or concealed ill-wishers; nor did
the report greatly displease the court of Whitehall, where the ministry,
as it usually happens in cases of timidity, had its degree of
apprehensions for fear the event should not be true; and, as I have
learnt from good authority, imposed silence on the news-writers, and
intimated the same to the pulpit in case any funeral encomium might
proceed from that quarter." Although the motive assigned by the writer,
that of the secret indisposition of the cabinet of James the First
towards the fortunes of Gustavus, is to me by no means certain,
unquestionably the knowledge of this disastrous event was long kept back
by "a timid ministry," and the fluctuating reports probably regulated by
their designs.

The same circumstance occurred on another important event in modern
history, where we may observe the artifice of party writers in
disguising or suppressing the real fact. This was the famous battle of
the Boyne. The French catholic party long reported that Count Lauzun had
won the battle, and that William the Third was killed. Bussy Rabutin in
some memoirs, in which he appears to have registered public events
without scrutinising their truth, says, "I chronicl