g about a reconciliation. The best plan which
was formed in the office was one which was given in by General Arnold.
The inconsistent orders given to Generals Howe and Burgoyne could not be
accounted for except in a way which it must be difficult for any person
who is not conversant with the negligence of office to comprehend.
Among many singularities he had a particular aversion to being put out
of his way on any occasion. He had fixed to go into Kent or
Northamptonshire at a particular hour, and to call on his way at his
office to sign the despatches, all of which had been settled, to both
these generals. By some mistake, those to General Howe were not fair
copied, and, upon his growing impatient at it, the office, which was a
very idle one, promised to send it to the country after him, while they
despatched the others to General Burgoyne, expecting that the others
could be expedited before the packet sailed with the first, which,
however, by some mistake, sailed without them, and the wind detained the
vessel which was ordered to carry the rest. Hence came General
Burgoyne's defeat, the French declaration, and the loss of thirteen
colonies." What, indeed, could have been, even _a priori_, greater
fatuity than to entrust the direction of a war to a man who years
before, on the continent of Europe, had over and over again proved
himself to be utterly destitute of every military quality--of whose
general repute the following lines, quoted by Shelburne (from a
newspaper of the time of the Seven Years' War), with the caustic
commentary, "It is feared there was too much foundation for what is
insinuated, and more need not be said," are a sufficiently suggestive
indication?--

All pale and trembling on the Gallic shore,
His lordship gave the word, but could no more:
Too small the corps, too few the numbers were,
Of such a general to demand the care.
To some mean chief, some major or a brig.,[D]
He left his charge that night, nor cared a fig.
'Twixt life and scandal, honor and the grave,
Quickly deciding which was best to save,
Back to the ships he ploughed the swelling wave.

Our view of Shelburne would be but a one-sided one if it regarded him
solely and wholly as a public character, and took no count of the
domestic and private side of him. We are proportionately grateful for
some extracts from a diary kept at the time by his wife, Lady Shelburne,
which her great-grandson has been ab