minary obstacles could be got over. At Barcelona she had, in the
course of last summer, doubly busy ever since Mollwitz time, got
into equipment some 15,000 men; but could not by any method get them
across,--owing to the British Fleets, which hung blockading this place
and that; blockading Cadiz especially, where lay her Transport-ships
and War-ships, at this interesting juncture. Fleury's cunctations were
disgusting to the ardent mind; and here now, still more insuperable, are
the British Fleets; here--and a pest to him!--is your Admiral Haddock,
blockading Cadiz, with his Seventy-fours!

"But again, on the other or Pragmatic side, there were cunctations. The
Sardinian Majesty, Charles Emanuel of Savoy, holding the door of
the Alps, was difficult to bargain with, in spite of British
Subsidies;--stood out for higher door-fees, a larger slice of the
Milanese than could be granted him; had always one ear open for France,
too; in short, was tedious and capricious, and there seemed no bringing
him to the point of drawing sword for her Hungarian Majesty. In the end,
he was brought to it, by a stroke of British Art,--such to the admiring
Gazetteer and Diplomatic mind it seemed;--equal to anything we have
since heard of, on the part of perfidious Albion.

"One day, 'middle of October last,' the Seventy-fours of Haddock and
perfidious Albion,--Spanish official persons, looking out from Cadiz
Light-house, ask themselves, 'Where are they? Vanished from these
waters; not a Seventy-four of them to be seen!'--Have got foul in the
underworks, or otherwise some blunder has happened; and the blockading
Fleet of perfidious Albion has had to quit its post, and run to
Gibraltar to refit. That, I guess, was the Machiavellian stroke of Art
they had done; without investigating Haddock and Company [as indignant
Honorable Members did], I will wager, That and nothing more!

"In any case, the Termagant, finding no Seventy-fours there, and the
wind good, despatches swiftly her Transports and War-ships to Barcelona;
swiftly embarks there her 15,000, France cautiously assisting; and lands
them complete, 'by the middle of December,' Haddock feebly opposing, on
the Genoa coast: 'Have at the Milanese, my men!' Which obliges Charles
Emanuel to end his cunctations, and rank at once in defence of that
Country, [Adelung, ii. 535, 538 (who believes in the "stroke of art"):
what kind of "art" it was, learn sufficiently in _Gentleman's Magazine,_
&c. of th