gy, which was his greatest characteristic, and which
eminently fitted him for the task of checkmating an enemy's every
move--for a purely defensive campaign. He was always on hand and
always ready; for he never wearied, and he knew his business. To
great combinations he was perhaps unequal. At all events, such are not
associated with his name. The distant scene he did not see; but step
by step he saw his way with absolute precision, and followed it with
unhesitating resolution. With a force inferior throughout, to have
saved, in one campaign, the British fleet, New York, and Rhode Island,
with the entire British army, which was divided between those two
stations and dependent upon the sea, is an achievement unsurpassed
in the annals of naval defensive warfare. It may be added that his
accomplishment is the measure of his adversary's deficiencies.

Howe's squadron had been constituted in 1776 with reference to the
colonial struggle only, and to shallow water, and therefore was
composed, very properly, of cruisers, and of ships of the line of the
smaller classes; there being several fifties, and nothing larger than
a sixty-four. When war with France threatened, the Ministry, having
long warning, committed an unpardonable fault in allowing such a force
to be confronted by one so superior as that which sailed from Toulon,
in April, 1778. This should have been stopped on its way, or, failing
that, its arrival in America should have been preceded by a British
reinforcement. As it was, the government was saved from a tremendous
disaster only by the efficiency of its Admiral and the inefficiency of
his antagonist. As is not too uncommon, gratitude was swamped by the
instinct of self-preservation from the national wrath, excited by
this, and by other simultaneous evidences of neglect. An attempt was
made to disparage Howe's conduct, and to prove that his force was even
superior to that of the French, by adding together the guns in all his
ships, disregarding their classes, or by combining groups of his small
vessels against d'Estaing's larger units. The instrument of the attack
was a naval officer, of some rank but slender professional credit, who
at this most opportune moment underwent a political conversion, which
earned him employment on the one hand, and the charge of apostasy on
the other. For this kind of professional arithmetic, Howe felt and
expressed just and utter contempt. Two and two make four in a primer,
but in the