SOME BOOKS OF THE WEEK.
[Under this heading tr. Notice such Books of ths vests as hays not iests TIMITTC11 for review in other fora's.]
With Wellington in the Pyrenees. By Brigadier-General Beatson. (Max Goschen. 15s. net.)—Those who are, at the time of writing, eagerly waiting news of the exploits of our troops on the historic battlegrounds of Flanders may well occupy their anxious leisure with General Beatson's admirable study of Wellington's operations against Soult from July 25th to August 2nd, 1813. "Never were the stubborn valour of the British soldier of all ranks of that old army and the quickness and decision of its great commander more signally displayed than in those nine days of desperate and almost continuous fighting amongst the ridges and valleys of those mountains." Our military annals hold few stories more inspiriting than that of the "soldiers' battle" on the Maya ridge, when four thousand British troops held their own for six hours against eighteen thousand of Napoleon's veterans. "They stood like a stone wall," writes an observer of the 92nd Regiment in especial, "overmatched by twenty to one till half their blue bonnets lay as a barrier to the advancing foe. Oh! they fought well that day ! I can see the line now of the killed and wounded stretched on the heather as the living retired closing on the centre." We are confident that our Army of to-day, firmly allied with the descendants of their gallant foes, will worthily maintain the centennial memory of the soldiers "whose stern valour," in :Napier's phrase, "would have graced Thermopylae."
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