The Corsairs of France. By C. B. Norman. (Sampson Low
and Co.)—Mr. Norman, who was in the Army, not the Navy, has written this book with the patriotic object of inciting the country to a still vaster outlay on the Navy, by showing how the French privateers, from the time of Louis XIV. to that of the last great war with France, inflicted an enormous amount of damage on English shipping- The book is hardly calculated to effect its object, for what the author really succeeds in showing is that in the days of which he writes privateering was a form of commercial enterprise well within the reach of private purses, and to be effectively carried out in an ordinary vessel, whereas no private enterprise would be sufficient to lit out a fast steaming cruiser of the present day to cope with ships of the regular Navy, or even to overhaul the clippers of our merchant fleets. The author has, however, told some stirring stories of naval fights and adventure, and it is well that we should be reminded in the stories of Jean Bart of Dunkirk, and Duguay Trouin of St. Maio, and others, that the French had their naval heroes not inferior in prowess and skill to our own sea-wolves, and who fought and conquered Englishmen with the odds against them, just as in Marryat's novels the Englishmen always beat the French. It must be confessed, however, that when one has read the account of any one of these corsairs, one has read them all, and that one naval fight, with its cannonades and boarding-parties, is very like another.
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