184 LIFE OF BENJAMIN SILLIMAN. 



sels the counsels of the king and the ministry, not of 

 the people of England, and armies, during that bloody 

 and barbarous crusade against the colonies. The occasion 

 when I saw Earl Moira was at a military review (January 

 18, 1806), both of the regulars and the volunteers. I en- 

 countered it accidentally in a morning walk, in Princes 

 Street, in the new town. I chose a position very near to 

 his lordship, who was on horseback in the full British uni- 

 form of the commander-in-chief of the forces in Scotland. 

 The housing of his saddle was a leopard skin, the holsters 

 were covered, as is usual, with bear-skin, and he wore the 

 three-cornered military hat. He was a noble-looking vet- 

 eran. Although only fifty years old, care, fatigue, and dan- 

 ger had given him the aspect of sixty years. His face was 

 furrowed and marked by anxiety. I studied him intently, 

 and thought to myself, " then you are the man who, as an 

 active and brave young officer, associated with Col. Tarle- 

 ton, and both, acting under Lord Cornwallis, desolated 

 South Carolina, and hanged one of its most estimable citi- 

 zens." I was so near that I could have heard every word, 

 had he spoken, but he was entirely silent. It was a mere 

 reconnoissance of troops, exercising and passing before him 

 in review by hundreds and thousands, a grand and beau- 

 tiful spectacle ; with all the pomp and apparatus of war 

 it gave a spectator a vivid impression of the reality of 

 those sanguinary scenes, so falsely called the fields of 

 glory. The mute artillery, with burnished brass cannon, 

 attended by their gunners and matrosses with their cais- 

 sons, and all their machinery, passed quietly along, a harm- 

 less pageant, but ready to wake the thunders of war. 



The Earl of Moira appears not to have lost his dislike 

 to the Americans, even when the contest was finished. 

 Col. Trumbull told me that when one of his historical pict- 

 ures I believe it was Bunker Hill was being exhibited 

 in Somerset House, and was visited by the young army offi- 

 cers, Earl 'Moira caused them to be informed that the visit- 



