My reason for addressing you is, that the appearance of this communication, or a remark of your own in your widely diffused periodical, may possibly meet the eye of some individual willing and able to clothe Bernardi in an English garb.

M.L.T.

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THE SKETCH-BOOK.

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THE HON.  MRS. NAPIER.

  “Let me embrace thee, good old chronicle,
   That hast so long walked hand in hand with time.”

You ask me for a single reminiscence of the olden time, which may challenge your sympathy for female suffering, and is as yet unhacknied.  You shall have one.

The recent perusal of a file of old Newspapers has brought it freshly to memory, and if your sympathy can be excited by the recital of an event of a private nature, which gave occasion in its time to deep and heartfelt regret, and occurred towards the close of the revolutionary war; I will detain you for a few moments by reverting to the year 1780, and by taking you with me within the British lines at New York.

It is only an incident, I confess, but it is of a character to furnish a scene for the “mind’s eye,” an incident which, though it could never occupy a very prominent place upon the canvass, might prove itself a fine auxiliary, spreading a sweet and tender effect over the more distant parts of the picture.  There are many similar events which seem fated to be lost in the rapid changes of feeling and the constant revolutions of business; many too that would give interest to the tale, and pathos to the ballad.  It is not generally known that some of the elite of the English nobility served in this country during the revolution, but the fact may be ascertained by referring to the biographical notices which from time to time appear in foreign publications.

Many gallant young men, who were the only hope of their families, and made their first essay in arms against their transatlantic brethren, were doomed to fall at the onset of their career.

Some of the choicest blood of English chivalry bedewed the plains of Brandywine, and valour, birth and merit were alike an unavailing sacrifice in the struggle at Saratoga.

There was one distinguished family in England, which lost its head at this memorable battle, and in which the voice of weeping was heard upon the advent of its melancholy tidings.  I allude to that of Sir Francis Carr Clerke, the aid de camp of general Burgoyne, who, although he possessed hereditary honours, and a fair estate in Lancashire, was at the age of twenty nine mortally wounded in the wilds of America, and now sleeps in an obscure grave near that of the unfortunate Frazer.

Several of our prints have lately copied an obituary of the Earl of Balcarras, who was also at Saratoga and had two remarkable rencontres with general Arnold, the one, when at the head of the British Light Infantry, he defended himself against his desperate valour, and the other when he subsequently refused to recognise him as an acquaintance at the court of St. James, even upon the introduction of the King himself.