Spirit of the age. [volume] (Woodstock, Vt.) 1845-1913, 1873-06-05
An Old Camapigner.

The name Of Burgoyne should be
one Of especial interest to Americans I;
for not only did a General Burgoyne
surrender his sword to Gates at Sara.
toga, thus forecasting the happy end
of the War of Independence, but an
other Gen. Burgoyne, son Of the
first, suffered another beating from
American foes at New Orleans. 1t is
a singular fact that the man who
fought with Old Hickory in 1915 was
living only the other day, still hale and
hearty, in London. Sir John Bur
goyne may be said to have inherited
not ouly his pugnacity against us, but
the paternal i'll luck in carrying that
pugnacity into action. Seldom has
even British soldier lived a more
busy, varied and long drawn out Ca
reer> Sir John, whose memoirs have
just been published, about a year and
half subsequent to his death, reached
his majority while Pitt was Prime
Minister and before Napoleon had be-
come Emperor; he lived to see the
third Napolean at Sedan, and several
thriving families Of grand
children Of George III. He entered
the service in the last year Of the last
century, and he only quilted it, when,
in October, 1871, he was borne to an
honored grave, a doughty old fight
er, q clustering, irascible, tyrannical,
but brave and honest soldier, was Sir
John; a typical British general, with
purple face and fierce blue eyes, i'll
domitable in energy, with constitu
ton of iron, Il hatred Of contradiction,
and a pide IN his port, which made
him feared and respected wherever in
fort or field he held command. At
cighty-nine he was as straight and
struttng, as burly and chOleric, as sure
footed and heavy listed as when he
blocladed Malta in 1900 or when,
seven years later, he followed Sir John
Moore to the Northern seas.
The clear-hcaded and stout-bodied
old soldier, as he sat in his cosy Const-
able's room in the Tower of London,
probably looked back with pardonable
pride to the days when he fought the
French on the Douro, and marched
with the victorious allies into Paris !;
but he must have growled surlily when
he thought of the Yankees with their
cotton bales at New Orleans, and
been tempted to shut their curious de,
scendants, in his venerable spite, out
of the Tower walls. From the begin
ming to the end of his long life, Sir
John was seldom without something
to do. Now we find him hotly enga-
ged, rudy and dictatorlal young
Colonel, in the Peninsula war; next he
appears at the mouth of the Mississippi
pi, to be driven thence by future
President; then getting into a huff,
because he did not receive the dis
tinctions he expected, after the peace
with France; now experimenting a
work of military engineering in Ire
land, inspecting Notifications, and try
ing to get the Government to reor-
ganize the army, and at last going,
though past seventy, pell-mell into the
din and glory of the Crimean war;
The bluff old veteran had mania; he
was forever prognosticating an inva-
sion Of France. He was sure the
Prince de Joinville was about to land
on the coast Of Kent with an innumer-
able force; he would stake his com
mission that Napoleon III. had deep
plot to strike at England from St.
Georges Channel; and so he went fu-
ming and fretting from Minister to
Minister, and wrote reams of argu-
ments, and clanked restlessly i'll and
out Of the Parliament House and the
Horse Guards. But he outlived inva-
sion after all, and at more than four
score could fight all his battles over
again by the Tower fresido without a
crutch. His last few years were
crowned with every honor which
Britain showers upon her brave and
loyal warriors, Field Marshall, Const-
able Of the Tower, Knight of the
Bath, his sturdy old breast glittering
with orders, he was still the Burgoyne
of old, whose Independent spirit and
British pluck and beligerency could
only be subdued, not by age, but
death.
CHEERFULNEss.- There is routine