With 16,000 British troops, Hanoverians to the like number, and Hessians 6,000, together near 40,000, not to speak of Dutch at all, surely one might manage Dunkirk, if not something still better?
It is AFTER Maillebois's departure that these dreadful exertions, coopering of water-casks, pumping all Sunday, go on at Gravesend: 'Swift, oh, be swift, while time is!' And Generalissimo-Plenipotentiary Stair, who has run over beforehand, is ardent enough upon the Dutch; his eloquence fiery and incessant: 'Magnanimous High Mightinesses, was there, will there again be, such a chance?
The Cause of Human Liberty may be secured forever! Dunkirk--or what is Dunkirk even?
Between us and Paris, there is nothing, now that Maillebois is off on such an errand! Why should not we play Marlborongh again, and teach them a little what Invasion means?
It is ourselves alone that can hinder it! Now, I say, or never!' "Stair was a pupil of Marlborough's; is otherwise a shining kind of man; and has immense things in his eye, at this time.

They say, what is not unlikely, he proposed an Interview with Friedrich now at Aachen; would come privately, to 'take the waters' for a day or two,--while Maillebois was on his new errand, and such a crisis had risen.

But Friedrich, anxious to be neutral and give no offence, politely waived such honor.
Lord Stair was thought to be something of a General, in fact as well as in costume;--and perhaps he was so.

And had there been a proper COUNTESS of Stair, or new Sarah Jennings,--to cover gently, by art-magic, the Britannic Majesty and Fat Boy under a tub; and to put Britain, and British Parliament and resources, into Stair's hand for a few years,--who knows what Stair too might have done! A Marlborough in the War Arts,--perhaps still less in the Peace ones, if we knew the great Marlborough,--he could not have been.

But there is in him a recognizable flash of magnanimity, of heroic enterprise and purpose; which is highly peculiar in that sordid element.