George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 4, 15th edition.

[294] invited to take the command, but declined. Three

chap XIII.} 1758.

several expeditions were set in motion. The circumspect, impenetrable Jeffrey Amherst, a man of solid judgment and respectable ability in action, with James Wolfe, was to join the fleet under Boscawen, for the siege of Louisburg; the conquest of the Ohio valley was intrusted to Forbes; and against Ticonderoga and Crown Point, Abercrombie, a friend of Bute, was commander-in-chief, though Pitt selected the young Lord Howe to be the soul of the enterprise.

None of the officers won favor like Howe and Wolfe. To high rank and great connections Howe added manliness, humanity, a capacity to discern merit, and judgment to employ it. As he reached America, he adopted the austere simplicity befitting forest warfare. Wolfe, then thirty-one years old, had been eighteen years in the army; was at Dettingen and Fontenoy, and won laurels at Laffeldt. Merit made him at two-and-twenty a lieutenant-colonel, and his active genius improved the discipline of his battalion. He was at once authoritative and humane, severe yet indefatigably kind; modest, but aspiring and conscious of ability. The brave soldier dutifully loved and obeyed his widowed mother, and his gentle nature saw visions of happiness in scenes of domestic love, even while he kindled at the prospect of glory, as ‘gunpowder at fire.’

On the twenty-eighth day of May, Amherst, after a most unusually long passage, reached Halifax. The fleet had twenty-two ships of the line and fifteen frigates; the army at least ten thousand effective men. Isaac Barre, who had lingered a subaltern eleven years till Wolfe rescued him from hopeless