Rambles about Portsmouth. Sketches of persons, localities, and incidents of two centuries: principally from tradition and unpublished documents. By Charles W. Brewster.

92 RAMBLES ABOUT PORTSMOUTH.
There are some fifty or sixty copies of the "Gazette" and
"Oracle," of various dates in the years 1796,'7 and'8, containing a large amount of interesting matter, much of which
has passed into history, and much more equally worthy of
being placed on permanent record, that, but for its preservation through some such method as this, would have been
consigned to oblivion. Among the state papers are the
annual and other messages of Presidents Washington and
Adams, and the messages and proclamations of John Taylor
Gilman, Governor of New Hampshire, and Increase Sumner, Governor of Massachusetts. There is also a letter of
the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts to General Washington,
signed by the familiar names of Paul Revere, Grand Master, and Isaiah Thomas, Senior Grand Master, with General
Washington's reply-the original of which is at this day
one of their most valued relics.
Much prominence is given to the interesting events then
transpiring in Europe. France was in a transition state
between the period known as the Reign of Terror, and
that when Napoleon assumed the reins of government and
obliterated the last vestiges of what had been little else
than an empty name-the French Republic. " Citizen Bon,
aparte, General-in-Chief of the Army of Italy," was wine
ning for himself a name that will exist through all time.
Many of his official letters to the Executive Directory, the
then existing government of France, are published in full
among others, that relating to the battle of Lodi, in which
while giving due credit to Berthier, Massena, D'Allemagne,
and others of his generals for their heroic daring in the
passage of the bridge across the Adda, modestly omits
even the slightest allusion to his own participation in that
wovld-renowned event. I find in these papers many proofs
of the corrections of history in relation to the Little Cor.
poral. Here is a confirmation of the truth of one of the
many anecdotes respecting him, related by himself in one