Page:The Life and Correspondence of Major-General Sir Isaac Brock - 1847.djvu/12

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PREFACE.

obstacles he experienced in the vigorous prosecution of the contest—obstacles which his gallant spirit could not brook, and which necessarily exposed "his valuable life" much more than it would have been in offensive operations. He regrets, however, that in the performance of this duty, he must necessarily give pain to the relatives of the late Sir George Prevost, of whose military government in Canada he would much rather have written in praise than in censure.

Brief memoirs are inserted, at the conclusion of the Appendix, of one of Sir Isaac Brock's brothers, the bailiff or chief magistrate of Guernsey, and of two of their nephews, Lieutenant E. W. Tupper, R.N., and Colonel W. De Vic Tupper, of the Chilian service. The prenjature fate of these two promising young officers is, to those who knew them best, still a source of unceasing regret and of embittering remembrance.

The notices of the celebrated Tecumseh interspersed throughout the volume, and the connected sketch of him near its close, can scarcely fail to interest the reader; that sketch is drawn from various and apparently authentic sources, and the Editor believes that it is more copious than any which has yet appeared of this distinguished Indian chief.[1] A perusal will perhaps awaken sympathy in behalf of a much-injured people; it may also tend to remove the films of national prejudice, and prove that virtue and courage are not confined to any particular station or country, but that they may exist as well in the wilds of the forest, as in the cultivated regions of civilization.


Guernsey, January 15, 1845.

  1. I have since learnt that there is a memoir of Tecumseh in Thatcher's Indian Biography, an American work, which I have been unable to procure.—F. B. T.