improvements as relate to the heads under which the narrative is carried on have already been described. Nearly the whole of the tabular matter in each volume has been transferred to an Appendix at the end; where, also, the Annual Abstracts of the British navy are now placed, instead of being put up in a separate quarto volume. The notes have almost all been incorporated with the text; and subjects connected in interest, but disunited in the former mode of arrangement, have been brought together. All the accounts have been revised, and many of them greatly enlarged. Upwards of 200 cases, chiefly boat and shore attacks, have been added to this edition. Among the improvements, is an epitome, under the head Of CONTENTS, of each year's proceedings, with a reference to the page at which the action or case is to be found.

In other naval histories, the name of the English captain is not always added to that of the ship he commands; and even when it is added, the christian name is seldom given. With respect to French captains, the omission of their names is generally preferable to the attempt to insert them; because, almost invariably, they are so mispelt, as to defeat every purpose of identity. In both these points, I was particularly careful in the first edition of this work; and I have, in the present edition, at incalculable pains, inserted the christian and surname of every first lieutenant in an action of note; of every officer killed and wounded, in any action whatever; of every officer present (where obtainable) in any attack by boats, or in operations against the enemy on shore. When it is known, that these names comprise some thousands, that the surnames of part only, and the christian names of scarcely any, are to be found in the gazette-letters, some idea may be formed of the difficulties I have experienced in consummating this part of my new plan. I will venture to say, that the Board of Admiralty themselves would have found considerable difficulty in adding the proper christian names to such a mass of surnames. A few christian names, and a few only, I have been obliged to leave in blank, and in others I may have erred; but I have used my utmost endeavours to be accurate in all. Let me here mention,

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