True, the Spanish Navy got well lamed in the business; Spanish Fleet blown mostly to destruction,--"Roads of Messina, 10th August, 1718," by the dexterous Byng (a creditable handy figure both in Peace and War) and his considerable Sea-fight there:--if that was an object to Spain or mankind, that was accomplished.

But the "War," except that many men were killed in it, and much vain babble was uttered upon it, ranks otherwise with that of Don Quixote, for conquest of the enchanted Helmet of Mambrino, which when looked into proved to be a Barber's Basin.
Congress of Cambrai, and other high Gatherings and convulsive Doings, which all proved futile, and look almost like Lapland witchcraft now to us, will have to follow this futility of a War.

It is the first of a long series of enchanted adventures, on which Kaiser Karl,--duelling with that Spanish Virago, Satan's Invisible World in the rear of her,--has now embarked, to the woe of mankind, for the rest of his life.
The first of those terrifico-ludicrous paroxysms of crisis into which he throws the European Universe; he with his Enchanted Barber's-Basin enterprises;--as perhaps was fit enough, in an epoch presided over by the Nightmares.

Congress of Cambrai is to follow; and much else equally spectral.

About all which there will be enough to say anon! For it was a fearful operation, though a ludicrous one, this of the poor Kaiser; and it tormented not the big Nations only, and threw an absurd Europe into paroxysm after paroxysm; but it whirled up, in its wide-weeping skirts, our little Fritz and his Sister, and almost dashed the lives out of them, as we shall see! Which last is perhaps the one claim it now has to a cursory mention from mankind.
Byng's Sea-fight, done with due dexterity of manoeuvring, and then with due emphasis of broadsiding, decisive of that absurd War, and almost the one creditable action in it, dates itself 10th August, 1718.