MONDE TO EDITH.

Danville, Jan. 20, 1852.

He went yesterday morning early; and since that time I go from one chair to another, or from one window to another, sighing, and with untold quantities of lead in my heart. I am disposed not to write, not to talk, or do any thing, but turn my eyes Boston-ward, and think of him.

But I shall not be so stupid! I shall put a little stiff barrier—my own flinty will, of course—between me and him, so that he shall be there at Boston, and I here, following diligently my duty. I shall lay this letter by, and finish my story for Mr. S——. Then I shall ask uncle to ride with me over to see Bessy’s feeble sister, Mrs. Thornton, who has a whole roomfull of little children to see to; and to whom an hour’s service, now and then, at making or mending, is a blessed godsend. Then I will take my sewing in, and sit a few hours with Paulina, whose neuralgia still afflicts her. I will stay and take supper with her; and if she is cross, as she is often of late, it shall not hurt me, since I will be good-natured.

In the long evening I will be here; I will snap corn, pass round apples; sit now at aunt’s feet, help her in her sewing-plans, and then at uncle’s, talking with him of Kossuth, Clay, Cass, and Webster.

When they go, if I am in wakeful mood, I will write here until I am in a drowsy one, and then go to my rest, humbly commending myself to God as his servant, his follower; not the servant, not the follower of any mortal idol whatever. Thus shall my soul be kept loyal unto itself and unto Him—and not the less loyal unto the good one who has chosen me.

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Ten o’clock, evening.

Uncle set us and our great basket, full of good things, down at the door of the Thorntons, and himself rode on to Hardwick, where he had business that must keep him until after dinner, as he believed. The pale mother was “glad and thankful to see us,” but a little flurried to have us find her children in such disorderly array; and her house, too—it is a bit of a house to hold ten people, and made of logs. But we took the children to us, gave them apples and doughnuts, and soon had Mrs. Thornton’s great work-basket between us. We finished off three little garments that were on the way, and put on ten patches here and there; Alice, aunt’s bright-eyed namesake, counted them. We cut off the long hair of the girl’s, and made the short hair of the boys shorter; and then, when they had all been washed and combed, saw that there is nowhere a prettier, brighter family of children. Aunt, meantime, was like a bee, dipping into this and into that; dragging roll after roll of pieces from her basket, whenever a patch was needed; and helping Mrs. Thornton warm up the pudding and the pies we had brought, and fry the sausages and broil the steak.

Mr. Thornton and his eldest boy came in from the woods just at the right moment—just as all the steaming dishes were ready to go to the table. Uncle, too, came in the right time; in fact there was never so lucky a day; every thing happened at the right time, and in the right way. There was never so good a dinner; or, at any rate, this was what we all said, smacking our lips a little, and holding out our plates for more.

“This will do us all a great deal of good,” said Mrs. Thornton, when we were putting on our things.

“And us, too, Mrs. Thornton!” said aunt; in a hearty way. “I havn’t had a pleasanter time for many a day. And I don’t believe Monde has.”

“No, aunt, I havn’t.”

And it was the truth, Edith. Happy as I have been with Alfred Cullen, I was as happy without him—just thinking of him now and then, as I sat there putting on patches, and doing with right good will whatever came into my way to do.

Let me tell you a little story, dear Edith, and then I am done. Two or three days ago, at about this time of the evening, there sat on this spot, a gentleman of fine features, of easy, manly bearing, and a lady. The lady was not beautiful. The best that could be said of her on the score of beauty, her sincere friend, Edith Manners, had said to her one day; “You are not so homely as you think, Miss Monde. You have beautiful hair, beautiful teeth—and I think a great deal of one’s having pretty teeth. Your form is excellent; and your ways have an abundance of grace and ease in them.”

This was all Edith Manners could say to her friend; and more than many others would have said, who knew her less familiarly; for she had, in truth, grace and ease in her manners only when she had grace and quietness in her soul; that it was sometimes said of her by those she would gladly have pleased, “I don’t fancy her; she has a hard manner.”

Well, they sat here, those two, in their easy-chairs, and rocked and talked, with their eyes steadily on each other’s face. He held her hand in his, and kissed the fingers ever and anon as he talked and listened. At length he folded her close to his heart, and, with his lips on hers, called her—his “beloved!”

The next morning, when they met here, on the spot so sacred and dear to them both now, he took her to him once more, and said, “When will my Monde be all my own?”

She, “pliant as a reed,” and with her arms clinging to him, answered, “Any time, dear Alfred—any time!” because, you see, she felt then, Edith, that she could not well live without him a day.

But it seems to have been demonstrated that she can—for he left her the following morning, after it had been agreed that they will both write immediately to her parents; that, their replies being propitious, he will accompany her to them in one month, and, in six months more, he will receive her at their hands; that, after two or three weeks spent there, he will bring her to his own home, to pass the rest of her happy life by his side.

And here ends my story. Only I must tell you how good uncle and aunt are. Aunt wept for joy, as if she would suffocate, when Alfred, standing close before me, with my hand in his, told her and uncle our resolves. Uncle, also, had moist eyes. He stood one moment near us, the next he walked the floor. I presume he thought of the dear Alice. I did; and longed that the blessings of her glorified spirit might be upon our union.

“You shall be as a daughter to me in all respects, Monde,” said uncle, speaking with difficulty. “I have loved you as if you were my daughter, ever since you came. Whatever you need to have done, I shall attend to—if you will come to me always, as though I were your father. And you will, Monde?”

I answered the imploring voice, the imploring eyes, by catching the hand extended to me in both my own, and covering it with grateful tears and kisses.

I have had letters from home within a few days. And mother wrote—“You will feel quite lost when you come. We’ve moved into a large and beautiful tenement on B. street, close by the Haydens, and fitted the front parlor all up new, taking the old parlor furniture for the sitting-room. I hope you’ll like these changes better than poor Kit does. Your father brought her over here in a basket, covered, that she might not see the way and be running back. But we missed her, and your father went over to see if he could find her at the old rooms, and there the poor creature was, prowling about the open cellar window, as lean and hungry-looking as a wolf. Your father worries half of his time about her, when he is in the house. I really think he wishes he had stayed there too. Now that it is becoming an old thing, I see that he is often tired of so much to do. He gets the best of business, I mean business that pays the best; but his responsibilities wear him, and he has trouble with some of his clients. When he has been working day and night for them, they are as likely as any way to think that he hasn’t done enough.

“I have my troubles, too. I ought to be ashamed to complain, I suppose, now we are doing so well, but when you come you will see, as I do, that there are vexations for those who have enough of every thing, as well as for the poor. Perhaps you will think, as your father and I are sometimes inclined to, that it isn’t worth while to look for much real, lasting happiness in this world, or for any benefit that hasn’t its tax.”

Yes, one sees how it is with my poor parents; poor in their adversity, poor now in their prosperity. They look to the outward conditions of their lot for a great good that shall be final; for a life serene and well-satisfied that shall make its way into them, from without; from the new friends, the fast-filling purse, the freshly adorned home. Would that they and all the world could know that every good, every real enjoyment of life, is born of God in the soul. There Love, the Divine Life, the Artist-Life, the Blessed Life, whatever we call it, has its genial, its beloved home. Ah, Heaven! to have this love within us, so that we must burst forth into singing; to have it beaming thence upon our friends, our home, upon the earth, crowning them all with glory and light!—this is to know how good God is, in that He made and endowed us specially for this kind of life. Only we have sought out many inventions; have picked up one thing and another on our right hand and on our left, calling the laborious, unseemly patch-work we have in this way made up, Life. That we must pay a tax grievous to be borne on this, is one of the merciful dispensations, for it brings us to look for that to come, which will come without price, which will surely come, if we will accept nothing else, if we will wait for it, and receive it like little children.

Thine, dear,

Monde Hedelquiver.

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A MILITARY BIOGRAPHY.

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BY WILLIAM DOWE.

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The last survivor of those celebrated chieftains who flashed their swords and waved their crests on the great battle-field of Europe in the Napoleonic war, has gone to his place. Half a pound of indigestible venison has done what the hostile bayonets and bullets of the French and the Mahrattas failed to do, in a military career of twenty years. Arthur, Duke of Wellington, born in the same year with the greater Corsican, outlived him over thirty years, and died at Walmer Castle, on the 14th of September last. He witnessed a great many of the most extraordinary doings of the last half century, and was, himself—a great portion of them—quorum pars magna fuit. He hurried on the current of events which led to the fall of the great Mongol throne of Tamerlane and Arungzebe; and his hand gave the last bloody stroke which overthrew that of Napoleon.

Arthur Wesley or Wellesley—for the name seems to have been elongated, as a matter of dignity, like that of Abram of old—was born at Dangan, in Ireland, on the first of May, 1769—a fortnight before Bonaparte saw the light upon the sheet of Gobelin tapestry which represented “the tale of Troy divine.” His grandfather was Garret Wesley, an Irish gentleman of good family, made Baron of Mornington by George II., in 1747. The Wesley family has given the world another great man. It is stated that John Wesley, the preacher, belonged to it; a man whose evangelical renown is as immortal as that of the soldier. The earldom of Mornington was not a wealthy one; and, after the death of her husband, the countess—mother of the British Gracchi (for the Marquis Wellesley was also famous)—brought up her four children, of whom Arthur was the youngest, in very narrow circumstances.

At an early age the latter, not having benefited much from his education, said he would be a soldier, and was sent to Angiers in France, where he studied the science of military engineering, under the famous Pignerol, about the time Napoleon was doing the same at Brienne. Great elements of future storms were at that moment fomenting in the kingdom of France! At the age of eighteen, Arthur Wellesley having returned home, got his ensigncy. By purchase and quick promotion, he was lieutenant-colonel in his twenty-fourth year. The first campaign he engaged in was as disastrous as his last was fortunate. The enemy was the same. In 1794 he joined the army of the Duke of York, then striving to drive the French republicans out of the Netherlands. But his royal highness was driven out himself in 1795. The soft young bishop of Osnaburg was not the man to cope with the fiery generals of the Convention. Thus ended Arthur Wellesley’s first campaign.

The scene now changes to India. From a mere foothold and factory, on the shore, the English had in half a century won, thanks to Lord Clive, a vast extent of territory round the three Presidencies of Bombay, Madras and Calcutta. A company of merchants had done all this—the East India Company—whose chartered monopoly existed up to 1814. At the close of the last century the empire of the Mongols had dwindled away, and the Mahrattas, a wild people who rose fifty years before, possessed a large portion of the appanage of the Great Mogul. This last was dozing out his life in the palace of his renowned ancestors at Delhi. His empire in falling had broken into pieces. The Mahrattas formed one of these, and another, was the kingdom of Mysore, made so famous by the usurpation and bravery of Hyder Alee and his son, the Sultaun Tippoo Saib.

In 1798 the Earl of Mornington went out to India as governor-general, and his brother, the colonel, accompanied him. Their earliest attention was given to Tippoo, who, from the table-land of Mysore made the Carnatic tremble at the name of his formidable cavalry. He was also in close connection with the French, and had given them repeated assurances that he would join his forces with theirs and annihilate the British power in India. Therefore, in March 1799, the Anglo-Indian army under General Harris, 37,000 strong, marched toward Tippoo, fully determined to put him out of the way. The advance was fiercely obstructed by the spahis of Mysore till, manoeuvring and skirmishing repeatedly, the invading army had reached the walls of Tippoo’s capital, Seringapatam. Between the British camp and the city lay some ruined villages, an aqueduct and a grove of cocoas and bamboos, which were desperately defended, and taken with great difficulty and loss. After a month’s delay outside the city, the besiegers prepared to get into it, by storm, through a breach made in the wall. French troops and engineers in the pay of Tippoo made the siege of Seringapatam a formidable undertaking. But a forlorn hope, crossing a ditch under fire, scrambled into the breach, and, other troops following, Seringapatam was taken, resisting furiously. Tippoo had gone out early in the morning to the outer rampart, to look at the camp. While there, he was surprised to hear that the English were entering the breach. Calling for his carbine, he hurried with his guard to the place, and on the rampart met his soldiers running before the stormers. He bid them stop, with a loud voice, and ordered them to rush back again; at the same time he fired his carbine repeatedly on the English. But the fugitives went by, and left him with a small body of officers and attendants, still firing on the assaulters. At last he turned to fly from the rampart to the gate of the inner fort. Hurrying through this he saw the English within and received two balls in the breast. He fell from his horse, and was then dragged from the crowd and put upon a palanquin. The Europeans soon rushed in, and a soldier laying hold of the diamond-studded sword-belt worn by the sultaun, attempted to drag it off. A servant, as he was making his escape, turned and saw Tippoo make a sweep of his sword at the man and cut him on the knee, whereupon the latter put his piece to his shoulder and shot the sultaun dead through the temple. More carnage followed in this spot till at last the fort was won. When Tippoo’s palace and his sons were taken, the conquerors sought the chief himself; the cry went that he was dead; and that night, by torchlight, General Baird and his officers proceeded to search for the body in the gateway. About three hundred dead bodies were dragged away, and then the killedar of the palace recognized the half-stripped body of Tippoo. His splendid turban, jacket and sword-belt were gone. When dragged out, the body was so warm, and the open eyes looked so life-like, that Colonel Wellesley laid his hands on the heart and the wrist before he could believe it was a corpse. An officer present cut off from the right arm a talisman in fine flowered silk—inclosing an amulet of a silvery substance, and a piece of parchment with Persian and Arabic words. Napoleon also wore an amulet, said to be that of Charlemagne.

After the fall of Tippoo, the little grandson of the rajah whom Hyder Alee had deposed, forty years before, was put in his place, and held his throne in subserviency to the English. A Mysore chief named Doondhia still attempted to hold out, but Colonel Wellesley defeated and killed him.

Next came the Mahratta war. The chief of the Mahratta confederacy—the Peishwa—resided at Poonah, his capital; acknowledging, in a shadowy and nominal way the supremacy of the shadowy Mogul emperor, Shah Allum, who dozed away his life at Delhi. But the peishwa’s authority was over-shadowed by his powerful subject, Ras Scindiah, who wielded the military power of the Mahrattas to make war or peace with the English. The latter, now, either thought he had been assisting Tippoo, or feared he might be a troublesome neighbor in connection with the French; so they prepared to take advantage of events. Holkar, another Mahratta chief, having gone to war against Scindiah and thrown the kingdom into confusion, the poor peishwa ran away from Poonah and put himself under British protection. The case was therefore a clear one. In 1803 General Wellesley proceeded, at the head of an army, into the Mahratta territory and restored the peishwa. In the same year, Lord Lake marched northward to Delhi, drove out the French, who had there exercised a certain influence over Shah Allum and bringing forth that poor, blind monarch (one of his Mahratta rebels had scooped out his eyes with a dagger!) placed him on the imperial musnud of India, under British protection! Meantime, the Mahratta chiefs who would not submit to the Anglified fled pieshwa, were to be punished. Wellesley marched against Scindiah and the Rajah of Berar, and overthrew them at Assaye; and Lord Lake demolished the armies of Holkar. The whole peninsula of India was now virtually subject to the British.

The East India Company gave Wellesley a sword worth one thousand guineas, for his services, and William Pitt made him a knight. In 1805 he returned to England with his brother, now Marquis Wellesley. In that year he became a member of the House of Commons. In 1806 he was again engaged in hot work. He married Elisabeth Pakenham, daughter of Lord Longford and sister of the general who fell at New Orleans; and was then sent on the Copenhagen expedition. England, dreading that Napoleon, who now bestrode Europe like a colossus, would lay hands on the fleet of Denmark for the purposes of invasion, resolved, with the promptness and decision which distinguish her in difficult emergencies, to lay hands on it first. An armament under Lord Cathcart and Admiral Gambier went for the ships, and receiving a refusal bombarded Copenhagen in the most terrible manner; while Sir Arthur Wellesley manoeuvred and beat the Danes on shore. In the midst of a general conflagration of the city the fleet was surrendered and carried away. All Europe—Napoleon and the French particularly—cried out against this high-handed business. It is still a great theme of discussion at historical societies in England, where it is not yet decided.

We have now come to the Peninsular War. Napoleon had declared all Europe in a state of blockade and forbade the nations to trade with England. But they would trade. He then resolved to take the coast kingdoms of Spain and Portugal into his own power; and seized his opportunity. In 1807, in consequence of the household quarrels of the imbecile Spanish Bourbons, he marched his troops into Spain under pretence of assisting Charles IV. against his son Ferdinand. Charles was induced to abdicate. Napoleon sent for Ferdinand; and in April 1808, Charles, his queen, Ferdinand, Don Carlos and Godoy were together, in a room at Bayonne, in presence of Napoleon; all the family in his clutches! The queen abused Ferdinand in the most shocking manner for his conduct to his father, who, she said, was not his father, after all! The interview was a terrible one—the calm, imperturbable face of Napoleon looking sternly on. Modern annals do not furnish the painter with a finer historic subject. Napoleon took the father and son, sent them to separate prisons in France, and put his brother Joseph on the throne. But, as Delavigne says:

The haughty people of Spain ran to arms to expel the foreign garrisons. England loudly cheered on the furies of insurrection in the Peninsula, and sent Sir Arthur Wellesley, in 1808, with an army of 9000 men to coÖperate with the Spaniards. When he reached Corunna he found that the Junta, relying upon the strength of the patriots, were not desirous to receive the troops. But they advised the general to proceed to Portugal and attempt to drive the French from that country, which they had likewise occupied. Sir Arthur proceeded to Mondego Bay, a little to the north of Lisbon, then garrisoned by the French. It was of this landing that Sir Walter Scott sung, in his “Vision of Don Roderick:”

Sir Arthur repulsed the French in the engagement of Rolica. He also beat them at the battle of Vimiera, during which Sir Harry Burrard, his superior in command, arrived on the ground; but left the honor of the day to Wellesley. Junot, Duke of Abrantes, then sent a flag of truce and offered to evacuate Portugal. The convention of Cintra followed, signed by Sir Hew Dalrymple, Sir H. Burrard and Wellesley, on the part of England; and the French army was sent home in British vessels. This treaty was vehemently denounced in England, and public opinion pelted the three generals. Byron alludes to the matter in Childe Harold:

Byron was mistaken in supposing the treaty was signed in the house of the Marquis of Marialva. Another and a greater disaster was mourned, soon after, in England. Sir John Moore who had marched, at the close of 1808, at the head of a small army into the heart of Spain, where he was disappointed in the Spanish assistance he expected, and threatened with destruction by the victorious French armies who had taken Madrid, began his disastrous retreat of 250 miles toward the sea, and arrived, at last, at Corunna, where his harassed and tormented spirit found rest.

A couple of months after this event—in April 1809—Sir Arthur Wellesley was at Lisbon, in command of the British and Portuguese armies. Marching rapidly northward he made the passage of the Douro in face of the enemy—one of the most remarkable achievements of the war—and entered the city of Oporto. The French fled away in such a hurry that Sir Arthur ate the dinner cooked for Marshal Soult. Following up his success immediately, he drove the marshal precipitately out of Portugal. In July, he crossed the frontier into Spain; where, having formed a junction with Cuesta—a respectable old general who always moved about in a carriage—he marched to Talavera. Here the allied armies met the French, under King Joseph, Jourdain, Victor and Sabastiani. The latter were the assailants in a series of brilliant and desperate movements; but they were boldly confronted and baffled by the admirable strategy of the English commander. The French fell back on the night of the battle. But Sir Arthur fell back in a week, and left all his wounded to the care of Mortier, at Talavera. Dreading that the junction of Soult and Ney might cut off his communication with Portugal, he retired to the frontiers of Spain by the Tagus.

Byron has celebrated or satirised Talavera in Childe Harold:

Sir Arthur was now created Lord Wellington—though the English did not like to hear of the retreating movements. The French generals were victorious in Spain, and the year 1809 closed darkly on the hopes of the junta.

In the beginning of 1810, they were almost driven into the sea. Upon the shore of it the enemy besieged them in Cadiz. Lord Wellington was with the allied army on the frontiers of Portugal; and when Massena, having taken Ciudad Rodrigo and Almeida, advanced upon the latter kingdom, the English general retired, but with his face to the marshal. In this attitude, he hurled back the French, in the brilliant affair of Busaco; and so continued to retire till he reached the sea, which, every where seems to wear a friendly face for the English. Here Wellington fortified himself within the impregnable mountain lines of Torres Vedras—extending thirty miles along the coast, from the Tagus to the mouth of the Sissandro. In this position he had the English fleet at his back. During his retreat he had laid waste Portugal—cleared the country of every thing that could support or assist Massena. The sufferings of the poor Portuguese—burghers and peasantry—were pitiable. But the French army suffered most. At the close of the year, weakened by want of provisions and desertion, Massena struck his camp and retired. In the beginning of March, Wellington quitted his mountain fortress and followed him. The country was extensively wasted by Massena in his retreat, and in April, 1811, the French were forced out of Portugal.

This year was consumed in a series of bloody and fruitless movements.

In the beginning of 1812, Wellington besieged and took Ciudad Rodrigo, and, on the 6th of April, he stormed Badajos—one of the most sanguinary affairs of the kind in modern warfare. Soult, who was advancing to relieve that fortress, retired on hearing of its fall, and, being followed by the allies, the great battle of Salamanca was fought in July. Marmont was defeated and lost his right arm; his dispatches to the minister at war were signed with his left hand. The blockade of Cadiz was now raised, at the end of twenty-one months, and the junta felt more at ease. Lord Wellington made a splendid entry into Madrid, and was hailed as the deliverer of the Peninsula. But it was not yet delivered. He pursued the French northward as far as Burgos, which place he besieged and tried to take by assault. But hearing that the French were greatly reinforced and fearing his communication with Portugal might be cut off, he raised the siege and retraced his steps in October, pursued in turn by Soult.

Then began the English retreat to the Douro; disgraceful as well as disastrous. The confusion, bad conduct, and insubordination of the army were extraordinary; it seemed completely demoralized by the reverse. The soldiers thought they were advancing to the French frontiers; instead of which, they were carried back again across Spain and Portugal. Thousands of the men deserted; and Wellington said his troops were “more ill-behaved and undisciplined than any army he ever read or heard of.” At the same time the Spanish general, Ballasteros, refused to listen to or obey him—a heretic foreigner—for which, on Wellington’s complaint, the Cortes cashiered and imprisoned him. The English general, leaving his army in Portuguese cantonments, went down to the junta at Cadiz, and there made such representations of the evils of a divided command, and told them so plainly his determination not to act without receiving the plenary powers he needed, that he was made generalissimo of the united armies of England and the Peninsula.

In 1813 the terrible effects of the Russian campaign began to be felt in Spain. French armies were withdrawn to fill the place of “those veteran hearts that were wasted” beside the Berezina. Wellington, the supreme chief, again advanced, and for the last time, from his base of operations in Portugal. But for this sea-washed position, he would have been driven out of the Peninsula long before. The giant Antreus, when overthrown, instantly recovered when he touched mother earth. Wellington, in his defeats, recovered whenever he touched the sea. He now turned his back upon it, and marched for the Pyrenees. From the frontiers of Portugal he followed the French, who retreated on Burgos. In June he beat King Joseph at Vittoria, and following the French to Pamplona, forced them to enter France by the Bidassoa and other points. But France was not to be invaded without a bloody struggle. Soult, who had received reinforcements from those terrific conscriptions with which Napoleon was decimating France, once more turned upon Wellington. He attacked and beat the English generals in several desperate engagements in the defile of Puerto Maya, and the pass of Roncesvalles.

The French fought desperately—as they were doing at the same moment, to protect the German frontiers of France against the Russians and Austrians. At the close of 1813, San Sebastian was besieged and taken; and the English soldiery rioted over the fallen city, with the most horrible brutality and license.

Napoleon now seeing his affairs desperate, took Ferdinand of Spain out of prison, and made a treaty of peace and friendship with him. But the Cortes refused to sanction it. In the beginning of 1814 Lord Wellington entered France, and dispatched General Beresford to Bourdeaux, which city he entered in triumph, accompanied by the Duc d’Angouleme. On the 14th of April was fought the battle of Thoulouse, in which Soult endeavored to oppose the progress of Wellington.

In the meantime, Napoleon, who had fought like a wild animal at bay, against the advance of the allies, was forced to abdicate at Fontainbleau, and go away to Elba. Returning thence to Paris, in the beginning of 1815, by one of the most daring and brilliant marches ever made by any soldier, he reached the Thuilleries, while the French princes hurried in consternation along the road to Ghent. At the end of three months the French emperor proceeded into Belgium to annihilate the nearest of his enemies—the Anglo-Belgian and Prussian armies, before the others should come up. It has been said Wellington was taken by surprise. This might have been so—as regarded the exact hour of Napoleon’s coming; but he was not disconcerted. He and many of his officers were at the Duchess of Richmond’s ball, in Brussels, when they heard of the sudden advance of the French.

Meantime, the emperor, moving rapidly on Brussels, drove in the English at the battle of Quatre Bras, on the 10th, and the Prussians, at Ligny, on the 17th of June. But, on the 18th, he was checked by the memorable hollow squares of Waterloo. On that day was fought one of the most renowned battles of the world—the most decisive of modern times. In antiquity, the battles most resembling it seem to have been PlatÆa, where Mardonius and the Persians were overthrown, and the fight of CannÆ, in Italy, where the Napoleon of the Punic War prostrated the military strength, but not the republican courage of Rome. For nearly the entire day the British squares withstood the vehement cavalry charges of the French, and so rough-handled and weakened them, that when, toward evening, the Prussians came up in great force, the emperor’s army was wearied, and ready for a repulse. He ordered one more charge in column—that of his Young Guard—(the Old Guard was asleep in Russia)—headed by Ney. But it was broken by the firmness of the English guards. Wellington himself was with these last, and doubtless his presence gave them increased spirit and steadiness. The column—the last forlorn hope of empire—was struck and scattered by the musketry in front, and the flank charges of cavalry; and then the career of Napoleon was at an end. And, for one great tyrant beaten down, a dozen others, great and small, reigned in his stead—their unholy alliance sitting like an incubus on the rights and hopes of exhausted Europe.

After the return of the Bourbons, the Duke of Wellington remained for three years in France, at the head of the Army of Occupation. His residence in Paris was the Elysee Bourbon—that lately occupied by Louis Napoleon. He has been blamed for not saving the life of Marshal Ney, who had in 1814 sworn fidelity to the Bourbons, and, in 1815, gone back to the emperor. Byron, who was always fierce on the duke, says, addressing him,

Wellington, when speaking to his intimate friends concerning the execution of Marshal Ney—which he undoubtedly could have prevented—merely said, “It was no concern of his.” It never was part of Wellington’s character to give way to any sentimental feeling. In 1818 his army left Paris; which occasion Beranger has signalised in one of the finest of his lyrics: La Sainte Alliance des Peuples:

The renown of Wellington was now only inferior to that of the late emperor: He was a prince, a noble, or a knight, in almost all the European codes of honor;

as Shirley says. Thenceforward he sat in the English House of Peers—a moderate politician, and a wealthy man. He had got a dukedom, and nearly a million and a half pounds sterling from parliament, and his pensions and other emoluments from successive offices he held were not less than £15,000 a year. In 1819, being First Lord of the Treasury, in Peel’s ministry, he advised that the Catholics should be emancipated—as they were insisting on it so furiously. For this a good many Tory missiles were sent rattling about his laureled head. But he did not mind them; he had heard the rattling of more deadly things. During the agitation for reform, to which he had opposed himself, the London mob, in 1831, pelted Apsley House, situated at the corner of Hyde Park, and broke several of his windows. Instead of mending them he got iron shutters to them, and they have remained closed ever since—a tacit reproach to the commonality of the capital. But that gust soon blew over, and, latterly, Englishmen of all classes were proud of the old duke—such a distinguished champion and evidence of their military glory. Wherever he went, he was stared at or cheered. Riding along the streets of the West End, followed by a single groom, his stooping figure and white head were well known. Hats would fly off as he passed, and he always raised his finger to the rim of his own in return. He was one of the most regular attendants on his duties in Parliament, and mingled in all the amusements and ceremonies of the aristocracy, as if he was no more than one of themselves. His growing years seemed to trouble his mind very little. Like Frederick the Great, he appeared to put aside all thoughts of senility and death, by the closeness of his attention to his daily duties and occupations of all sorts. He did not ponder on that “fell sergeant;” or, if he did, he probably thought of him as an old acquaintance he had seen somewhere in either of the two peninsulas—the Indian or the Iberian; a sergeant, in fact, who did duty under himself, along with the rest of the sergeants! Latterly, his son, Lord Charles, and his daughter-in-law, kept house for him in Piccadilly; and thus left the insouciant old militaire at liberty to attend all the galas of the court, and all the balls and reunions of Belgravia. On great court occasions, the stooping old Warrior would be seen—something like Achilles in the disguise—dressed in the showy ceremonial costume of his rank or office, in the midst of all the pageantries of royalty. At festive parties he would generally remain among the latest guests, enjoy himself with as much apparent cheerfulness as any body present, and go home to bed, like an old rake, in the small hours of the morning. He liked the gayeties of fashionable life. He would stand godfather for noble infants at the font, and give away noble brides at the altar. He would also go to christenings, and eat caudle with infinite good nature; gratified, doubtless, by the homage that awaited him everywhere.

On the 18th of June, he gave yearly, at Apsley House, a grand entertainment to all those officers who had been at Waterloo. People said he should have discontinued it—seeing it tended to keep up ill-feeling between England and France. But the feelings of the French were not worth respecting. They have as much levity and slavishness as their ancestry in the time of Louis Quatorze; a sad thing to say. The duke would interest himself in every thing considered important to society; and from his high character and his supposed influence with the ruling powers, at all times, he had crowds of volunteer correspondents in his time, asking all sorts of questions, and begging all sorts of interferences and favors. The first general sensation created by the Irish starvations at Skibbereen, in 1847, was produced by a letter addressed to the duke, and printed in the London Times. He almost invariably sent an autograph answer to his correspondents, beginning: “F. M. the Duke of Wellington presents, etc.” His replies were succinct and ad rem; some very trenchant, and some, which we have seen, very courteous.

Wellington was a man of cold thought and calculation. There was very little generous impulse or fine feeling in his character. Any thing like sentimental talk of glory he would smile at as stuff and nonsense. He knew that all the British glories of the Peninsula were won by the greatest scamps and blackguards in the three kingdoms, who composed the strength of the regiments. He was simple and matter-of-fact; his thoughts were subdued and hardened by the drilling of a lifetime. His style of writing was as disciplined and calm as his mind. He could never have written any of those bulletins with which Napoleon used to fire the blood of his soldiers, and in which he could show himself as impassioned as Mirabeau, as condensed as Tacitus. It is said Wellington cried out: “Up, guards, and at them!” when Ney had climbed the ridge at Waterloo. But on being asked about it, by a painter to whom he sat for his portrait, the duke smiled, and said he did not remember saying any such thing. He did not understand any melo-dramatic un-British balderdash! He loved the simple vernacular, and even slang of old England. At Salamanca, he turned to General Leith, and pointing to a height, said, “Push on, and drive them to the devil!” O Sallust, Tacitus, Polybius, how should you have got over the battle-speeches of such a man! After the battle of Salamanca, he said: “Marmont has forced me to lick him.” At Waterloo, with his watch in his hand, and his keen, cold glance bent through the rolling smoke, in the direction of Warre, he said: “This is hard pounding, gentlemen; we must only see who will pound the longest!” using, in that sublime and trying moment, the language of a London prize ring! Thus, cool and courageous as a steel blade, he never exhibited any of that glowing, impressible temperament, so characteristic of his native isle. He had, in fact, very little sympathy with Ireland in any thing, and seemed to forget he was ever born there. He never came forward in Parliament, or out of it, with any motion respecting its distress, or the relief of it, and, indeed, showed himself undeserving of any attachment on the part of Irishmen. Ireland had no sympathy with him, nor prided herself in him; which, seeing how forgivingly grateful she always was for the slightest show of kindness, speaks very unfavorably for the heart of the Duke of Wellington.

Wellington was a great general—not a great man. His was far inferior to the comprehensive, imperial genius of Napoleon, who, though a thorough-paced homicide, yet possessed the broad vision and faculty which distinguish the mightier rulers of men. In the latter years of his life, the emperor exchanged his soldierly statesmanship for fatalism—goaded to this by the fierce opposition of legitimacy—and that renounced and falsified the glorious prestige of his early career. But, take him all in all,—looking at the astonishing picture of his life, in all its breadth and all its magnificent effects of light and shadow—we feel that the Corsican was of a higher order of spirit than the renowned and admirable soldier whose obituary we write.

The duke’s decease was caused by apoplectic fits; and took place at Walmer Castle, where he was attending his duty as Warden of the Cinque Ports. On Sunday, 12th September, he felt very well, and dined heartily on venison. On Tuesday morning he seemed to feel the effects of indigestion, and had an apothecary sent for. He spoke to the latter on his arrival; but afterward lost the power of speech, and died imperceptibly at three o’clock. Wellington was of low stature, like Napoleon; as for his aspect, there is as little need to describe it as that of the emperor. He was simple in his habits, and economic in his household, and usually slept on a little hard camp bed. A friend of his once complained that he had not room to turn in his bed. “Sir,” said the duke, “when a man begins to think of turning in his bed, it is high time for him to turn out of it.” He survived his duchess about twenty years.

He has been succeeded by Arthur, Marquis of Douro, born in 1807, and married in 1839 to the lady Elisabeth Hay, daughter of the Marquis of Tweedale. He has no children. We believe Lord Charles Wellesley has a son. But the English apprehend a failure of the heirs male, and wish to have the dukedom entailed on the issue of the females of the family.

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BY WM. ALEXANDER.

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AN AMERICAN TRADITION.

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BY MARY J. WINDLE.

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