shire, Lord-Lieutenant of the Tower Hamlets, Ranger of St. James's-park, Ranger of Hyde-park, Chancellor of the University of Oxford, Commissioner of the Royal Military College, Vice-President of the Scottish Naval and Military Academy, the Master of the Trinity-house, a Governor of King's College, a Doctor of Laws, &c.

Then the late Duke's controller, having broken in pieces his staff of office in the household, handed it to the Garter King at Arms, who cast the fragments into the vault. The choir and chorus sang the hymn, "Sleepers, awake!" and the Bishop of London, standing by the side of the Lord Chancellor, pronounced the blessing, which concluded the ceremony.

And thus was buried, with all state and honour, the great Duke of Wellington.

With the demise of the Duke of Wellington, the last link of that chain is broken which connected the present generation with the heroic characters of the period which was ushered in by the first French Revolution. One after another have soldiers, statesmen, and authors, passed away from the scene of action: the rulers of the world overruled and overcome by the all-powerful and resistless hand of death. At length the most distinguished of them all has bowed his head and died. Thus, then, does earthly glory perish. A few years, more or less, make the only difference between the peasant and the prince. Position and honours possess no immunity from the common lot of mortal men.

The sundering of this link is the parting point between the past age and the present one. The earliest days of the great captain, whose decease we bewail, carry the thoughts back to a social condition the most dark and threatening. Old prescription and new thought were then on the point of engaging in mortal conflict. Despotic governments were all but universal. Even in England, the interests and the will of the few bore sway, and held the land in bondage. The church of three-fourths of Christendom was grossly corrupt and alarmingly effete; opinions, not less narrow than repulsive, held the place of practical piety in many Protestant communions. Scarcely anywhere, except in England, did true and healthful religion find a home. The populations of Europe were, for the most part, ignorant and brutal.

Existing social maladies needed a desperate remedy; and in France broke forth that whirlwind which was designed to issue in a new social life. But before the blessing came to birth, what pangs, what throes, what wailing, what ruin! It is our privilege to see and to enjoy the fruits of those toils and pains. In England a liberal, intelligent, and beneficent queen is the centre of institutions, inferior, indeed, to what may be desired, but still wise in their purposes, and benign in their operation. In religion, if Englishmen are divided in opinion, they are nevertheless cemented together by some unity of spirit; and even in and from their differences they have acquired mental strength, and learnt mutual toleration. Taught by the painful experience of other nations, they have in some measure learnt to unite in just proportions the claims of the past and the claims of the present; and while every year has now long seen the predominance of class interests becoming less and less, at the present moment the will of the people is to a great extent the law of the land, and a practical Christianity goes far to guarantee to every man the possession of his individual and social rights. Among those rights, the most prominent and the most important, religious liberty, a fair remuneration of labour, free scope for enterprise and exertion, untaxed bread, and sound education, are now within the reach of most, or seem likely to be so at no distant day. These priceless advantages are the result and the reward of mental efforts, national struggles, and social sacrifices of the highest and most worthy kind. How would the picture increase in brightness, had we time to sketch the discoveries achieved by science within the last half century! The task is the less necessary, because Englishmen are enjoying the consequent advantages on a very large scale, and in every rank of life.

It is by a long, complex, and painful process, that the social existence of Britons has been renovated. In that pro

cess, no one person, perhaps, had a share so great as that of the recently deceased warrior. It is of the outward and material current of events that we now speak. In the world of thought, the position of that eminent man was below the highest. But as a doer he had no equal.

The Duke of Wellington began his public life as the champion of prescription, and as the champion of prescription did he remain active to the last. Attached by birth, education, and sympathy, to the cause of legitimacy, he fought his battles and won his laurels in resisting the encroachments of the spirit of change and reformation.

He, the greatest and the purest champion of "things as they are" that perhaps ever appeared, was forced to give way before the onward rush of events, and it was only by placing himself at the head of the stream that he directed it into channels the most suitable, and to results the most satisfactory. A noble and an aristocrat in all his principles, affections, and aims, he, under the higher control of good sense, pure patriotism, and a benign religion, became a practical friend of popular rights, and the buckler of the national freedom. Such is the benign working of free and liberal institutions, and such is the absorbing and all-controlling love of country in the Anglo-Saxon soul, that party considerations and personal predilections are willingly and readily offered up on the altar of public usefulness and the general good.

The attributes of character which are implied in these statements are tokens of a great man. A great man, undoubtedly, was Arthur Wellesley. In his class, he was, perhaps, the greatest. Never before has there appeared such a happy union of the qualities which make a great captain and a successful warrior. Wise in council and heroic in fight, he was considerate of his own troops, and merciful towards a vanquished foe. Whatever ambition he may have possessed, he fought for what, with him, was a righteous, if not sacred cause; and so, while he was very far from the ignoble aims of the vulgar soldier, he turned the battle-field into a school of self-discipline, and, sword in hand, read to the world lessons of moderation, peace, and social wisdom.

Yet, though first of his class, the Duke of Wellington was not first among his contemporaries, still less among men. The warrior class is by no means a high class. War, after all, is only a marshalling of brute forces. The very essence of war lies in the reduction of human beings into self-acting machines. Not until the mind of many moves under the impulse of the one master-mind, can war be safely undertaken or successfully carried on.

"The battle is not to the strong, nor the race to the swift." The experience of the world justly assigns the palm of victory to Good Fortune. It is not genius that wins victories, so much as caution and hardihood. To that persistence which is so marked a feature in the English character, that nation owes all its great victories.

With these facts before us, we cannot declare any conquerer, however ample his renown, a great man of the first class. It is to a higher class of qualities than those which war puts into action, that the greatness of the greatest warriors is to be ascribed. Not for his skill in fighting, but for his pure patriotism and manly self-denial, have men agreed to place Washington at the head of the warrior class. And Wellington's high position in that class he owes mainly to the purity of his motives, the general elevation of his character, and the magnanimity that never needlessly injured a foe, or wantonly spilled a drop of blood. With him as, with all warriors that deserve the epithet of Great, the moral excellence of the man far outshone the fame of the soldier.

While directly and indirectly we thus load the conqueror with distinctions, we not only invite him forth from the ranks of his fellow-citizens, but encourage and strengthen the warlike spirit with which the world is already too much impregnated. The immediate abolition of war, though desirable, is, we fear, by no means possible. But the abatement of the warlike spirit, and the diminution, or, if possible, the utter removal of causes of war, must be objects of desire with every disinterested and right-minded person. Desires, however,

that call forth no corresponding action, are nugatory, if not discreditable. The aim, then, of every lover of his species should be to disabuse men's minds of their warlike idolatry. It is the arts of peace that have made England so great and so powerful. It is by cultivating the arts of peace that we of this generation may transmit our advantages to posterity, and create influences that may multiply and improve those advantages indefinitely. Even for protection, peace has better guarantees than war. An active, industrious, intelligent, rich, and happy people is its own shield and buckler. Such a nation has all the elements of strength as well as greatness. And in the actual and possible collisions of the world, the strong, and the strong only, are safe. Nor must it be forgotten, that the real sources of a nation's strength lie in its mental and moral culture. A well-educated people cannot be subdued. Mental superiority gives universal superiority. In their ultimate issues, mental power and moral power hold in their hands the government of the world. And it is not by the spirit of war, but by education, by justice, by mercy, in a word, by the religion of Jesus Christ, that nations shall preserve and enrich the sources of their national greatness, in strengthening, exalting, and ennobling the national character.

In the main and on the whole, Wellington stamped an image of himself on the immediate past. Victorious at Waterloo, he was irresistible at Vienna; and, considering the materials with which he had to deal, he moulded Europe at his pleasure. From the Congress of Sovereigns he passed to the right hand of supreme power in Great Britain, and, seated there, he with an iron hand gave shape to the not easily yielding masses of human and social interests which he undertook to control. While employed in the task he met with opposition, sometimes stern opposition, and often had to adapt his measures to meet and control interests the intervention of which he had not anticipated. Of course he was checked, impeded, even overpowered. He could not give effect to his own will. As a workman, he was compelled to submit to insuperable necessities. Out of limestone he could not carve an Apollo Belvi dere. Water in his hands would not coalesce with wax, nor would wax retain impressions with the fixedness of granite. Yet, on the whole, he triumphed; and as he triumphed, so he reigned. He himself declared that he had attained everything England could bestow, except the crown; and had he been as ambitious as he was dutiful, possibly in some crisis amid the fearful collisions of the last five and thirty years he might have clutched that. Speculations apart, the Duke was powerful, very powerful-powerful with the monarch-powerful in the legislature-powerful with the churchpowerful in the country.

In

Wellington, the symbol of legitimacy, is departed. funereal pomp he has gone down into the cold and lifeless tomb. National grief has thrown its pall over the remains of the hero, and solemnly conducted them to their final resting place. The sword and the charger have lost their office; the bold, calm, wide-surveying eye is for ever closed; the hand that could cleave a helmet or marshal a battalion rests motionless and still. How is it with the thing symbolised? Why, it has triumphed; it is in the ascendant. The hero of a hundred victories has placed the British throne of a hundred descents on a basis of adamant.

If there is truth in the tenor of these remarks, we are required to qualify our veneration for the great warrior whose obsequies we celebrate. The settlement which Wellington brought about was a settlement for a day. Such must be the nature of every settlement which is effected by the sword. The sword is but violence with a glittering exterior; the sword is only force with a sharpened blade. Injury it may add to injury; right is beyond its sphere. The sword may punish, it cannot adjudicate.

After the mass of information which has been showered upon the public in newspapers, pamphlets, reviews, lives, and anecdote books, we have thought it unnecessary to give any lengthened sketch of the great deeds of which the career

of Wellington was made up; but a few of the incidents connected with his last and crowning achievements we have thought worthy of illustration. The "stern child of destiny," whose star was forced to pale its fires before the steadier flame which Wellington's glories shed on the eyes of the world, appears, in our engraving (p. 56), in his chamber at Fontainbleau, after his return from Elba,-absorbed in thought, doubtless regretting the past and fearing the future. There was enough in the occurrences of the few preceding days to fill the heart of stone with pride. The heir of thirty generations of kings had fled from his palace like a thief in the night, and abandoned a mighty kingdom at the mere sound of his name. The sight of his grey surtout filled veteran soldiers and war-worn generals with frantic enthusiasm. But what availed all this against the terrible fact that a world was in arms against him, and that, as traitor to public law, he was already doomed to public vengeance by the great chiefs of European diplomacy? The grand old palace might well look gloomy, and the brow of the emperor, great and feared though he was, might well seemed wrinkled with care.

There is little more to say. On page 53 we have a portrait of Wellington as he was known in the House of Lords, and to perhaps the largest circle of acquaintance any man in London ever possessed--to say nothing of the populace themselves, who, whenever and wherever he appeared in public, looked with interest and admiration upon the aged warrior.

Our

The engraving representing the charge of Lord Somerset's brigade at Waterloo (p. 52) may be fitly described in the words of Colonel Tucker, who was himself an actor in that tremendous scene. The attacking party consisted of troops of the Life Guards, the Royal Horse Guards, and the First Dragoon Guards. "These splendid regiments," says authority, absolutely rode down and over their opponents. Horses and men fell at the shock of the fearful encounter. The cuirassiers, whose breast-plates had glittered in so many battles and victories, disappeared from the world as a corps, and became a thing that had been; they were completely cut up. After this almost total destruction of his cavalry, and after the frightful reduction of his columns of infantry, Buonaparte was, if not as good as beaten, at the least put into a condition from which the Duke could have had nothing to apprehend, even though no Prussians had come up. Except the guards, every part of the French army had been engaged, repulsed, and frightfully thinned. Not a point of the British position had been carried. Not a single square had been broken; and, though our loss in killed and wounded had been great, some of the duke's troops had not been engaged at all, and all were full of heart and of confidence in their great leader."

Lord F. Somerset's heavy brigade of cavalry having made its annihilating charge, there was a pause in the battle; and it was about seven o'clock in the evening when artillery was heard at a distance, and a staff officer reported to the Duke that the head of a Prussian column was already coming in sight. Very shortly after, Bulow's corps, advancing upon La Belle Alliance, began to engage the French right. And now was the short agony for Buonaparte. He called forward his guard, which he had kept in reserve for a last desperate effort. He led it forward, in person, to the foot of our position; but then he turned aside, and took shelter behind some swelling ground. The guard moved onward, looking on Buonaparte as they passed him. "Morituri te salutant!" He ought to have gone on with it, and to have died with it; but he neither headed it nor followed it; nor did he, during any part of this day, expose his person freely in the mêlée of battle, as he had done in the spring of 1814 in the battles of Craonne, Arcissur-Aube, and in other affairs on French ground. Ney went on with that great forlorn hope, and, unluckily for himself, was not killed. The guard advanced in two massy columns, leaving only four battalions of the old guard in reserve, near to the sheltered spot where Buonaparte sat on his horse, sallow, rigid, and fixed, like a mummy. The guards moved resolutely on, with supported arms, under a destructive fire from our position. They were met by General Maitland's brigade of English guards, and General Adam's brigade, which

were rapidly moved from the right by the Duke of Wellington in person, who formed them four deep, and flanked their line with artillery. That the Duke, on first moving them from some cover under which they had been screened, shouted out, "Up! guards, and at them!" is now recognised as a fable. His Grace never did anything theatrically, and never used any such language to his troops. An aide-de-camp gave the order in the usual quiet manner; the officers in command of our guards obeyed the order, uuder the eye of their great chief, and the Duke advanced with the guards over the brow of the low hill, and then stood to meet the last charge. When within fifty yards from the line of the English guards, the French guards attempted to deploy; but the close fire upon them was too terrible; their flanks were enveloped, they got mixed together in a confused mass, and in that condition they were slaughtered, broken, and driven down the slope of the

for the halt and bivouac of his own fatigued troops, and handed over the task of further pursuit to the Prussians. Blucher swore that he would follow up the French with his last horse and his last man. He started off immediately with two Prussian corps, who began the chase with the encouragement of three cheers from the English army.

The immediate result of the battle of Waterloo was, as is well known, the utter and irretrievable overthrow of the French empire, and the restoration of the Bourbons. For many days after that fatal field, the hosts of the allied armies poured into Paris in one unbroken line, amidst the acclamations of the most fickle population on earth. Those wild tribes from the banks of the Don, beneath whose remorseless swords so many of the best and bravest of France had expiated the rash ambition of their chief, were hailed as saviours and deliverers by the same bourgeoisie which now

hill.

There was no more fighting; that Grand Army of Buonaparte-the last of all, and the most desperate of allnever again stood, nor attempted to rally: all the rest of the work was headlong, unresisted pursuit ; slaughter of fugitives, who had entirely lost their military formations; and capture of prisoners, artillery, and spoils. The army was destroyed, as an army, before the pursuit began. If it had not been so, the Prussians could not possibly have found the pursuit such easy work. In flying, Buonaparte and his guards left about 150 pieces of cannon in the hands of the English. Before that flight began, Blucher had been for a time hotly engaged at Planchenois. At a farm-house called "Maison Rouge," or "Maison du Roi," at a short distance behind Planchenois and the farm of La Belle Alliance, the Duke and the Marshal met, and Blucher, in the manner of the continent, embraced and hugged his victorious partner. Here Wellington gave orders

calls the heir and nephew of the emperor, the "Messiah of the Second of December." The dethroned emperor fled in dismay to the coast, amidst the threats and execrations of those whom he had made childless and fatherless, but who, with unexampled infatuation, had, up to the moment of his downfal, hailed him with acclamation. He sought refuge on board an English vessel, but only found a prison. In a few days afterwards he took his last look at France across the heavy rolling billows of the Bay of Biscay, with the flag which it had been the ambition of his life to subdue waving proudly above his head. The world knows his fate. A few years of peevish exile-quarrelling with his keepers-quarrelling with his servants-discontented with himself, and he, upon whom the eyes of the whole globe had for twenty years been fixed in fear, hatred, or admiration, passed away, without leaving behind any other relic of his greatness than the empty glory of a name.