respect, the advantage is with the old. A state of ease is, generally speaking, more attainable than a state of pleasure. A constitution, therefore, which can enjoy ease, is preferable to that which can taste only pleasure. This same perception of ease oftentimes renders old age a condition of great comfort; especially when riding at its anchor, after a busy or tempestuous life. It is well described, by Rousseau, to be the interval of repose and enjoyment, between the hurry and the end of life. How far the same cause extends to other animal natures, cannot be judged of with certainty. The appearance of satisfaction with which most animals, as their activity subsides, seek and enjoy rest, affords reason to believe that this source of gratification is appointed to advanced life, under all, or most, of its various forms. There is a great deal of truth in the following representation, given by Dr. Percival, a very pious writer, as well as excellent man: "To the intelligent and virtuous, old age presents a scene of tranquil enjoyments, of obedient appetites, of wellregulated affections, of maturity in knowledge, and of calm preparation for immortality. In this serene and dignified state, placed, as it were, on the confines of two worlds, the mind of a good man reviews what is past with the complacency of an approving conscience; and looks forward with humble confidence in the mercy of God, and with devout aspirations towards his eternal and ever-increasing favor." -PALEY. SPRING. I HEARD a thousand blended notes In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts To her fair works did Nature link The human soul that through me ran; And much it grieved my heart to think What Man has made of Man. Through primrose tufts, in that sweet bower, And 'tis my faith that every flower Enjoys the air it breathes. The birds around me hopp'd and play'd, Their thoughts I cannot measure- 230 THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON. The budding twigs spread out their fan And I must think, do all I can, If this belief from heaven be sent, ON THE DEATH OF WELLINGTON. THE Chancellor of the Exchequer rose, and, while the House lent him its deepest attention, spoke as follows : The "The House of Commons is called upon to-night to fulfil a sorrowful, but a noble duty. It has to recognize, in the face of the country, and of the civilized world, the loss of the most illustrious of our citizens, and to offer to the ashes of the great departed the solemn anguish of a bereaved nation. princely personage who has left us was born in an age more fertile of great events than any period of recorded time. Of these vast incidents the most conspicuous were his own deeds, and these were performed with the smallest means, and in defiance of the greatest obstacles. He was therefore, not only a great man, but the greatest man of a great age. Amid the chaos and conflagration which attended the end of the last century there rose one of those beings who seem born to master mankind. It is not too much to say that Napoleon combined the imperial ardor of Alexander with the strategy of Hannibal. The kings of the earth fell before his fiery and subtile genius, and at the head of all the power of Europe, he denounced destruction to the only land that dared to be free. The Providential superintendence of this world seems seldom more manifest than in the dispensation which ordained that the French Emperor and Wellesley should be born in the same year that in the same year they should have embraced the same profession; and that, natives of distant islands, they should both have sought their military education in that illustrious land which each in his turn was destined to subjugate. During the long struggle for our freedom, our glory, I may say our existence, Wellesley fought and won fifteen pitched battles, all of the highest class-concluding with one af those crowning victories which give a color and aspect to history. During this period that can be said of him which can be said of no other captain--that he captured three thousand cannon from the enemy, and never lost a single gun. The greatness of his exploits was only equalled by the difficulties he overcame. He had to encounter at the same time a feeble Government, a factious Opposition, and a distrustful people, scandalous allies, and the most powerful enemy in the world. He gained victories with starving troops, and carried on sieges without tools; and, as if to complete the fatality which in this sense always awaited him, when he had succeeded in creating an army worthy of Roman legions, and of himself, this invincible host was broken up on the eve of the greatest conjuncture of his life, and he entered the field of Waterloo with raw levies and discomfited allies. "But the star of Wellesley never paled. He has been called fortunate, for fortune is a divinity that ever favors those who are alike sagacious and intrepid, inventive and patient. It was his character that created his career. This alike achieved his exploits and guarded him from vicissitudes. It was his sublime self-control that regulated his lofty fate. It has been the fashion of late years to disparage the military character. Forty years of peace have hardly qualified us to be aware how considerable and how complex are the qualities which are necessary for the formation of a great general. It is not enough to say that he must be an engineer, a geographer, learned in human nature, adroit in managing mankind; that he must be able to perform the highest duties of a Minister of State, and sink to the humblest offices of a commissary and a clerk; but he has to display all this knowledge and he must do all these things at the same time, and under extraordinary circumstances. At the same moment he must think of the eve and the morrow— of his flanks and of his reserves; he must carry with him ammunition, provisions, hospitals; he must calculate at the same time the state of the weather and the moral qualities of man; and all these elements, which are perpetually changing, he must combine amid overwhelming cold or overpowering heat: sometimes amid famine, often amid the thunder of artillery. Behind all this, too, is the ever-present image of his country, and the dreadful alternative whether that country is to receive him with cypress or laurel. But all these conflicting 232 THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON. ideas must be driven from the mind of the military leader, for he must think—and not only think-he must think with the rapidity of lightning, for on a moment more or less, depends the fate of the finest combination, and on a moment more or less, depends glory or shame. Doubtless all this may be done in an ordinary manner by an ordinary man; as we see every day of our lives ordinary men making successful Ministers of State, successful speakers, successful authors. But to do all this with genius is sublime. Doubtless to think deeply and clearly in the recess of a Cabinet is a fine intellectual demonstration, but to think with equal depth and equal clearness amid bullets is the most complete exercise of the human faculties. Although the military career of the Duke of Wellington fills so large a space in history, it was only a comparatively small section of his prolonged and illustrious life. Only eight years elapsed from Vimiera to Waterloo, and from the date of his first commission to the last cannon-shot on the field of battle scarcely twenty years can be counted. After all his triumphs he was destined for another career, and, if not in the prime, certainly in the perfection of manhocd, he commenced a civil career scarcely less eminent than those military achievements which will live for ever in history. Thrice was he the Ambassador of his Sovereign to those great historic congresses that settled the affairs of Europe; twice was he Secretary of State; twice was he Commander-in-Chief; and once he was Prime Minister of England. His labours for his country lasted to the end. A few months ago he favored the present advisers of the Crown with his thoughts on the Burmese War, expressed in a state paper characterized by all his sagacity and experience; and he died the active chieftain of that famous army to which he has left the tradition of his glory. "There was one passage in the life of the Duke of Wellington which should hardly be passed unnoticed on such an occasion, and in such a scene as this. It is our pride that he was one of ourselves; it is our pride that Sir Arthur Wellesley sat upon these benches. Tested by the ambition and the success of ordinary men, his career here, though brief, was distinguished. He entered Royal Councils, and held a high ministerial post. But his House of Commons success must not be measured by his seat at the Privy Council and his Irish Secretaryship. He achieved a success here which the greatest Ministers and the most brilliant orators can never hope to rival. That was a parliamentary success unequalled when he rose in his seat to receive the thanks of Mr. Speaker for a glorious victory; or, later still, when he appeared at the bar of this House, and received, Sir, from one of your predecessors, in memorable language, the thanks of a grateful country for accumulated triumphs. There is one consolation which all Englishmen must feel under this bereavement. It is, that they were so well and so completely acquainted with this great man. Never did a person of such mark live so long, and so much in the public eye. "To complete all, that we might have a perfect idea of this sovereign master of duty in all his manifold offices, he himself gave us a collection of administrative and military literature which no age and no country can rival; and, fortunate in all things, Wellesley found in his lifetime an historian whose immortal page already ranks with the classics of that land which Wellesley saved. The Duke of Wellington left to his countrymen a great legacy-greater even than his glory. He left them the contemplation of his character. I will not say his conduct revived the sense of duty in England. I would not say that of our country. But that his conduct inspired public life with a purer and more masculine tone I cannot doubt. His career rebukes restless vanity, and reprimands the irregular ebullitions of a morbid egotism. I doubt not that, among all orders of Englishmen, from those with the highest responsibilities of our society to those who perform the humblest duties, I dare say there is not a man who in his toil and his perplexity has not sometimes thought of the duke and found in his example support and solace. "Though he lived so much in the hearts and minds of his countrymen-though he occupied such eminent posts and fulfilled such august duties-it was not till he died that we felt what a space he filled in the feelings and thoughts of the people of England. Never was the influence of real greatness more completely asserted than on his decease. In an age whose boast of intellectual equality flatters all our self-complacencies, the world suddenly acknowledged that it had lost the greatest of men; in an age of utility the most industrious and commonsense people in the world could find no vent for their woe and no representative for their sorrow but the solemnity of a |