The Duke of Wellington alone of all

whom history mentions soared superior to mere good fortune, and impressed upon the proceed ings of the clay the unvarying stamp of his own vigilance and genius. We are, therefore, justi- I fied in concluding that we were successful be cause we had him for our commander —that he was not carried on by an irresistable tide of events, but made for himself those opportuni ties which he knew so well how to improve. "If this was not also the case in his political career, it was probably because he had no deal with events over which no individual mind can exercise a commanding influence ; but even here dangers which lie could not avert were clearly foreseen, justly appreciated, and pru dently met. The simplicity, uprightness, and massiveness of his character, free from all those perplexing influences of vanity, passion, irreso lution, or selfishness which blind the vision of ordinary mortals, gave his firm and impassible glance a peculiar and inexplicable intuition into the immediate results of every conjuncture of affairs, civil or military. The medium was clear, solid, and without a flaw, and the refraction was free from distortion or the delusive brilliancy of prismatic colouring. A want of the imagina tive faculty rendered him, it is true, a just rather than a farsighted observer, but if the range of mental vision was limited, the vision within those limits was exquisitely and unerringly cor rect. Like Themistocles, he could foresee the better and the worse, and, like him, by the mere effort of natural genius he could strike out the course that ought to be adopted. Such a power, limited as it was to the more immediate results of existing conjunctures, was the highest per fection of the practical intellect; had it exten ded to more remote contingencies, it would have been, not intuition, but inspiration. "Almost the only good fortune we can ascribe to this extraordinary man was, that his position in life gave him, in common with thousands o,f others who are gone down to. the grave unre membered, an easy access to the sphere of com mand and activity, and that his mental qualities were such as eminently qualified him to be of the utmost service to his country in an age of war from without and of faction and tumult from within. 