Arthur, should supply his place, but nothing could induce him to do so; when beset by a party of five or six, he would fight with the utmost courage and determination, until he freed himself from their grasp; he would then retire again to his tree, and look about him as quiet, dejected, and observant as he had been before. This anecdote was communicated to the British and Foreign Review, in 1840, by one of Arthur's school-fellows at Chelsea.

The Duke and his brother, the Marquis Wellesley, passed much of their boyhood at Brynkinalt, in North Wales. On one occasion they met a playfellow, David Evans, and his sister, returning from school, when Arthur commenced a game at marbles with the boy, while his sister walked on. Presently, her brother called her to his assistance, as Arthur, he said, had stolen his marbles, which he refused to give up. The girl insisted, and then came the struggle. Arthur was about twelve years old, and his brother older; the girl about ten, and her brother two years younger: the battle now began between the girl and Arthur, who soon dropped his colors, handed over the marbles, and beat a hasty retreat, with tears in his eyes. Meanwhile Arthur's brother stood at a distance, inciting the fight, but taking care to keep out of it. Many years after, the Marquis, when in India, wrote to David Evans, and reminding him of their games in boyhood; and the Duke, in 1815, when passing through Denbigshire, inquired at Brynkinalt for David Evans, and recognized him as his old playfellow, but they never saw each other again.

Arthur Wellesley, by the death of his father in 1771, became dependent upon the care and prudence of his mother, a lady, as it fortunately happened, of talents not unequal to the task. Under this direction of his studies, he was sent to Eton, where very little seems to be recollected of him at the college. As he left before he was in the fifth form, his name was not cut in the Upper School when he went away. In the Lower School, however, it was cut upon a post, but afterward erased; and, about six-and-twenty years since, in some alterations, this post, with some other materials, was cleared away.

The tradition respecting Arthur in the school is that he was a spirited, active boy, but occasionally shy and meditative. Among his school-fellows was the facetious Bobus Smith (brother of the Rev. Sydney Smith), who, in after-life, when Arthur had conquered wherever he had fought, used to say: "I was the Duke of Wellington's first victory." "How?" "Why, one day at Eton, Arthur Wellesley and I had a fight, and he beat me soundly."

While at Eton, Arthur and his two brothers were invited to pass the holidays with Lady Dungannon, in Shropshire, and, being full of fun, asked each other what news they should tell when they arrived. One of them proposed that they should say-a pure invention—that their sister Anne had run off with the footman, thinking it was likely to produce some sensation. This they accordingly did, and greatly shocked Lady Dungannon; they entreated, however, that she would not mention the circumstance to any one, hoping, as they said, that their sister might come back again. Dady Dungannon now excused herself, having promised to pay a visit to her neighbor, Mrs. Mytton; and, unable to keep this secret, of course told it to her. On her return, she nearly killed them by saying, "Ah, my dear boys, ill news travels apace! Will you believe it? Mrs. Mytton knew all about poor Anne!" This story is worthy of Sheridan, and if he had heard it, he would certainly have introduced it in one of his plays.

Arthur, when at Eton, lived at Mrs. Ranganean's, one of the best boarding-houses in the place. There, when he had grown to be a father, he one day took his sons, Lord Douro and his brother: he looked over his bed-room, made several inquiries, and then descended into the kitchen, and pointed out to his sons where he had cut his name on the kitchen door. This interesting memento was soon after removed, during some repairs of the boarding-house; and the Duke, on one of his subsequent visits, expressed his annoyance at its disappearance.

Between Arthur and his elder brother, had any one speculated on the future career of both, how erroneous would have been his conclusions! At his first school, Wellesley gave certain promises of a distinguished manhood; Wellington did not; and yet how easily can this be reconciled! The taste and fancy that afterward produced the senator, were germane to the classic forms of Eton; while those mental properties which alone can constitute the soldier, like metal in a mine, lay dormant, until time betrayed the ore, and circumstances elicited its brilliancy.

From Eton, Arthur was transferred, first to private tuition at Brighton, and subsequently to the celebrated military seminary of Angers, in France.

For the deficiency of any early promise in the future hero we are not confined to negative evidence alone. His relative inferiority was the subject of some concern to his vigilant mother, and had its influence, as we are led to conclude, in the selection of the military profession for one who displayed so little of the family aptitude for elegant scholarship. At Angers, though the young student left no signal reputation behind him, it is clear that his time must have been productively employed. Pignerol, the director of the seminary, was an engineer of high repute, and the opportunities of acquiring not only professional knowledge, but a serviceable mastery of the French tongue, were not likely to have been lost

on such a mind as that of his pupil. Altogether, six years were consumed in this course of education, which, though partial enough in itself, was so far in advance of the age, that we may conceive the young cadet to have carried with him to his corps a more than average store of professional acquirements.

We quote the above from a Memoir which appeared in the Times journal, in 1852, immediately after the Duke's death. It is somewhat at variance with the evidence of the late Dr. Benning, who, while traveling with Blayney, called to see the College at Angers, and inquired of the head of the establishment if he had any English boys of promise under his care, when he replied he had one Irish lad of great promise, of the name of Wesley, the son of Lord Mornington.

At the end of the stipulated term, he returned to England; and it would appear somewhat unexpectedly to Lady Mornington, whose first intimation that he had left France, was seeing him at the Haymarket Theatre, when her ladyship exclaimed, almost angrily, "I do believe there is my ugly boy, Arthur."

Meanwhile, his family had not been unmindful of his prospects; for we have the evidence of a letter in the possession of a gentleman at Trim, in which Lord Wellesley states that the Lord Lieutenant had been two years under promise to procure a commission for his brother Arthur, and had not been able to fulfill it. At length, in March, 1787, the Hon. Arthur Wellesley, being then in his eighteenth year, received his first commission as an ensign in the 73rd Regiment of Foot. The only point of interest in his position at this moment, was the fact that though the young officer commanded sufficient interest to bring his deserts into favorable notice, he was not circumstanced as to rely exclusively on such considerations for advancement. He possessed interest enough to make merit available, but not enough to dispense with it. On a remarkable occasion in aftertimes he spoke, in the House of Peers, of having "raised himself" by his own exertions to the position he then filled.

Here our sketch of the Duke's early life may be closed. His service of the Sovereigns and the public of this country for more than half a century-in diplomatic situations and in councils, as well as in the army-has scarcely a parallel in British history. His Dispatches are the best evidence of his wellregulated mind in education. No letters could ever be more temperately or more perspicuously expressed than those famous documents. Even as specimens of literary composition they are exceedingly good-plain, forcible, fluent, and occasionally even humorous. He once declared of the Dispatches, "Well, if these were to be written over again, I don't think I should alter a word." A single examination of these documentsthe best record of his own achievements will show what im

mense results in the aggregate were obtained by the Duke, solely in virtue of habits which he had sedulously cultivated from his boyhood-early rising, strict attention to details,-taking nothing ascertainable for granted-unflagging industry, and silence, except when speech was necessary, or certainly harmless. His early habit of punctuality is pleasingly illustrated in the following anecdote: "I will take care to be punctual at five to-morrow morning," said the engineer of New London Bridge, in acceptance of the Duke's request that he would meet him at that hour the following morning. "Say a quarter before five,” replied the Duke, with a quiet smile; "I owe all I have achieved to being ready a quarter of an hour before it was deemed necessary to be so; and I learned that lesson when a boy."

But the paramount principle of the Duke's life was his respect for Truth, which he observed himself with earnestness akin to the admiration with which he recognized it in others : and we know that the best homage we can pay to virtue is its practice.

GEORGE CANNING AT ETON AND OXFORD.

This accomplished orator and statesman was born of Irish parents, in 1770, in the parish of Marylebone, London. His descent on the paternal side was from an ancient family, his ancesters having figured at different periods at Bristol, in Warwickshire, and in Ireland. His father died when the son was only a year old. The early education of Canning was superintended by his uncle, Mr. Stratford Canning, a merchant of London; and the expenses were in part defrayed from a small estate in Ireland bequeathed by his grandfather. George Canning was first sent to Hyde Abbey School, near Winchester. In his thirteenth year he was entered as an Eton Oppidam, and placed in the Remove. He soon distinguished himself as a sedulous student, and of great quickness in mastering what he undertook to learn; keen and emulous in contest, yet mindful of steady discipline. At the same time, he was, says Mr. Creasy, "a boy of frank, generous, and conciliatory disposition, and of a bold manly, and unflinching spirit." His Latin versification obtained him great distinction, as attested by his compositions in the Musæ

* Mrs. Canning, through the influence of Queen Charlotte, was introduced by Garrick to the stage as her profession, and she subsequently married Reddish, the actor. Meanwhile, her son George had become the associate of actors of a low class, from which influence he was rescued by Moody, the Comedian, who stated the boy's case to Mr. Stratford Canning, and thus opened the road by which he advanced to power and fame. From an elegant work entitled Poets and Statesmen: their Homes and Haunts in the Neighbor hood of Eton and Windsor. By William Dowlin, Esq. 1857.

Etonenses. He had written English verses from a very early age; and at Eton, in his sixteenth year, he planned with three school-fellows a periodical work called the Microcosm, which was published at Windsor weekly for nine months.

Among Canning's contributions was a poem entitled "The Slavery of Greece," inspired by his zeal for the liberation of that country from the Turkish yoke, which one of the latest acts of his political life greatly contributed to accomplish. Another of his papers in the Microcosm, his last contribution, thus earnestly records his love of Eton: "From her to have sucked 'the milk of science,' to have contracted for her a pious fondness and veneration, which will bind me for ever to her interests, and perhaps to have improved by my earnest endeavors the younger part of the present generation, is to me a source of infinite pride and satisfaction."

At seventeen, Mr. Canning was entered as a student at Christchurch, Oxford, where he gained some academical honors by his Latin poetry, and cultivated that talent for oratory which he had begun to display at Eton. His splendid Latin poem on the Pilgrimage to Mecca, "Iter ad Meccam," gained him the highest honor in an University where such exercises are deemed the surest test of scholarship. At Oxford he formed an intimate friendship with Mr. Jenkinson, afterward Earl of Liverpool, who is supposed to have been of service to him in his political career. Canning's college vacations were occasionally passed in the house of Sheridan, who introduced him to Mr. Fox, and other leaders of the Whig party. On leaving Oxford, Canning entered at Lincoln's Inn; but he soon abandoned the study of the law for the political career that was promisingly opening to him.

Canning had a strong bias in favor of elegant literature, and would have been no mean poet and author had he not embarked so early on public life, and been incessantly occupied with its duties. Even amidst the cares of office, he found time for the indulgence of his brilliant wit; and, in conjunction with Mr. John Hookham Frere, Mr. Jenkinson, Mr. George Ellis, Lord Clare, Lord Mornington (afterward Marquis Wellesley), and other social and political friends, he started a paper called the Anti-Jacobin, some of its best poetry, burlesques, and jeuxd'esprit, being from Mr. Canning's pen. As party effusions, these pieces were highly popular and effective; and that they are still read with pleasure is attested by the fact that the poetry of the Anti-Jacobin, collected and published in a separate form, is still kept in print by the publisher.