It is the strongest

ed was acquired in courts and camps. proof of the extraordinary strength and sagacity of his mind, that with such limited advantages he became what he wasthe first in arms, and second to none in politics of the age in which he lived. He made admirable use of the opportunities he afterward enjoyed. In the school of Turenne he imbibed the art of war; in the palace of St. James he learned the mysteries of courts; in the House of Peers and at the Hague he became master of the art of diplomacy. In these varied situations he acquired the knowledge, of all others the most valuable, which can nowhere be learned so well-that of the world and the human heart. His career affords the most striking proof of how much the real education of every mind depends upon itself, and how much it is in the power of strong sense, accompanied by vigilant observation in after life, to compensate the want of those advantages which, under more favorable circumstances, give to early youth the benefit of the acquirements and experience of others.

15.

dress and suav

A most inadequate opinion would be formed of Marlborough's mental character if his military exploits alone are taken into consideration. Like all His great adother intellects of the first order, he was equally ity of manner. capable of great achievements in peace as in war, and shone forth with not less luster in the deliberations of the cabinet or in the correspondence of diplomacy, than in directing columns on the field of battle, or tracing out the line of approaches for the attack of fortified towns. Nothing could exceed the judgment and temper with which he reconciled the jarring interests, and smoothed down the rival pretensions of the coalesced cabinets. The danger was not so pressing as to unite their rival governments, as it afterward did those of the Grand Alliance in 1813, which overthrew Napoleon; and incessant exertions, joined to the highest possible diplomatic address, judgment of conduct, and suavity of manner, were required to prevent the coalition, on various occasions during the course of the war, from falling to pieces. As it was, the intrigues

of Bolingbroke and the Tories in England, and the ascendency of Mrs. Masham in the queen's bed-chamber councils, at last counterbalanced all his achievements, and led to a peace which abandoned the most important objects of the war, and was fraught, as the event has proved, with serious danger to the independence and even the existence of England. His winter campaign at the allied courts, as he himself said, always equaled in duration, and often exceeded in importance and difficulty, that in summer with the enemy; and nothing is more certain than that, if a man of less capacity had been intrusted with the direction of its diplomatic relations, the coalition would have soon broken up without having accomplished any of the objects for which the war had been undertaken, from the mere selfishness and dissensions of the cabinets by whom it was conducted.

16.

His character

With one blot, for which the justice of history, or the partiality of biography neither can nor should atas a statesman, tempt to make any apology, Marlborough's priand in private. vate character seems to have been unexceptionable, and was evidently distinguished by several noble and amiable qualities. That he was bred a courtier, and owed his first elevation to the favor with which he was regarded by one of the king's mistresses, was not his fault: it arose, perhaps, necessarily from his situation, and the graces and beauty with which he had been so prodigally endowed by nature. The young officer of the Guards, who in the army of Louis XIV. passed by the name of the handsome Englishman, could hardly be expected to be free from the consequences of female partiality at the court of Charles II. Shortly after the Revolution he was undoubtedly involved in many dark intrigues for the restoration of the exiled family: he seemed to be desirous to undo what he himself had done. It is the fatal effect of one deviation from rectitude that it renders subsequent ones almost unavoidable, or so confounds the moral sense as to make their turpitude be unfelt. But in maturer years, his conduct in public, after Anne had placed him in high com

mand, was uniformly consistent, straightforward, and honorable. He was a sincere patriot, and ardently attached both to his country and to the principles of freedom, at a time when both were wellnigh forgotten in the struggles of party, and the fierce contests for royal or popular favor. Though bred up in a licentious court, and early exposed to the most entrancing of its seductions, he was in mature life strictly correct, both in his conduct and conversation. He resisted every temptation to which his undiminished beauty exposed him after his marriage, and was never known either to utter, or permit to be uttered in his presence, a light or indecent expression. He discouraged to the utmost degree all intemper ance and licentiousness in his soldiers, and constantly labored to impress upon them a sense of moral duty and supreme superintendence. Divine service was regularly performed in all his camps, both morning and evening; previous to a battle, prayers were read at the head of every regiment, and the first act, after a victory, was a solemn thanksgiving. "By those means," says a cotemporary biographer, who served in his army, "his camp resembled a quiet, well-governed city. Cursing and swearing were seldom heard among the officers; a drunkard was the object of scorn; and even the soldiers, many of them the refuse and dregs of the nation, became, at the close of one or two campaigns, tractable, civil, sensible, and clean, and had an air and spirit above the vulgar."

In political life, during his career after the Revolution, he was consistent and firm; faithful to his party, 17. but more faithful still to his country. He was a character after His political generous friend, an attached, perhaps a too fond the Revolution. husband. During the whole of his active career he retained a constant sense of the superintendence of the Supreme Being, and was ever the first to ascribe the successes which he had gained to Divine protection; a disposition which shone forth with peculiar grace amid the din of arms and the flourish of trumpets for his own mighty achievements. Even the one occasion, on which, like David, he fell from his high princi

EE

ples, will be regarded by the equitable observer with charitable, if not forgiving eyes. He will recollect that perfection never yet belonged to a child of Adam; he will measure the dreadful nature of the struggle which awaits an upright and generous mind when loyalty and gratitude impel one way, and religion and patriotism another. Without attempting to justify an officer who employs the power bestowed by one government to elevate another on its ruins, he will yet reflect, that in such a crisis even the firmest heads and the best hearts may be led astray he will recollect that, as already noticed, the heroic Ney, in another age, did the same. If he is wise, he will ascribe the fault, for fault it was, not so much to the individual, as to the time in which he lived; and feel a deeper thankfulness that his own lot has been cast in a happier age, when the great moving passions of the human heart act in the same direction, and a public man need not fear that he is wanting in his duty to his sovereign because he is performing that due to his country.

Marlborough, however, was but a man, and therefore not

His faults and

18. without the usual blemishes and weaknesses of huweaknesses. manity. The great blot on his character, the inexcusable act in his life-that of having accepted a command from James II., and afterward betrayed him—will be found, on examination, to be but a part, though doubtless the most conspicuous one, of the prevailing disposition and secret weakness of his character. He was extremely ambitious, and little scrupulous about the means by which elevation was to be attained or prolonged. He repeatedly yielded to the solicitations of those around him from the desire to avoid ruining his party, under circumstances when the dignity of his character required a more independent and resolute conduct. He was not by nature a bad, or by habit a dishonorable man, and yet he did a most base and dishonorable thing; he abandoned his king and benefactor when holding an important command under him. He did not possess the mental independence, the strong sense of rectitude, the keen feelings of honor, which lead

pure and elevated minds to make shipwreck of their fortunes in the cause of duty. He was possessed by strong moral and religious principle; but when a crisis arrived, they yielded to the whisperings of expedience, or, rather, the deceitfulness of sin made him believe that his duty pointed to the course which his interest demanded. He had more of Cæsar in him than Cato. It never would be said of him,

Victrix causa Deis placuit sed victa Catoni.

In justice to Marlborough, however, it must be recollected that he lived in an age of revolutions, when the

19. Circumstances

which palliate

these faults in

crown had been recently twice subverted, and a new dynasty placed on the throne; when men's him. minds were confused and their ideas unhinged with regard to public duty; and when that fatal effect of revolutionary success had taken place the ascribing to public actions no other test but success. And yet, so mixed is the condition of mankind, and so great the ascendency of selfishness in human affairs, that Marlborough's extraordinary rise and long-continued power is in great part to be ascribed to these moral weaknesses in his character. Had he possessed the noble spirit of one of the old cavaliers, he would have adhered to James in his misfortune, and become a respectable but unknown exile at St. Germain's, instead of the illustrious leader of the coalition. He thus affords another instance to the many which history affords of the truth of Johnson's saying, "that no man ever rose from a private station to exalted power among men, in whom great and commanding qualities were not combined with meannesses that would be inconceivable in ordinary life." Marlborough was often accused of avarice; but his conduct through life sufficiently demonstrated that in him the natural desire to accumulate a fortune, which belongs to every rational mind, was kept in subjection to more elevated principles. The great wealth which he acquired from his numerous appointments, and the royal and parliamentary rewards bestowed on him for his services, were sufficient to excite the envy of the vulgar, and this feeling was eagerly fed by those who pandered to

20.

character and His private

elevated ideas in the disposition of money.