through the long and weary hours, was poured forth the shower of iron, tearing and shattering those little squares, winnowing their ranks with a tempest of death. And whenever the mangling shot had done its work, and a gap yawned, on dashed the lancers or cuirassiers, as the 7 ocean dashes on the rock riven of the thunderbolt. Yet it was all in vain. The roar of death from those three hundred cannon-throats they heard undismayed; the gleam of the lancers and the glittering of the cuirasses, as the horsemen dashed out from the cloudy smoke, with death upon their plumes, they eyed unswerving. Hour after hour rolled heavily away, and the patient earth, with all her summer burden, wheeled on to the east. The squares dwindled, and several united into one; the arm was growing heavy, the scent of blood filled the air, the ground was fattening with human gore; yet they yielded not. In silence they closed up their ranks, as brother after brother fell a mangled corpse; with the earnest prayer of agony they implored to be led against the foe. 8 But yield they never would; the car of death might crush them into the ground, but it was only so that a path could be made. Sterner or nobler valor never fought round windy Troy.

"O proud Death,

What feast was toward in thine eternal cell!"

From noon until eve those cannon had roared, and squadron after squadron of horsemen had poured upon those squares; and now, as the shades of a gloomy evening were beginning to fall, the fight was ever becoming the sterner, and the light in that dark, fiery eye, which directed the French columns, the more wild and agitated. Once more, as if by a tremendous effort to wrest the scepter from destiny, an attempt was to be made by Napo

leon. His old guard yet remained. They loved him as 9 children love their father; they had received from his hand the wreaths of honor and victory; some of them had followed him to the flames of Moscow; on some of them had risen the sun of Austerlitz; and now for that dear master they were to go against those unconquerable squares. Beyond them lay fame, and honor, and victory ; to yield a foot was destruction and despair. Slowly, under the rolling smoke of those great guns, they advanced, with the firm tread of men whose nerves had long been strung to the music of battle; we shall not liken them to tornado or thunder-cloud; there is no spectacle so fearful to man as the calm, determined advance of thousands of his brothers to the strife of death. Let the brave 10 have their due! The old guard advanced most gallantly; but they were ploughed up, as they approached, by the British artillery, and a murderous fire from the unquivering British arm searched their ranks as they endeavored to deploy; valiantly did they attempt it, but it was in vain. Torn and mangled by that terrible fire, they wavered; in a moment the British horsemen dashed into their ranks and rolled them backward in wild confusion. All was won on the one side, and all was lost on the other. Who can tell the feeling of serene and complete satisfac-11 tion which then filled the breast of Wellington! And, ah! who can image to himself the dread moment when thick clouds rushed over the fire of that imperial eye, whose lightnings were to smite the towers of earth no more! Lo! mid the thickening dusk, while the cheer of another host comes on the gale, the shattered squares have opened into line. At last, the bayonets glittering afar in the cloudy air, they sweep down the ridges to victory. For a moment Napoleon saw the long line, as it came on like the rolling simoom. Shakespeare could not

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have voiced his emotions at the sight. And he passed away to his lonely rock in the sea, to exhibit the sublimest spectacle of modern times, whose deathless sorrow could be sung by no harp but that of the melancholy ocean.

Now was the time when the genuine and lofty manhood of our mighty Wellington displayed itself. He had reached the highest pinnacle of fame, the eye of Europe was fixed upon him, and his grateful country exhausted in his behoof her storehouse of honor and reward. It is such moments that try men. The towering Andes, with the serene air of the upper heavens about their brows, present us with two phenomena: to those solitudes of the pathless sky, by the force of wind and the tumults of the lower atmosphere, are borne the smallest insects; in those serene solitudes, in the full flood of the undimmed sunshine, floats the condor. The difference between the two is marked. The insects, borne aloft by external and not by internal strength, are tossed hither and thither in the thin air, with their little pinions tattered, and their little senses bewildered; the condor, with outspread fans, rests upon the liquid ether as his native element, whither Na13 ture had designed him to ascend. The phenomena are replete with meaning to the eye of wisdom. By popular applause, by confusion and turmoil, the human insect is often borne for a time aloft, to be dashed about and to fall; the man who, rising far over his fellows, and basking in the full beams of glory and victory, rests there placid and immovable as the condor, is a true and mighty son of Nature. His strength is from within. So, most emphatically, it was with Wellington; the world's applause did not quicken a pulse in his frame, or flutter for a moment his calm and manly intellect.

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In connection with this part of the career of Wellington, there is one name which we can not pass over;

if

not an actual spot in the sun of his glory, it is at least a faint mist which has obscured it. That name is Ney. We must confess a very strong wish that Wellington had done his utmost to save Ney. To say he was not required to do it by justice, or even by honor, is probably to assert a fact; but it is virtually to admit the absence of a satisfactory plea. Why talk of the iron rod of justice or the cold code of honor here; hath mercy no golden scepter to extend to the vanquished? How beautiful, as he returned resistless from the field, would this trait of human kindness have shown; as a sunbeam on the wings of a proud eagle, that at eventide seeks his island-eyrie, after having vanquished all that resisted! He had stilled the tempests of Europe as the wise and kind Magician stilled the elements and the demons; and when, like him, he was to lay his terrors aside, would not the spectacle have been still more noble and sublime if, like Prospero, he had closed all with a strain of mercy's music? We shall not 15 say that the affair left a blot on the Duke's escutcheon; we can imagine that, with his rigid habits of adherence to form, his unwillingness in any particulars to overstep his powers or prerogatives, and the natural reserve of his character, he might not feel himself called upon directly to interfere; but, had he for once cast all such feelings aside, and striven energetically to save Ney, it would have cast such an enhancing light over all his glories that we can not but regret its absence.

We shall not follow the Duke of Wellington in the 16 remaining portion of his career. As a statesman, he displayed the same decision and the same intellectual perspicacity which had marked him as a soldier; he had a deep sympathy with that old conservatism which has now been so severely battered by free-traders and Manchester schools, but which numbered in its ranks much of the

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highest and the noblest blood in Britain; when the trumpet of advancement spoke so clearly and so loud that it could be neither mistaken nor resisted, he advanced. It was when he was at the head of the Government, in 1829, that the famous measure for the emancipation of the Roman Catholics was passed.

We seem to see him, after the pacification of Europe, taking up his abode, in calm majesty, in the island round which he had built such a battlement of strength and of glory. We shall apply to him the superb thought of Tennyson:

"With his hand against the hilt,

He paced the troubled land, like Peace."

We trust that some portraiture of the character of the Duke of Wellington has been presented to the reader in the foregoing paragraphs. It well became us to trust for such portraiture to his mighty deeds rather than to our puny words. But we deem a few supplementary remarks necessary for the general summing up of his character. His radical characteristics were calmness, clearness, strength; they are easily read, and it is not difficult to refer to their action every portion of his career. We see them everywhere; in the unerring but silent care with which he gained a comprehensive knowledge of the conditions of every contest in which he was engaged; in the piercing and certain glance by which he detected the error of an opponent; in the sedate and massive composure of his dispatches, where clearness of vision produces pictures rivaling the efforts of art; in the marble stillness and 19 strength of his firm cheek and unwrinkled forehead. We trace the same characteristics in his valor. He has been called cautious and hesitating; after the charges of Assaye, the passage of the Douro, and the eagle swoop of Sala