conscripts to say that the struggle would have been nothing like so long and obstinate as it proved.

The events of the 16th and 18th of June 1815 are too familiar to every reader in the British Empire to need recapitulation here. There is, however, one circumstance in connection with them, with respect to which delusion still extensively prevails, chiefly perhaps because some of Lord Byron's best verses chronicle the fiction: we mean those relative to the way in which the Duke of Wellington and his officers are represented as being suddenly startled by the sound of cannon whilst dancing-unconscious of the approach of danger-at the Duchess of Richmond's ball on the night of the 15th, at Brussels. They commence thus

and presently we are told that, amidst the voluptuous swell of music the sudden booming of the French artillery arrested the flying feet of the dancers, paled the cheeks of the fair dames, and pressed innumerable sighs from out young hearts. Nothing can be prettier, only there is not a particle of truth in the story. It would have been odd if there were, the French attack on the Prussians at Charleroi commencing in the morning and closing before dark: the echoes of the 'opening roar' of the guns must have taken an immense time on the road only to reach Brussel at midnight. But the truth is, that long before a ball-candle was lighted, o a ball-dress fitted on, every officer and man in the army knew of the attack of the French on the Sambre, and had received orders from the quarter master to be in readiness to march at daybreak. The last order issued b the Duke of Wellington on the evening of the ball was dated 'à Bruxelle ce 15 Juin, 9 P.M.,' and directs the Duc de Berri to send what force he ha to Alost by daybreak. Brunswick's 'fated chieftain' had, before going the 'surprise'-ball, directed his corps, by order of the British field-marsha to assemble and bivouac on the high-road between Brussels and Bivorc in readiness for the march at dawn. Provided the invited officers had ma the necessary preparations for departure, there could be no possible obje tion to their attending the ball for a few hours-the reverse rather; men do not now, any more than in the days of paladins and tournamer fight the less bravely for the actual or recent presence of graceful a beautiful women. The whole story is an invention, not one whit tr than the words ascribed to the Duke of Wellington during the great fig 'Would that the night or Blucher were come!' And, in truth, spit all the fables and assumptions of both French and Prussian writers-exc able perhaps under the circumstances-Blucher's army took no effect part in the fight, invaluable as they proved themselves in the pursuit. this were not so, the Prussian authorities would scarcely have studio omitted to publish an official list of their killed and wounded in the bat The capitulation of Paris, agreed to between Marshal Davoust, Princ Eckmul, acting on behalf of the provisional government, at the head which was Fouché, Duc d'Otrante, and Wellington and Blucher, signed on the 3d of July 1815, and the French army occupying F retired beyond the Loire.

Two days after the Convention was signed, Marshal Ney, who, on b intrusted by Louis XVIII. with the command of a body of troops to a

On the morning of the 14th of September 1852, he awoke in his usual health, but almost immediately after complained of slight indisposition. He soon fell into a succession of fits, which ended in his death at three in the afternoon.

The qualities, mental and moral, of the illustrious field-marshal, are written in such firm and vivid characters in his life, that none but the wilfully blind can fail to perceive their significance and appreciate their value. That he was a magnificent leader of armies, a general marvellously skilled in the art of handling troops in the field, and strong to encounter and overcome adverse fortune by indomitable courage and unswerving constancy, is as undeniably true as that he was in no sense a great statesman. There was no breadth, no largeness in his notions and maxims of civil polity: he appeared to have no faith in the progress of humanity, no feeling of the strength and majesty of moral power. It may serve to illustrate the routine habit of his mind, when employed on other than strictly professional questions, that he lays it down repeatedly over and over again in his voluminous correspondence, that the alliance of Portugal is before all others important to the interests and welfare of this country. But, with all this, the record of his life is a great epitaph. We have run it over briefly— faithfully: we do not dip our pencil in fancy hues, in order to write fantastic panegyrics on his name; but we not the less hold it to be certain, that the name of Arthur, Duke of Wellington, will, whenever uttered in ages yet to come, recall the memory of a great soldier, and an earnest-minded though not eminent statesman.

The Duke of Wellington's titles and offices were perhaps the most exalted and numerous ever conferred upon a single individual. We subjoin the list: Duke and Viscount Wellington; Baron Douro; Knight of the Garter, and Grand Cross of the Bath; Prince of Waterloo in the Netherlands; Duke of Ciudad Rodrigo, and Grandee of Spain; Duke of Vittoria; Marquis of Torres-Vedras; Count Vimeira in Portugal; Knight of the foreign orders of the Guelph of Hanover, St Andrew of Russia, the Black Eagle of Prussia, the Golden Fleece of Spain, the Elephant of Denmark, St Ferdinand of Merit, and St Januarius of the Two Sicilies; Maximilian-Joseph of Bavaria, Maria-Theresa of Austria, the Sword of Sweden, of William of the Netherlands; Field-Marshal in the armies of Austria, Russia, Prussia, Portugal, the Netherlands; Captain-General of Spain; Commander-in-chief; Colonel of Grenadier Guards; Colonel-inchief of Rifle Brigade; Constable of the Tower and Dover Castle; Warden of the Cinque Ports; Lord-Lieutenant of Hampshire and the Tower Hamlets; Chancellor of the University of Oxford; Master of Trinity House; Vice-President of the Scottish Naval and Military Academy; Governor of King's College; and D.C.L.

SIR ROBERT PEEL.

THE HE intense and general emotion which the intelligence of the premature death of Sir Robert Peel excited in all classes of society was an instinctive, and with many persons an involuntary, homage to the eminence of that distinguished man. The falling of the column revealed the largeness of the space it had occupied in the public eye, and men were startled by the magnitude of the void which thus suddenly flashed upon them. With the natural regret felt by generous minds on witnessing high hopes overthrown, the pulses of a yet manly and honourable ambition for ever stilled, the warm current of vigorous life arrested by the sudden grasp of death, there mingled a startled apprehensiveness of the consequences likely to result to the nation from the demise of a statesman who exercised so great and paramount an influence over its destinies, and whose name, whatever the merits or demerits of his policy, is indissolubly associated with some of the most important events in modern British history. That painful emotion will not speedily subside; but already there succeeds to the natural outburst of regretful encomium which followed the sudden withdrawal of a great man from the scene where he played so distinguished a part, the first faint whispers of the spirit of detraction by which he was in life pursued, and which, shamed into momentary silence, is again taking heart, and reviving aspersions by which it has so industriously sought to dwarf and stain a lofty reputation and a great memory. Be it our task, then, calmly to inquire if there be any reason to doubt of an ultimately favourable verdict of posterity on the acts and motives of Sir Robert Peel; a verdict, by the way, which if it be true that foreign nations are a kind of contemporaneous posterity, has never been for a moment doubtful. Happily, violence and passion, unreasoning clamour and abuse, will avail nothing to influence the judgment of the next generation. No contemporary condemnation of Sir Robert Peel pronounced by the voices, phrase-eloquent as they may be, of envy, hatred, and uncharitableness, will be ratified by posterity. The award to which Time will give validity and enduring power will be spoken by other tongues than those of men who, once his parasites, have since become his unscrupulous calumniators; and from other tribunals than those presided over or influenced by persons who saw only in his fall from power a niche left vacant which themselves, if sufficiently bold and reckless, might hope to fill. A necessarily brief, but unreserved and faithful, tracing of the chief incidents of his life and political career will enable us to anticipate with

probable correctness the nature of that calm and reasoned judgment— whether it will confirm or reverse the emphatic declaration pronounced in the House of Lords by the Duke of Wellington—a man whose blunt honesty of speech and keen insight into character no one will deny—that in every action of his life, Sir Robert Peel, above all other men he knew, was guided by a love of TRUTH AND JUSTICE.

The chief measures which the deceased statesman has been instrumental in placing on the statute book, mark, it cannot be denied, great and distinct epochs in the monetary, religious, and commercial policy of this country-the turning-points of a system which, suddenly abandoning the beaten but narrow and miry road, darkly-visible in the doubtful and fading light of decaying traditions, stepped confidently into a firmer and broader path, illumined by the lights of reason, common sense, and the spirit of social impartiality. These changes, whatever fond illusions may be indulged in by a few persons representing ages long past, and dreaming rather than living in the present day, are irreversible. No instance can be pointed out in which this country has receded from a policy urged upon the government by long, continuous, and peaceful efforts of the people, and slowly, reluctantly acquiesced in by the legislature. In such cases all the conditions and guarantees of permanence have been fulfilled, and an effectual reaction is out of the question. Mr Vansittart's dictum, that an inconvertible one-pound note and a shilling were, and always would be, equal in exchangeable value to a guinea of full weight and fineness, is as capable of restoration to our statute book as the law forbidding an Irish Catholic to take part in the legislation of his own country. The same with the duties on corn: they are as dead as the close boroughs; and gentlemen who trade in delusion might as reasonably promise their followers a revival of Old Sarum as of the sliding scale. With these irrevocable departures from a narrow and restrictive policy, it has been the fortune of Sir Robert Peel to inseparably connect his name, whilst, unfortunately for his reputation, according to his adversaries, the precise measures relative to Currency, Catholics, and Corn-to use a quaint, alliterative phrase upon which his fame as a statesman must ultimately rest, are precisely those which he had previously distinguished himself by denouncing and combating. In 1810 he voted for Mr Vansittart's currency absurdities in opposition to Mr Francis Horner. In 1819 he adopted Mr Horner's propositions, eliciting from the House of Commons explosions of hilarious mirth at the transparent folly he had before supported. Until 1829 he had uniformly, if hesitatingly, opposed the admission of Roman Catholics to equal civil rights with other subjects of the realm. In that year he not only renounced his opposition to those claims, but led the assault upon the exclusive Protestant constitution, of which he had till then been the favourite champion. Finally, in 1846, he recanted his previous opinions upon the Corn-Laws, and in the face of his bewildered and astonished party, gave legislative effect to doctrines concerning which they had chiefly gathered around him as their leader to denounce and oppose. It is by his conduct with reference to these three questions that Sir Robert Peel's moral and intellectual qualities as a public man must be chiefly tested, for his various administrative reforms, and his amendment of the criminal law and practice of the country, though sufficient, under other circumstances, to make the reputation of