and supported the absolute necessity of acknowledging personality in God." In the autumn of 1836 we find him at Bordeaux, in search of health, which, in some measure he found in the "South of France, with its Gascon ways, the Garonne, Garumna river, the Gironde, and Montaigne's country." He visited, while there, the house of the great essayist, and many of the places associated with the memory of the Girondists, collecting the while a few slight materials for his friend's "History of the French Revolution." Driven by the approach of cholera from Bordeaux, he went next to Madeira, and there wrote some of the best of his contributions to "Blackwood's Magazine," whose editor, Professor Wilson, appreciated and loved him. Among these contributions to "Old Ebony were his two best productions, the "Onyx Ring," a novel, and the poem of "The Sexton's Daughter." Hardly were these concluded ere he left Madeira and returned to England; but he had scarcely touched his native shores before his malady compelled him to take flight anew. He dwelt first for a few months, however, in a pleasant cottage at Blackheath, writing therein further contributions for "Blackwood," and sundry papers for the "London and Westminster Review," and founding in London the celebrated "Sterling Club," among whose members were Tennyson, Carlyle, John Mill, and other ornaments of the literary circles of the metropolis. He then went to Italy, and re-gained his health amid the marble palaces, the gardens, and the churches of that sunny-land. From Rome are dated many of his admirable letters to his parents and his friends, and there, too, he continued writing for the "London and Westminster" and for "Blackwood." When he returned from Italy, in the summer of 1839, he settled for a time at Clifton, near Bristol, writing there his "Criticism on Carlyle," some portions of his poem, "The Election," and his tragedy of "Strafford," and publishing a volume of collected poems, dedicated to Julius Hare, of which the public took no notice. Poetry, indeed, was at once his foible and his penchant, -though at the same time his highest and much-needed consolation, and he continued writing it in spite of the oft-repeated warnings of Carlyle, who, while finding in his friend's verses far more merit than the public seemed disposed to allow to them, failed to see in them any true originality. Sterling did not, however, cease writing verses till he died, and his biographer informs us that, just before his death, he arrived, for the first time, at what he, his biographer, conceived to be veritable originality. During the next few years he lived chiefly at Falmouth, enjoying the fine scenery of the neighbourhood, and the society of some eminent Quakers residing there. He sometimes passed a few months at Torquay during this period, writing there what is written of his unfinished and fine epic of " Richard Cœur de Lion ;" and he also, before its expiration, paid a short visit to Naples. In 1843 his mother died at a good old age, and his wife in a few months followed her to the tomb. Edward Sterling, then retired from the editorship of the "Times," struck by this re-doubled blow, became infirm; and his son John survived not long his mother and his wife, dying in the middle of 1843, in his own house at Ventnor, in the Isle of Wight. Such is a slight sketch of the life of poor John Sterling. Like all men in our age, particularly men attached specially to the cultivation of the intellect, he was inquiet and tormented. He wandered from system to system, seeking a belief, interrogating all oracles. Lives such as his are always full of perils, and few indeed of those who have felt the same doubts and the same torments, ever managed to escape them. All have committed some intellectual crimes; despair, disdain, contempt, anger, cynicism, and we know not what else, have seized them and made them their victims. But Sterling was a grand exception to this rule: he had the art, the address, the virtue, of escaping every peril in his path. With a singularly practical manipulation, he could utilize his doubts and transform them into elements of piety and religion. He marched slowly and safely by the edge of the abyss, like the Moslem believers over the scythe-edge of Mahomet. The agility which he displayed in leaping over whatever dangerous obstacle might lie before him, was certainly most marvellous. His writings are not the productions of a great intel lect, but of a mind transparent, amiable, and pure. That which more especially distinguishes them is the sentiment of profound humility which runs through them. We know that many of the opinions entertained by Sterling were not orthodox, but we know also that the sentiment of Christianity dominated in all his works. If love, and charity, and goodwill towards others are the first and most essential virtues of the Christian, Sterling possessed them in a high degree. He returns always in his writings to the necessity for the love of our neighbour. It is this which forms the grand foundation of his thoughts, and he was accustomed in them to separate men into two classes those who possessed, and those who lacked the one indispensable virtue. there lives not an Englishman who does not feel a reverence for the name of Wellington. His great and victorious battles, with all the minor points o his personal history, now that he has descended into the grave, will soon be before the public, who will pronounce that verdict which time and close and impartial investigation can alone mature. Whatever gloom may for a moment have cast its shadows over the brilliancy of his life-march, his end was a calm and unclouded sunset his spirit quietly quitted its wornout tenement he died full of years and honours, and without a murmur or a struggle-so kind was nature to him in his last moments. Among the biographers of this remarkable man there exists a difference of opinion as to the exact day and place As a writer, we would divide his of his birth; but it appears to be quite writing into two principal classes-the certain that it was either on the 29th essays inserted in the "Athenæum," in of April, or the 1st of May, 1769, and which he exhibits his first manner, the place was Dangan Castle, county and which are, as it were, imitations of Meath, Ireland, or Merrion Street, and souvenirs of the literature of the Dublin. The Duke himself seems to ancients; and his contributions to have favoured the 1st of May. Even "Blackwood's" and the "Westminster his genealogy is dwelt upon with inteReview," in which, although there are rest and great particularity by a writer traces of modern German philosophy, in the "Leading Journal," from whose the spirit of Christianity rules tout-a-columns, and other sources, we have fait. Those of his writings which we drawn largely in the following narramost prefer, are his "Crystals from a tive:-Cavern," and "Sayings and Essayings," in which he appears to us as a New Novalis, using the microscope to penetrate into the secretest recesses of the human soul. As a critic, he had more intelligence than true originality, and one could scarcely perceive in him any decided preference. But his character as a critic and a writer matters little, he was more than either-a Christian and a Man. FIELD MARSHAL THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON. THE illustrious personage, the leading events of whose life we are about to give, finished a career of almost unexampled brilliancy and duration at his residence, Walmer Castle, at twenty minutes past 3 o'clock, on Tuesday, the 14th of Sept. Though in his 83rd year, so well was his health sustained to the very last, that the announcement of the event fell like a thunderbolt upon the nation; for, despite the errors which have now and then clouded the sunshine of his long and successful life, ARTHUR WELLESLEY was the son of the Right Hon. Earl and Countess of Mornington. By the death of his father in 1781, became dependent at an early age upon the care and prudence of his mother, a lady, as it fortunately happened, of talents equal to the task. Under this direction of his studies he was sent to Eton, from which college he was transferred, first to private tuition at Brighton, and subsequently to the 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. On the 7th of 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 instant is the degree of advantage over his contemporaries which might be derived from the family connections above described; and a review of the facts will lead, we think, to the conclusion that, though the young officer commanded sufficient interest to bring his deserts into immediate and favour able notice, he was not so circumstanced as to rely exclusively on such considerations for advancement. A French historian, indeed, has indulged in a sneer at the readiness with which the haughty aristocracy of Britain submitted themselves in after times to the ascendancy of an Irish parvenu, but this assumption is as little warrantable as that by which the distinctions of the young cadet are attributed to the nobility of his extraction. The pretensions of Arthur Wellesley were insufficient, even at a somewhat later period, to secure him from failure in that test of social position-the choice of a wife; nor could his opportunities have produced more than commonplace successes to a man of ordinary capacity. On the other hand, they relieved him from those risks of neglect and injustice which must occasionally be fatal even to eminent worth, and hey carried him rapidly over those arly stages in which, under other circumstances, the fortunes of a life might have been perhaps consumed. possessed interest enough to make merit available, but not enough to dispense with it. He His promotion was accordingly rapid, but not more so in its first steps than in examples visible at the present day, and much less so than in the case of some of his contemporaries. He remained a subaltern four years and three months, at the expiration of which period of service he received his captaincy. He entered the army, as we have said, in the 73rd, but in the same year he moved as lieutenant to the 76th, and within the next eighteen months was transferred, still in a subaltern's capacity, to the 41st Foot and the 12th Light Dragoons successively. On the 30th of June, 1791, he was promoted to a captaincy in the 58th, from which corps he exchanged into the 18th Light Dragoons in the October of the following year. At length he obtained his majority in the 33rd, a regiment which may boast of considerable identification with his renown, for he proceeded in it to his lieutenant-coloneley and colonelcy, and commanded it personally throughout the early stages of his active career. These rapid exchanges bespeak the operation of somewhat unusual interest in pushing the young officer forward; for in those days a soldier ordinarily continued in the corps to which he was first gazetted, and to which his hopes, prospects, and connections were mainly confined. So close, indeed, and permanent were the ties thus formed, that when Colonel Wellesley's own comrade and commander, General Harris, was asked to name the title by which he would desire to enter the peerage, he could only refer to the 5th Fusiliers as having been for nearly six-and-twenty years his constant home. Before the active career of the young officer commenced he was attached as aide-de-camp to the staff of the Earl of Westmoreland, then Lord Lieutenant of Ireland; and in 1790, having just come of age, he was returned to the Irish parliament for the family borough of Trim. The most eager researches into this period of his career have not elicited anything to prove that he was distinguished from those around him. In one particular, indeed, he shared the failings common to his class and times, after a fashion singularly contrasted with the subsequent developments of his character. Captain Wellesley got seriously into debt. So pressing, in fact, were his obligations, that he accepted temporary relief from a bootmaker in whose house he lodged, and before quitting England on foreign service, confided the arrangement of his affairs to another Dublin tradesman, whom he empowered for this purpose to receive the disposable portion of his income. At length, in the month of May, 1794, Arthur Wellesley being then in his 26th year, and in command of the 33rd Regiment a position which he owed to his brother's liberality-embarked at Cork for service on the continent of Europe; so that his first active duties involved great independent responsibility. The aspect of affairs at that period was unpromising in the extreme. War had been declared about twelve months previously between England and France, and 10,000 British troops, under the command of the Duke of York, had been despatched to aid the operations of the Allied Powers in the Low Countries. It would be difficult to impress an Englishman of the present generation with a true conception of the character and reputation of the British army at that period. Forty years had elapsed since the appearance of any considerable English force on the European continent, and the recollections of the campaigns in question were not calculated to suggest any high opinions of British prowess. In fact, the Duke of Cumberland had been systematically beaten by Marshal Saxe, and the traditions of Marlborough's wars had been obliterated by contests in which the superiority of the French soldiery seemed to be declared. The ascendency, too, so signally acquired at this time by our navy, tended to confirm the impressions referred to, and it was argued that the ocean had been clearly marked out as the exclusive scene of our preponderance. Throughout a great part of the century these opinions had been rather justified than belied by our own proceedings. We fought many of our colonial battles with mercenaries, and we hired German battalions even to defend our coasts, and protect the established succession of the throne. A new school of war, to which the attention of the reader will be presently directed, was, indeed, forming in the East: but its influence was hardly yet known, and the Duke of York's corps was disembarked at Ostend with, perhaps, less prestige than any division of the allied Though the exertions of the royal commander had already been army. directed, and with some success, to military reforms, yet the conditions of the service were still miserably bad. The commissariat was wretched, the medical department shamefully ineffective, and rapacity, peculation, and mismanagement prevailed to a most serious extent. Such was the army which Colonel Wellesley proceeded to join. It was no wonder that English as well as Imperialists were worsted by Republican levies, not only numerically superior, but whose system confounded all received tactics as utterly as the campaigns of Charles VIII. in Italy demolished the conceptions of mediæval warfare. The Duke of York was repulsed in a series of engagements which we need not describe, and it was in aid of his discomfited force that Colonel Wellesley carried out the 33rd Regiment to the scene of his first, as well as of his last services--the plains of Belgium. The first military operation performed by the conqueror of Waterloo was the evacuation of a town in the face of the enemy. The 33rd had been landed at Ostend; but when Lord Moira, who had the chief command of the reinforcements sent out, arrived at that port with the main body, he saw reason for promptly withdrawing the garrison and abandoning the place. Orders were issued accordingly, and though the Republicans, under Pichegru, were at the gates of the town before the English had quitted it, the 33rd was safely embarked. Lord Moira by a flank march effected a timely junction with the Duke of York at Malines. Colonel Wellesley took his corps round by the Scheldt, and landed at Antwerp, whence he moved without delay to the head-quarters of the Duke. This was in July, 1794. The operations which followed, and which terminated in the following spring with the reembarcation of the British troops at Bremerlehe, a town at the mouth of the Weser, constituted Arthur Wellesley's first campaign. They do not, for the purposes of our memoir, require any circumstantial description. The total force of the Allied Powers was strong, but it was extended over a long line of country, composed of heterogeneous troops, and commanded by generals, not only independent, but suspicious of each other's decisions. In the face of an enemy, first animated of anything beyond intrepidity and steadiness, and these qualities, as we learn, were made visibly manifest. His post was that which, in a retreat, is the post of honour-the rearguard. The command of a brigade devolved on him by seniority, and the able dispositions of Colonel Wellesley in checking the enemy or executing an assault, are circumstances of special remark in contemporary accounts of the transactions. In particular, the affairs of Druyten, Meteren, and Geldermansel, are mentioned with some detail, as reflecting considerable credit on the 33rd and its commander. Beyond this point Colonel Wellesley's reputation was not extended, but we may readily imagine how material a portion of his professional character might have been formed in this Dutch cam by desperation and then intoxicated by success, there existed no unity of plan or concert of movements. After the defeat sustained by the Austrians at Fleurus, the campaign was resolved into retreat on the part of the Allies, and pursuit of fortune on the part of the French. The Austrians were on the middle Rhine, the British on the Meuse. The route taken by the Duke of York in his successive retirements from one position to another, lay through Breda, Bois le Duc, and Nimeguen, at which latter place he maintained himself against the enemy with some credit. Early in December, however, he resigned his command to General Walmoden, and returned to England, leaving the unfortunate division to struggle with even greater difficulties than they had yet experienced. Disengaged by repeated tri-paign. Irrespectively of the general umphs from their Austrian antagonists, the Republican forces closed in tremendous strength round the English and their comrades. The winter set in with such excessive severity that the rivers were passable for the heaviest class of cannon, provisions were scanty, and little aid was forthcoming from the inhabitants, against either the inclemency of the season or the casualties of war. It was found necessary to retire into Westphalia, and in this retreat, which was commenced on the 15th of January, 1795, the troops are said to have endured for some days privations and sufferings little short of those encountered by the French in the Moscow campaign. So deep was the snow that all traces of roads were lost, waggons laden with sick and wounded were unavoidably abandoned, and to straggle from the column was to perish. The enemy were in hot pursuit, and the population undisguisedly hostile to their nominal allies. At length the Yssel was crossed, and the troops reposed for a while in cantonments along the Ems; but as the French still prepared to push forward, the allied force continued its retreat, and as they entered Westphalia the tardy appearance of a strong Prussian corps secured them from further molestation till the embarcation took place. Such was the Duke of Wellington's first campaign. Whatever might have been the actual precocity of his talent, there was obviously no room in such operations for the exercise on his part uses of adversity, the miscarriages of this ill-starred expedition must have been fraught with invaluable lessons to the future hero. He observed the absolute need of undivided authority in an enemy's presence, and the hopelessness of all such imperfect combinations as state jealousies suggested. We are justified in inferring from his subsequent demonstrations of character, that no error escaped either his notice or his memory. He saw a powerful force frittered away by divisions, and utterly routed by an enemy which, but a few months before, had been scared at the very news of its approach. He saw the indispensability of preserving discipline in a friendly country, and of conciliating the dispositions of a local population, always powerful for good or evil. Though a master hand was wanting at head-quarters, yet Abercromby was present, and the young Picton was making his first essay by the side of his future comrade. Austrian, Prussian, Hanoverian, French, Dutch, and British, were in the field together, and the care exemplified in appointing and provisioning the respective battalions might be serviceably contrasted. Every check, every repulse, every privation, and every loss, brought, we may be sure, its enduring moral to Arthur Wellesley; and although Englishmen may not reflect without emotion on the destinies which were thus perilled in the swamps of Holland, the future General had perhaps little reason to repine at |