utation of a
schoolboy, of things that of a man, is founded. But the despatches now
published demonstrate that, before he attained middle life, he was a
proficient at least in Latin, French, and English composition; for
letters in each, written in a very pure style, are to be found in all
parts of his correspondence.

From early youth, young Churchill was distinguished by the elegance of
his manners and the beauty of his countenance and figure--advantages
which, coupled with the known loyal principles of his father, and the
sufferings he had undergone in the royal cause, procured for him, at the
early age of fifteen, the situation of page in the household of the Duke
of York, afterwards James II. His inclination for arms was then so
decided, that that prince procured for him a commission in one of the
regiments of guards when he was only sixteen years old. His uncommonly
handsome figure then attracted no small share of notice from the
beauties of the court of Charles II., and even awakened a passion in one
of the royal mistresses herself. Impatient to signalize himself,
however, he left their seductions, and embarked as a volunteer in the
expedition against Tangiers in 1766. Thus his first essay in arms was
made in actions against the Moors. Having returned to Great Britain, he
attracted the notice of the Countess of Castlemaine, afterwards Duchess
of Cleveland, then the favorite mistress of Charles II., who had
distinguished him by her regard before he embarked for Africa, and who
made him a present of L5000, with which the young soldier bought an
annuity of L500 a-year, which laid the foundation, says Chesterfield, of
all his subsequent fortunes. Charles, to remove a dangerous rival in her
unsteady affections, gave him a company in the guards, and sent him to
the Continent with the auxiliary force which, in those days of English
humiliation, the cabinet of St James's furnished to Louis XIV. to aid
him in subduing the United Provinces. Thus, by a singular coincidence,
it was under Turenne, Conde, and Vauban that the future conqueror of the
Bourbons first learned the art of scientific warfare. Wellington went
through the same discipline, but in the inverse order: his first
campaigns were made against the French in Flanders, his next against the
bastions of Tippoo and the Mahratta horse in Hindostan.

Churchill had not been long in Flanders, before his talents and
gallantry won for him deserved distinction. The campaign