een stigmatised as cold, distant, at times
harsh, and even selfish. For the charges of coldness and distance there
appears to be some foundation. Unlike Napoleon, the Duke of Wellington
never appealed to the enthusiasm of his soldiers; but he always relied
upon their sense of duty. He regarded his army, organized by discipline,
as a perfect machine, upon the performance of which he could calculate
with precision, and as he never expected it to do more than it ought, so
he never looked to see it do less. The idea of duty, of absolute
responsibility and subordination from rank to rank, seems to have been
that to which he was always content to appeal. Accordingly, his troops
never failed him. Their rock-like steadfastness and constant unimpulsive
bravery, it was that enabled him to carry out his plans with such
certainty.

The contrast to Napoleon is no Where more seen than in the dispatches of
the one and the bulletins of the other. In his demeanour to his men, the
Duke was reserved; in his language, curt and laconic. If his troops felt
the moral certainty that he was leading them to victory, and honoured
him accordingly, it was not from personal enthusiasm, such as the wild
love the emperor inspired in those around him, but from a deep respect
for his character and a reliance on his talents. Nor did he condescend
to charlatantism or bombast, as his great rival too often did. There is
not the slightest trace of vanity about him. Compare the speech of the
one to his army, beneath the Pyramids, with the simple, "Up, guards, and
at them!" of the other. In these trifles, we find the key to the real
minds of great men.

The political character of the Duke, and his services as a civilian,
have never been sufficiently appreciated by the great mass of his
countrymen. His brilliant military reputation cast into the shade his
sterling but unobtrusive services as a senator and as a minister. It was
even the fashion, for a long time, to assert that his taking office at
all was a sign of defective judgment. Indeed, when he declared, in the
House of Lords, that he would be "worse than mad to think of such a
thing," he gave a colour to the supposition. His subsequent assertion,
after he had become prime minister, that he had done so "because nobody
else would," conveyed, in all probability, the simple truth. The Duke
did not know his own capacity for government, until it was tried.

Another reason why his positive worth, as a politici