manners, and was often seen walking in the park with English
companions. In youth his habits had been temperate; and his temperance
had its proper reward, a singularly green and vigorous old age. At
fourscore he retained a strong relish for innocent pleasures: he
conversed with great courtesy and sprightliness: nothing could be in
better taste than his equipages and his table; and every cornet of
cavalry envied the grace and dignity with which the veteran appeared in
Hyde Park on his charger at the head of his regiment, [426] The House
of Commons had, with general approbation, compensated his losses and
rewarded his services by a grant of a hundred thousand pounds. Before
he set out for Ireland, he requested permission to express his gratitude
for this magnificent present. A chair was set for him within the bar. He
took his seat there with the mace at his right hand, rose, and in a
few graceful words returned his thanks and took his leave. The Speaker
replied that the Commons could never forget the obligation under which
they already lay to His Grace, that they saw him with pleasure at the
head of an English army, that they felt entire confidence in his zeal
and ability, and that, at whatever distance he might be, he would always
be in a peculiar manner an object of their care. The precedent set on
this interesting occasion was followed with the utmost minuteness, a
hundred and twenty-five years later, on an occasion more interesting
still. Exactly on the same spot on which, in July 1689, Schomberg had
acknowledged the liberality of the nation, a chair was set, in July
1814, for a still more illustrious warrior, who came to return
thanks for a still more splendid mark of public gratitude. Few things
illustrate more strikingly the peculiar character of the English
government and people than the circumstance that the House of Commons,
a popular assembly, should, even in a moment of joyous enthusiasm, have
adhered to ancient forms with the punctilious accuracy of a College of
Heralds; that the sitting and rising, the covering and the uncovering,
should have been regulated by exactly the same etiquette in the
nineteenth century as in the seventeenth; and that the same mace which
had been held at the right hand of Schomberg should have been held in
the same position at the right hand of Wellington, [427]

On the twentieth of August the Parliament, having been constantly
engaged in business during seven months, broke up, by t