rloo, was over and gone.

[Illustration: Duke of Wellington.]

In the interval another great spirit had passed away. The Duke of
Wellington died, very quietly and with little warning, at Walmer
Castle, on the 14th of September, 1852, "full of years and honours."
He was in his eighty-fourth year, and during the whole reign of Queen
Victoria he had occupied such a position as no English subject had
ever held before. At one time, before that reign began, his political
action had made him extraordinarily unpopular, in despite of the
splendid military services which no one could deny; now he was the
very idol of the nation, and at the same time was treated with the
utmost respect and reverent affection by the Sovereign--two
distinctions how seldom either attained or merited by one person! But
in Wellington's case there is no doubt that the popular adoration and
the royal regard were worthily bestowed and well earned. He had never
seemed stirred by the popular odium, he never seemed to prize the
popular praise, which he received; it was not for praise that he had
worked, but for simple duty; and his experience of the fickleness of
public favour might make him something scornful of it. To the honours
which his Sovereign delighted to shower on him--honours perhaps never
before bestowed on a subject by a monarch--he _was_ sensitive. The
Queen to him was the noblest personification of the country whose
good had ever been, not only the first, but the only object of his
public action: and with this patriotic loyalty there mingled
something of a personal feeling, more akin to romance in its paternal
tenderness than seemed consistent with the granite-hewn strength and
sternness of his general character. A thorough soldier, with a
soldier's contempt for fine-spun diplomacy, he had been led into many
a blunder when acting as a chief of party and of State; but his
absolute single-minded honesty had more than redeemed such errors;
"integrity and uprightness had preserved him," and through him the
land and its rulers, amid difficulties where the finest statecraft
might have made shipwreck of all.

He had his human failings; yet the moral grandeur of his whole career
cast such faults into the shade, and justified entirely the universal
grief at his not untimely death. The Queen deplored him as "our
immortal hero"--a servant of the Crown "devoted, loyal, and faithful"
beyond all example; the nation endeavoured by a funeral of
unpreceden