e mistake at Waterloo. Yet you
will allow Wellington to have been something of a general, if not in
India, at least in Spain.

_Landor_.--Suppose him, or any distinguished general of the English,
to have been placed where Murillo was placed in America, Mina in
Spain; then inform me what would have been your hopes? [84]
The illustrious Mina, [85] of all the generals who have appeared in our
age, has displayed the greatest genius, and the greatest constancy.
That exalted personage, the admiration of Europe, accomplished the
most arduous and memorable work that any one mortal ever brought to
its termination.

[Footnote 84: Vol. ii. p. 214.]

[Footnote 85: Vol. ii. p. 3. Ded. "to Mina."--Wilson.]

_North_.--We have had some distinguished statesmen at the helm in
our time, Mr. Landor.

_Landor_.--Not one.

_North_.--Mr. Pitt.

_Landor_.--Your pilot that weathered the storm. Ha, ha! He was the
most insidious republican that England ever produced.

_North_.--You should like him if he was a Republican.

_Landor_.--But he was a debaser of the people as well as of the
peerage. By the most wasteful prodigality both in finance and war,
he was enabled to distribute more wealth among his friends and
partisans than has been squandered by the uncontrolled profusion of
French monarchs from the first Louis to the last. [86] Yet he was
more short-sighted than the meanest insect that can see an inch
before it. You should have added those equally enlightened and
prudent leaders of our Parliament, Lord Castlereagh and his
successors. Pitt, indeed! whose requisites for a successful minister
were three--to speak like an honest man, to act like a scoundrel,
and to be indifferent which he is called. But you have forgotten my
dialogue between him and that wretched fellow Canning. [87]
I have there given Pitt his quietus. As to Castlereagh and Canning,
I have crushed them to powder, spit upon them, kneaded them into
dough again; and pulverized them once more. Canning is the man who
deserted his party, supplanted his patrons, and abandoned every
principle he protested he would uphold. [88] Castlereagh is the
statesman who was found richer one day, by a million of zecchins,
than he was the day before, and this from having signed a treaty!
The only life he ever personally aimed at was the vilest in existence,
and none complains that he succeeded in his attempt. [89] I forgot:
he aimed at another so like it, (you remember his duel with Ca