Hill's, however, I went; and though plain fare, | no one got a leg in, and a mat was over the hole. compared to Lord Wellington's, whose table is just now very good, and extremely improved, I got what I call a very good dinner. There is a grim humor in what follows: Lord Wellington looks forward very coolly to another winter here. He said yesterday he should have twenty-five couples of fox hounds next season. The other day the commissarygeneral told him we had eaten nearly all the oxen in the country, that the cultivation of the lands in Portugal could not go on for want of them, and that he scarcely knew where to turn for a supply of beef, as there was this year no reserve store near Lisbon. Lord Wellington said, "Well, then, we must now set about eating all the sheep, and when they are gone I suppose we must go." But above all we must give the reader a glimpse of a dinner and ball given by Wellington literally amidst the ruins of Ciudad Rodrigo, when, after first dining some seventy dignitaries, he received two hundred gentlemen and ladies at a ball and supper. The amusing expedients to cover the want of crockery, glass, silver, &c., and generally to veil the nakedness of the place with yellow damasked satin and silver or crimson satin and gold, are capitally related by Mr. Larpent; and the occasion called forth an astonishing activity on the commander-in-chief's part which one does not find to be at all consistent with the sleepy habits we have seen attributed to him! The day before yesterday we had a hard day's work in the shape of gayety and amusement. My lord was desired to invest General Cole with the Order of the Bath, in a suitable manner. As he has never done anything at Ciudad Rodrigo, of which he is duke, he determined upon this opportunity to give a grand fête there in the midst of the ruins. A grand dinner, ball, and supper. The whole went off very well, except that it was excessively cold, as a few balls during the siege had knocked in several yards of the roof of the ball-room, and it was a hard frost at the time. I never had a colder ride than going there. Lord Wellington was the most active man of the party; he prides himself on this; but yet I hear from those about him that he is a little broken down by it. He staid at business at Frenada until half-past three, and then rode full seventeen miles to Rodrigo in two hours to dinner, dressed in all his orders, &c., was in high glee, danced himself, staid supper, and at half-past three in the morning went back to Frenada by moonlight, and arrived here before daybreak at six, so that by twelve he was ready again for business, and I saw him amongst others upon a court-martial when I returned at two the next day. The whole was laid out so as to astonish the inhabitants, and the defects concealed almost entirelyone hole in the floor had a man near it to see that CCCCLXVIII. LIVING AGE. VOL. I. 24 With great care only a few silver spoons and knives and forks were missing, and I hear one plate. Henry tells me the servants saw one Spanish officer with a turkey's leg sticking out of his pocket; but like our aldermen, they are given to pocket even at Madrid, and have some excuse, as they are paid little, and find everything very dear. 66 This is all highly picturesque; and we may also observe that there is also a good picture of the duke on another occasion sitting and hearing with considerable coolness his own praises chanted in a Spanish ditty-(three Spanish songs having been written in his honor) and calling for it himself at times." On another occasion, however, when the Spaniards insist on entertaining him and his staff with a concert and lemonade (but this is when he is en route for Vittoria) we find him anything but admiring "this time lost in singing psalms to him," as he calls it. In truth the native population appear to have had the notion generally that everything depended individually on Wellington (as I believe most people here do think," interposes Mr. Larpent); wherefore, at all the great crises of affairs present or expected, all the priests and nuns of the peninsula are sending up choruses of prayers and praise for him. He snuffs up such incense with supreme self-pos session. We are far from disposed, notwithstanding, to question what Mr. Larpent says of occasional touches of vanity to be noted in him. He ranks him in this respect as neither better nor worse than "every great man, present or Considerpast, almost without exception." ing his situation, we are told, he is remarkably neat and particular in his dress; being well made, knowing it, and willing to set off to the best what nature has bestowed. "He cuts the skirts of his own coats shorter, to make them look smarter; and only a short time since I found him discussing the cut of his half-boots, and suggesting alterations to his servant, when I went in on business." Never for an instant, however, is there to be remarked about Wellington the least tendency to pomp or parade. There may be a touch of vanity, but there is none of pomp or humbug, when he appears at the grand gathering of the allies and sovereigns in Paris, amid a blaze of stars and orders, in his blue coat and little round hat. The distinction is always made by Mr. Larpent. He thinks he even carried to an excess his simplicity in respect to personal attendance, though in an amusing instance he records at Toulouse we are left to infer that a motive may at times have existed for it not wholly or exclusively Spartan and A Dutch aide-de-camp of General severe. Clausel's goes to ask Mr. Larpent to get him that he may entreé at Wellington's hotel introduce his general. He fancies they will have to pass through armies of aids, officers, sergeants, sentinels, and Heaven knows what. It so happened there was no one but an ignorant sentinel. In trying a door or two, we all blundered upon Lord Wellington, who came himself to the door; so I introduced the astonished Clausel and walked off. My Dutch friend told me that Soult and Suchet would have had about six aides-de-camp, &c., in the first room, and a general officer in waiting in the second. I own I think our great man is in the opposite extreme, but he does not like being watched and plagued. Just after the state levée yesterday, I saw him cross the crowded square in his blue coat and round hat, almost unnoticed, and unknown even to the very people who half an hour before had been cheering him. In one angle of Lord Wellington's hotel lives Madame C, a Spanish beauty, married into a French family of rank, who are the proprietors of the hotel, but who have been obliged to let nearly the whole, reserving this angle. I do not mean to be scandalous, but this perhaps may have decided the choice of the house. Let us show him also in the act of receiving (what Alava seems to have thought might have justified a little ceremony) the outward and visible token of the general Bonapartean "smash" at the battle of Vittoria. General Alava introduced an officer who came to present to Lord Wellington King Joseph's sword—his dress sword set in steel and diamonds, and very handsome. Where taken from, or whence obtained, I did not learn. Lord Wellington just looked at it as he took his seat at dinner, and, telling his man to put it by safe somewhere, fell to at the soup and said no more. Sometimes a capital point of character is let fall unexpectedly at these dinner parties, with very good effect. There is no arm of the service at which Wellington rails at all times with so little scruple as at the artillery, and at the heaviness and slowness of the officers in command. "I took care to let him feel that I thought him very stupid," he remarked over "the soup" of one of these officers; whereon General Murray says (aside and sotto voce), "That must have been by telling him so in plain terms, I have no doubt." With the slowness of another of these slow officers he was made one day so irate at an interview when the conduct of some "friend" was in question that Wellington cut him short by telling him that "his friend might go to hell,' when, overhearing him mutter slowly as he left, "I'll go, sir, to the quarter-master-general for a route," the pacified commander-inchief" laughed well." The truth was that these artillery officers annoyed the commander-in-chief by their unwillingness to move out of rule and precedent, or undertake anything which could not first be squared to demonstration, with strict mathematical accuracy. That was not Wellington's way. He was a soldier of all work, combining in his own person whatever was sufficient to preserve him from becoming dependent on the efficiency of subordinates. He had almost as clear a perception in every case of the method of doing the thing, as of the importance of the thing to be done; and he would never admit the possibility of a miscarriage unless the possibility of redeeming it was at the same time admitted. Thus at Badajoz, when the regular bred artillery colonels threw perpetual difficulties in his way, Mr. Larpent tells us he suddenly became principal engineer himself, picking out for his acting man, a young, clever, unhesitating artillery captain, whom he rapidly made major and lieutenant-colonel, "and," Mr. Larpent adds, "he now conducts the whole department here because he makes no difficulties." This extraordinary aptitude for minute details, combined with the power of directing at the same time the grandest combinations and manoeuvrings in military science, was what really gave Wellington his supremacy over the greatest generals opposed to him. Mr. Larpent gave several striking anecdotes of the promptitude with which he mastered a the new circumstances. In preparing for difficulty by readjusting his arrangements to the famous passage of the Adour, a want of the due quantity of wood was started as a reason for delay: . To show you how little Lord Wellington listens to objections, and how he rather likes to cut up the routine work, I may mention that Elphinstone told him the quantity of plank necessary would take time, and make a delay. "No," says he, "there are all your platforms of your batteries which have been sent out, in case of a siege. Cut them all up." "Then when we proceed with the siege, what is to be done?" quoth Elphinstone. Oh, work your guns in the sand until you can make new ones out of the pine-wood near Bayonne." So all the English battering platforms have been cut up accordingly. 66 A still more remarkable case had occurred at Rodrigo. Scaling ladders became suddenly necessary to take some advanced work before any progress could be made with the siege, and the engineers had no scaling ladders with them. It was put as a hopeless case to Wellington. "Well," he said, no way disturbed, "you have brought up your ammunition and stores, cut them all up directly, they will make excellent ladders-there, you see, each side-piece is already cut." And by the help of these novel ladders the work was scaled forthwith. It is hardly necessary that we should add, in speaking of Wellington, that there never is any underrating of the power of an ad- being constantly called to account; Bonaparte versary, never any disparagement of the was quite free from all inquiry; he was himself abilities of the men opposed to him. When in fact very much so. The other advantage it was reported, after Vittoria, that Bo- Bonaparte possessed, and which he made so naparte was himself to appear on the field much use of (Lord Wellington said) was his of action, he said he should estimate his full latitude of lying; that, if so disposed, he presence as equal to a reinforcement of said, he could not do. 40,000 Frenchmen, for that it would give a turn to everything. As little is there a disposition to conceal his own occasional blunders of which an instance is mentioned in this simple way :· - I dined yesterday at head-quarters, and sat next to Baron Wimpfen, the new quarter-mastergeneral attached here to Lord Wellington. He is a very gentlemanlike man, and talks French well. We had much conversation together, in which Lord Wellington, who sat next to the general, often took part. He gave us the whole history of the battle of Fuentes d'Onore some time since near here, in which the French were three to one, and in which Lord Wellington said he committed a fault in extending his right too much to Posso de Velho; and that if the French had taken advantage of it, there might have been bad consequences, but that they let him recover himself, and change his front before their face. In the like unaffected, manly manner he speaks at other times of the advantages possessed by himself over the generals opposed to him. The subjoined extract is interesting for what it shows us of this, and also for what it tells us, with such quiet truth of observation, of the character of Wellington's mind in other respects - from which many undeserved imputations have arisen: Let us remark, too, that his utter want of respect for persons when a matter of propriety or duty is to be considered, is a feature in his character which has continual illustration in Mr. Larpent's volumes. The Prince Regent was excessively anxious to hold regular personal correspondence with him-and" much hurt" at failing to establish it; but Wellington would not consent. He saw a certain impropriety in admitting any ground of private friendship or relations apart from his necessary communication through the ordinary ministerial channels. "I wrote to his ministers," says Wellington, "and that was enough. What had I to do with him? However, his late favor was a reason for my writing, and I have had a most gracious answer evidently courting further correspondence." Which he intimated, adds Mr. Larpent, that he should not comply with. In short, there was one thing Mr. Larpent found Wellington always surprisingly deficient in" of which there is so much all over the one works hard and does his business. The You ask me if Lord Wellington has recollected —with regard? He seems to have had a is, let every one do his duty well, and never great opinion of him, but scarcely has ever men- let me hear of any difficulties about anything tioned him to me. In truth, I think Lord Wel--and that is all he cares about." One would lington has an active, busy mind, always looking say, on the whole, that it was enough; and to the future, and is so used to lose a useful when the difficulties happen to take preceman, that as soon as gone he seldom thinks more dence of the duty, we have seen what storms of him. He would be always, I have no doubt, and rages follow. Nor is there anything he ready to serve any one who had been about him fires up at more (to his honor be it ever menwho was gone, or the friend of a deceased friend, but he seems not to think much about you when tioned) than at any oppression or plunder of the native and friendly inhabitants which it once out of the way. He has too much of everything and everybody always in his way to think is within human power and watchfulness to much of the absent. He said the other day, he prevent. "He says, if officers will not obey had great advantages now over every other gen- orders, and take care that those under them eral. He could do what others dare not attempt, do so also, they must go home, for he will and he had got the confidence of all the three not command them here; so many officers allied powers, so that what he said or ordered seem to think they have nothing to do but was, right or wrong, always thought right. fight." Several examples recorded in the "And the same" (said he) "with the troops; volumes of his own prompt and awful punishwhen I come myself, the soldiers think what ment of the least excess in friendly towns are they have to do the most important as I am there, sad to read, but doubtless had the effect deand that all will depend on their exertions; of sired. Here is a melancholy case: course, these are increased, in proportion, and they will do for me what perhaps no one else can make them do." He said he had several of the advantages possessed by Bonaparte, from his freedom of action and power of risking, without The man was caught in the fact, stealing wine, and brought forward. Lord Wellington had him shot in the most impressive manner this morning, before all the corps, after a solemn admoni tion, and much parade. I am told the man appeared absolutely dead from fear before a musket was fired. He was unluckily one of the least culpable, for he had only taken away a bottle of wine by force. But he was caught in the fact, and suffered for the sake of example, as the least guilty in reality often do, from the most guilty being also the most knowing. The officer from whom Wellington appears to have borne most in the way of thwarting or opposition of any kind was General Crauford. He knew his merits, and humored him. He knew also the extraordinary confidence which the men of his own division had in him. Some capital anecdotes of Crauford are told by Mr. Larpent. He was very clever and knowing in his profession, all admit, and led on his division on the day of his death in the most gallant style; but Lord Wellington never knew what he would do. He constantly acted in his own way, contrary to orders; and as he commanded the advanced division, at times perplexed Lord Wellington considerably, who never could be sure where he was. On one occasion, near Guinaldo, he remained across a river by himself; that is, only with his own division, nearly a whole day after he was called in by Lord Wellington. He said he knew he could defend his position. Lord Wellington, when he came back, only said, "I am glad to see you safe, Crauford." The latter said, "Oh, I was in no danger, I assure you." "But I was, from your conduct," said Lord Wellington. Upon which Crauford observed, "He is d― crusty to-day." Of some of the young men about him Wellington appears to have been very fond of young FitzClarence, for instance, afterwards Lord Munster; and of the young Prince of Orange (afterwards King of Holland) who made himself popular with everybody. for one day, at dinner, Lord Fitzroy Somerset, not knowing he was present, said, "Where is Slender Billy to-day?" Upon which the prince put his head forward, and called out, "Here I am, Fitzroy; what do you want?” Another prince no less than the Duke of Angoulême-came afterwards to headquarters. But he made no mighty impression in any way, and Wellington seemed to have been more than disposed to quiz both him and his gentleman in attendance, Monsieur Damas. I do not think much of the little duke; his figure and manners are by no means imposing, and I think his talents are not very great. He seems affable and good-tempered, and though not seemingly a being to make a kingdom for himself, he may do very well to govern one when well-established. Lord Wellington was in his manner droll towards them. As they went out, we drew up on each side, and Lord Wellington put them first, they bowed and scraped right and left so oddly and so actively, that he followed with a face much nearer a grin than a smile. And as the volume is open at this point (soon after the great battle) we will give two more extracts illustrative of remarks already made. AFTER VITTORIA. We now began to see the effects of the guns. Dead and wounded men and horses, some in the most horrible condition, were scattered all along the way we passed. These were principally cannon-shot wounds, and were on that account the more horrible. It was almost incredible that some could live in the state we saw them. From my black feather I was taken by some for a doctor, and appealed to in the most miserable voice and affecting manner, so that I immediately took out my feather, not to be supposed so unfeeling as to pass on without taking any notice of these poor creatures. Our hospital springWagons were following on, and men with frames to lift up and carry off those near the roads ; some in the fields about crawled by degrees into the villages; but hundreds have lain without food or having their wounds dressed until now, two days afterwards. the hospital, and the scene is most terrible; seventeen or eighteen hundred men, without legs or arms, &c., or with dreadful wounds, and, having had nothing to eat for two or three days, the misery extreme, and not nearly hands sufficient to dress or take care of the men, English, Portuguese, Spaniards, and French altogether, though the Spaniards and Portuguese had at first no provision at all for their people. Half the wounded have been scattered round all the villages in the neighborhood; and there are still many to come in, who arrive hourly, and The Prince of Orange was very thin and are lying in all the passages and spare places It was one pass, or -slim- which got him a nick-name: valley, all the way from Vittoria here; the road infamous, villages every mile, but much damaged by the French, and the people, from affluence, The day before yesterday Lord Wellington ordered young Fitz Clarence to go and bring up two Portuguese companies to attack. He went. It was close by; but he was highly pleased with the order. When he had given his instructions, he saw a cherry-tree, and went up to break a bough off, and eat the cherries. When Lord Wellington lost his way the other night in the fog (returning to head-quarters), FitzClarence told Lord Wellington he was sure the road was so-and-so, as they had passed the place where he found the two Portuguese companies. "How do you know that?" quoth Lord Wellington. "By that cherry-tree, which I was up in just afterwards," was the answer. It amused Lord Wellington much; and yesterday he called to him, with a very grave face, and desired him to go and get some of the cherries, as if it were an important order. Slender Billy was his nick-name with those who were intimate with him, and he knew it; around the hospital. I have been over reduced to misery and distress. Oh war! war! little do you know of it in England. VERY ANIMATING! [pagne went round, and after dinner Lord Wellington gave "Louis XVIII.," which was very cordially received with three times three, and white cockades were sent for to wear at the theatre in the evening. In the interim, howI think I never told you a little anecdote of ever, General Alava got up, and with great our General Stewart, who is brave, and always warmth gave Lord Wellington's health, as the gets his aide-de-camp, &c., into some bad blows, Liberador del' Espagna! Every one jumped in consequence, if he does not get one himself. up, and there was a sort of general exclamation His people about him on the 13th were all from all the foreigners - French, Spanish, Portouched, and he was nearly alone. An officer of tuguese, Germans, and all- El Liberador the name of Egerton came up, and whilst there d'Espagna! Liberador de Portugal! Le Lib a shell burst between them; Stewart said, "Aerateur de la France! Le Liberateur de l'Eushell, sir! very animating!" and then kept Egerton there talking on. rope! And this was followed, not by a regular three times three, but a cheering all in confusion for nearly ten minutes! Lord Wellington bowed, One of Mr. Larpent's personal adventures, confused, and immediately called for coffee we must not forget to say, was to get himself He must have been not a little gratified with taken prisoner by the French, who detained what had passed. We then all went to the play. him a month before the necessary exchange | The public were quite in the dark as to what had could be effected. He found among the just arrived, but Lord Wellington was received French a continual curiosity about Welling- in the stage-box (where he sat supported by ton" as one of the great men of the age;" Generals Picton, Frere, and Alava, &c., and also and Wellington himself laughed, but did not the maire) with no little applause, I can assure seem disposed to acquiesce," when Mr. Lar- you. At the door the people would scarcely take pent subsequently told him of the general box the French left the box themselves, and made the money from us; and in the opposite stagefeeling of the French officers that he ought to die now, 66 as he never would have such another year, and Fortune would prove fickle." If they could but have seen Waterloo looming in the distance! before the news came." Henri IV." was played, and then the new French Constitution was read aloud from one of the boxes. room for us. We had our white cockades on the and did not know what to make of it. Some breast. The English officers in the house stared, thought it a foolish, giddy trick. In about ten minutes Lord Wellington turned his hat outWhen at last the whole British army forced wards to the front of the box; it was seen, and its way into France, it is curious to mark the a shout ensued immediately. The play was passionate desire for peace which is found" Richard, oh mon Roi”, - fixed upon really everywhere prevailing or professed, and with it the lamentation and regret (often accompanied with even "curses") for Bonaparte's ambition while yet hardly anywhere can a word of affection or respect be elicited for the Bourbons. Mr. Larpent is led at last to think that the people would really rather have Bonaparte continued, if they can have him with the condition of peace, than the Bourbons back. Three fourths of the population he believes would be so inclined, speaking from what he witnessed himself. "All have the highest respect for Lord Wellington," he adds, which they say they learn from the French army, high and low. Of course when once the allies are in Paris, the constitution proclaimed, and the Bourbons installed, the time for any further tests of sincerity or good faith has passed altogether. Nothing now is visible or audible but a huge surface of apparent enthusiasm for the new order of things. Here is Mr. Larpent's account of a dinner at Colonel Campbell's in Toulouse, to which the news of those events in Paris was brought, and of the visit afterwards made to the theatre. interesting volumes - dropping the curtain With which grand finale we may close these before any one has time to ask how soon it will be before it rises again, to a performance entirely different from that of Richard, oh mon Roi! The Whole French Language, comprised in a series of Lessons. By T. Robertson. In three volumes. Volume I. mode of teaching French, both as respects its The author of this work proposes to reform the the pupil; which last will be accomplished by thorough acquirement and the saving of time by means of three full-sized octavo volumes. The plan of Mr. Robertson is based upon what was called the Hamiltonian system that is, a literal translation of the text, which Mr. Robertson follows by a free translation; the words of one lesson being thoroughly mastered before proceeding to the next. There are various other plans, one of which is to exercise the pupil on the most usual words only, and those chiefly derivatives; and this is good. Another is to mark the pronunciation of every word as it occurs in the lesson, by a complex system of signs; which strikes us as being troublesome and inefficient. Just as we were sitting down to dinnerabout forty of us— - General Frere and several Spaniards, General Picton and Baron Alten, the principal French, &c., in came Cooke with the despatches. The whole was out directly, cham--Spectator. |