But the French altogether mistake the question. Men like Wellington are not the growth of any military school, of any especial army, or of any peculiar nation. Without offering this great soldier any personal panegyric, he was a military _genius_. Since Marlborough, England had produced no such commander of an army, and may not produce another such for a century to come. Nelson was similarly a _genius_: he sprang at once to the first rank of sea-officers; and England, fertile as she is in first-rate sailors and brave men, may never produce another Nelson. Napoleon was a _genius_, and almost as palpably superior to the crowd of brave and intelligent generals round him, as if he had been of another species. The conduct of men of this exclusive capacity is no more a rule for other men, than their successes are to be depreciated to the common scale of military good fortune. The campaigns of Napoleon in Italy; the sea campaign in which Nelson pursued the French fleet half-round the globe, to extinguish it at Trafalgar; the seven years' continued campaign of Wellington in the Peninsula, finished by the most splendid march in European history, from the frontier of Portugal into the heart of France, have had no example in the past, and can be no example to the future. The principle, the power, and the success, lie equally beyond the limits of ordinary calculation. The evident fact is, that there is an occasional rank of faculty, which puts all calculation out of sight, which is found to produce effects of a new magnitude, and which overpasses all difficulties, by the use of an intellectual element, but occasionally, and but for especial purpose, communicated to man. We have no doubt whatever of the truth of this solution, and are consequently convinced, that it would have been much wiser in M. Gravière to have attempted to describe the career of Wellington, than to pronounce on the principles of his science; and, above all, than to account for his victories by the very last means of victory--the mere brutishness of standing still, the simple immobility of passive force, the mere unintelligent and insensate working of a machine. "What a contrast," exclaims the Frenchman, "between these passionate traits (of Nelson) and the _impassive bearing_ of Wellington, that _cool and methodical_ leader, who _maintained_ his ground in the Peninsula by the _sheer force of order and prudence_! Do they belong to the same nation? Did they command the same men? The admiral, full of enthusiasm, and devoured by the love of distinction, and the general, so _phlegmatic_ and _immovable_, who, intrenched behind his lines at Torres Vedras, or re-forming, without _emotion_, his _broken_ squares on the field of Waterloo--(where not a single British square was broken)--seems rather to aim at _wearying out his enemy_ than at _conquering him_, and triumphs _only_ by his patient and unconquerable firmness."