this be the first step in this romance of reality, the next is one profoundly suggestive to a contemplative mind. We have spoken of a splendid _Decennium_ in the Duke of Marlborough's campaigns--that from 1702 to 1712. But what a preceding _Quinquennium_--that from 1672 to 1677--have we here, for a moment, before us! The "handsome young Englishman"--an idol among the profligate beauties of the court of Charles II.--had made at length a conquest of his celebrated and favourite mistress, the Countess of Castlemaine, afterwards Duchess of Cleveland. To remove so dangerous a rival in her fickle affections,[11] Charles gave him a company in the Guards, and then sent him to the Continent--_proh pudor_!--to _aid_ Louis XIV. in subduing the United Provinces. There he sedulously learnt the art of war under Louis's consummate generals, Turenne, Condé, and Vauban: thus acquiring, under Louis's own auspices, that masterly knowledge of the science of war, which was destined to be wielded so soon afterwards, with triumphant and destructive energy, against himself! How little was such a contingency dreamed of, when Louis XIV. publicly, at the head of his army, thanked the handsome young hero for his services, and afterwards prevailed on his brother sovereign, Charles, to promote him to high command! And here is suggested the first of several deeply interesting and instructive parallels to be found in this work, between our own incomparable Wellington, and his illustrious predecessor: that Wellington went through the same practical course of study, but in inverse order--his first campaign being _against_ the French, in Flanders, and his next against the bastions of Tippoo, and the Mahratta horse, in Hindostan. Shortly after his return occurred that event which is of great importance in the lives of all men to whom it happens--marriage; but which to the young soldier was pregnant, for both good and evil, with immense influence upon the whole of his future career, and also upon his personal character. He married the beautiful lady in attendance on the Princess Anne--Miss Sarah Jennings, of spotless purity of character, and like himself, of an ancient and ruined Royalist family. He was then in his twenty-eighth, she in her eighteenth year: and, to anticipate for a moment, after a fond union of forty-four years' duration, he died in his seventy-second year; she, twenty-two years afterwards, in her eighty-fourth! Want of fortune for some time delayed their union, which, however, an enthusiastic declaration of his passion at length accelerated. She married, in the young and already celebrated general, a man of not only transcendent capacity, but gentle and generous feelings, and a magnanimity which displayed itself on a thousand trying occasions. Their hearts were passionately true to each other, through every moment of their protracted union. Her fair fame was never, even in those days of impunity, tarnished by the momentary breath of slander.