“A greater there never lived. It is the misfortune of this age that it has no guides or leaders; no profound, thinking men, who, knowing the past and caring for the future, can judge rightly of the present, and give laws to the opinions of the time. Now, the multitude decide on every thing for themselves; and every thing is despised which is beyond the taste of the vulgar. Napoleon was essentially a hero for the vulgar; fools, who have no idea of power but in tumult, or of strength but in struggle, cannot comprehend the calm, unapproachable grandeur of Wellington—a grandeur too high for sympathy. I have studied him in his despatches; I have talked with him—I have seen him all round—there is in that man more of innate, imperturbable greatness than in all the world beside. When Napoleon was about to strike a blow, he raised up around him a cloud, a very tempest, of passions and fancies, through which every thing was magnified and mistaken. Wellington goes to work plainly, indifferently, frigidly, and it is only by the result that you recognise _in scena Roscium_. In the deep perturbation which came over the spirit of Napoleon when he essayed any vast work: in the mighty effort, the tremendous strain—inevitably successful though it may have been—you see one whose undertakings are above his nature; who must lash his energies to make them efficient enough. In the cool, common-place, regular, business-like proceedings of Wellington—never erring or unprosperous—we behold one whose native, unalterable strength is so high that the loftiest enterprise is to him not exciting; who, in conquering glory, is doing his ordinary work. His trade was to be always successful, and he was perfect master of it. There is the same difference between the two that there is between the youth and manhood of genius: in the former, more fervor and greater consciousness of power; in the latter, far more real might. The distinction may be marked by the names of the two demons who, in Æschylus, bind Prometheus to the rock; one was Force, the other Strength. There is the same diversity which exists between the calm, grey light of the sun, and the lurid, flashing, noisy brilliance of fire-works. Wellington is the representative of the genius of England, which, from the beginning of history, bearing aloft the standard of integrity, good sense and solid freedom, has stood like a rock in the sea of human passions and powers: one while baffling the frantic tyranny of the Papacy, and at another stamping under its iron heel the struggling fiend of Jacobinism. Napoleon is the type of France—a nation which has no power save of paroxysms, and cannot cease to be frivolous but by becoming ferocious. Wellington rides through life like a Tartar horseman, with one perpetual posture, that of the lance in rest; with one fixed gaze, that on the object of his attack. Napoleon scoured through his existence like a monkey on a circus horse, brandishing a flag, stooping over his nag’s