head or under his body, jumping down to jump up again, and all to gain the wonder and applause of the spectators; going round and round, and ending where he began. I must finish the parallel by saying that his course was marked out for him by the whip of a base necessity. Napoleon was the slave and courtier of opinion, which he at length flattered into the belief that it was a master. Wellington despised and neglected opinion, till it has come fawning about his feet. Vanity had grasped Napoleon by the throat, and he was her garlanded victim. You never see in Wellington that sycophancy to circumstances, that obsequiousness to fortune. He seized Destiny by the collar, and fairly swung her round. Consider the wonderful, sublime achievement of Assaye; study the political skill which he displayed in the Peninsula, the miraculous combination of ingenuity, temper, firmness and authority by which he threw order into a chaos of difficulties, and, himself alone, sustained a world of jarring interests; contemplate the glorious action of the Arapeiles, of which Austerlitz was a dull and broken reflection; ponder the campaign of Torres Vedras, the master-piece of art, the wonder of history—a conception as felicitous as the brightest of Newton’s, and executed with a perfection which delights the observer even to mirthfulness—a model of _beauty_ in war, by which victory was reduced to certainty, and war became one of the exact sciences: review these, and tell me by what proofs of intellectual power in Napoleon’s history they are exceeded. Remember, too, that of all Wellington’s doings we have unvarnished and exact accounts; while of Napoleon’s actions we have in many cases only the statements of himself, the most enormous liar that ever breathed the upper air. Wellington was a great man; Napoleon was a child, who, by the despair of an infinite and hopeless ambition, had strengthened himself into a giant.” “There is this remarkable consideration in Wellington’s case, that the whole of his wide and free career was wholly run within the limits of duty. In that respect, no man in history may be compared with him, except Belisarius. What such men do is done without the inspiration of the passions.”