There is an apocryphal anecdote of the Duke's cruelty and of Wolfe's humanity towards the wounded after the battle,--"Wolfe, shoot me that Highland scoundrel who thus dares to look on us with such contempt and insolence." "My commission is at your Royal Highness's disposal, but I never can consent to become an executioner." The anecdotist adds that from that day Wolfe declined in the favour and confidence of the Commander-in-Chief. But it happens that Wolfe did nothing of the kind. On the other hand, Mr. Wright does not doubt, nor is there any ground for doubting, the identity of the Major Wolfe who, under orders, relieves a Jacobite lady, named Gordon, of a considerable amount of stores and miscellaneous property accumulated in her house, but according to her own account belonging partly to other people; among other things, of a collection of pictures to make room for which, as she said, she had been obliged to send away her son, who was missing at that critical juncture. The duty was a harsh one, but seems, by Mrs. Gordon's own account, not to have been harshly performed. If any property that ought to have been restored was kept, it was kept not by Wolfe but by "Hangman Hawley." Still one could wish to see Wolfe fighting on a brighter field than Culloden, and engaged in a work more befitting a soldier than the ruthless extirpation of rebellion which ensued. The young soldier is now thoroughly in love with his profession. "A battle gained," he says, "is, I believe the highest joy mankind is capable of receiving to him who commands; and his merit must be equal to his success if it works no change to his disadvantage." He dilates on the value of war as a school of character. "We have all our passions and affections roused and exercised, many of which must have wanted their proper employment had not suitable occasions obliged us to exert them. Few men are acquainted with the degrees of their own courage till danger prove them, and are seldom justly informed how far the love of honour and dread of shame are superior to the love of life." But now peace comes, the sword is consigned to rust, and in promotion Patronage resumes its sway. "In these cooler times the parliamentary interest and weight of particular families annihilate all other pretensions." The consequence was, of course, that when the hotter times returned they found the army officered by fine gentlemen, and its path, as Napier says, was like that of Satan in "Paradise Lost" through chaos to death.