his sovereign, and drank _to_ his sovereign--in vain all this; the beauty and chivalry at the banqueting-tables still looked at the Duke of Wellington; still kept their eyes on the man whose person and horse recalled, not war in romance, but its stern and recent realities. All were at gaze--fixed, silent. He was habited only as a peer, had only his staff as Lord High Constable, yet was he the observed of all. Nowhere was he more intently eyed than from the box where sat the assembled ambassadors of the potentates of Europe. Judging from opinion in that box, there was nothing in the elaborate grandeur of the day to rival the scene. It was the inherent pre-eminence of a great man exalting moral admiration above the show of the whole kingdom.’ This was the imperative fact. The King was the great figure of the hour, but the Duke was the great hero of the age; and the truth was not lost sight of in the gorgeous splendour of the spectacle. To do the King justice, it must be confessed that he was among the first to acknowledge the pre-eminence of the Duke as regarded his services and merits. At the dinner given by the Duke of Wellington, a few days after the coronation, in honour of the new sovereign, and with that monarch as chief guest, this acknowledgment was very gracefully made. At this splendid banquet, after the noble host had proposed the health of his royal guest--a toast that was drunk all standing and all silent, the King himself merely rising to bow his thanks to the company--George IV. in turn proposed, in a brief speech, the health of the Duke. ‘The purport of his remarks,’ says Mr. Rush, who was present at this interesting festival, was, ‘that, had it not been for the exertions of his friend upon the left (it was so that he spoke of the Duke), he, the King, might not have had the happiness of meeting those whom he now saw around him at that table; it was, therefore, with particular pleasure that he proposed his health. The King spoke his words with emphasis and great apparent pleasure. The Duke made no reply, but took in respectful silence what was said. The King continued sitting while he spoke, as did the company, in profound silence under his words.’ The silence of the host was true courtesy. It has not escaped Mr. Rush’s discernment. ‘I thought,’ he says, ‘of Johnson, when George III. complimented him: the innate dignity of great minds is the same. In Johnson it was that of the rough, virtuous recluse--whose greatness was that of the author. In Wellington it was externally moulded into the will which armies and courts, and long association with the _élite_ of mankind, may be supposed to give. Johnson did not bandy civilities with his Sovereign, whom he had never seen before; nor did Wellington, who saw him every day!’ It is ever the same with true gentlemen.