THE COMPLETENESS

OF THE

LATE DUKE OF WELLINGTON

AS A NATIONAL CHARACTER.

Two Lectures

BY THE

REV. GEORGE DAVIES.

"AN HONEST MAN'S THE NOBLEST WORK OF GOD."

PREFACE.

THE following pages are a compilation from all the publications which have appeared upon the subject of the great Duke, rather than a composition with any claims to originality. Any one who writes the character of a great man with whom he has no personal acquaintance, must necessarily avail himself of such materials as are the property of the press. Mr. Kennaway's and Mr. Gleig's lectures; M. Jules Maurel's history; Wellingtoniana, a collection of stories about the great Duke; the well-known Essays from the Times which appeared immediately after his death; with Professor Blunt's and Dr. Croly's admirable Sermons preached in his memory, have been freely ransacked for every detail that might serve to show the depth, and breadth, and width, and height of his character. So have been the ballads, poems, speeches, and newspaper anecdotes that swarmed in the interval between his decease and his funeral. The author feels that those who have preceded him in writing on this subject, will not grudge him what he has culled from them, as their object, like his, was only

to set forth a great man for the admiration and imitation of a grateful people. If this picture of the great Duke has any merit, it is that like Zeuxis the painter, alluded to in the second lecture, the author has freely adopted into his own canvass, whatever he admired in the pictures which others had drawn of his hero. These lectures arose out of the variety of anecdotes about Wellington, which the author had accumulated in his common-place book. May a remark which Mr. Gilfillan (in his second gallery of Literary Portraits) makes on an American lecturer, apply also to these pages: "each anecdote stood for a distinct part of the subject and rendered it intelligible and memorable; an anecdote severely selected answers the end of a bone in the hand of an anatomical lecturer."

THE

COMPLETENESS OF WELLINGTON

AS

A NATIONAL CHARACTER.

LECTURE I.

INTRODUCTION.

MR. CHAIRMAN, Ladies and GenTLEMEN,

I have ventured to appear before my fellow. members of this Institution without those aids that lecturers generally have,-diagrams, apparatus for experiments, or music. I have not either any novelty in the subject I have chosen; for ballads, dirges, sermons, eulogies, speeches, lectures, and pamphlets literally swarmed at the time of the Duke's funeral.

If, however, I have the disadvantage of appearing late on the stage, I have the advantage of the anecdotes and opinions expressed by the thousands who have preceded me, on the subject of the great Duke.

I have nothing to trust to but the feeling which I may arouse in national and loyal hearts, by the name on which I propose to offer you some remarks. But I am emboldened by the thought, that when I lean on the name of Wellington for all my support, I am reposing on a name that has never yet failed any of the thousands who have trusted in it.

My object in this lecture will be, not so much to

B