WELLINGTON.

Lyttelton Times, Volume III, Issue 124, 21 May 1853, Page 4

WELLINGTON.

Osr the day of the Duke's funeral, the Times devoted no less than three leaders to that great man. The following one more particularly refers to his character, and is so admirable as to justify its transference to our columns :—

" Before the most honourable tomb this country can give closes over the remains of our great General and Statesman, our old and faithful servant and support, it is natural to pause and cast yet another lingering retrospect on the career about to be so gloriously closed. Much has been written on this fruitful theme, but few can fail to observe that the sterling and genuine character of the Duke of Wellington gains more by careful and critical analysis than by the most brilliant bursts of rhetoric or best sustained flights of fancy. Let us, then, before we give to the past one who was so lately a mighty presence among us, cast once more a glance over that wondrous life, and trace out the causes of his greatness and our regret. Who can tell what would have been the state of Europe or of England during the last half century or at this moment had Arthur Wellesley never lived, or had his fate been cut short by the bullet or the sabre under the walls of Seringapatara ? "Without the slightest personal ostentation, with a simplicity of character utterly alien from display or egotism, such was the force of his talents and the vigour of his energies, that he became the life and soul of every transaction in which he took part, and the prominent fignre in almost every one of the long series of historical pictures in which he must always be included. It is ever difficult to separate the history of the campaign from the biography of the General, but in the campaigns of the Duke of Wellington they become absolutely identical. Cool, cautious, daring, and indefatigable, now Fabius, and now Marcellus, he preserved in either capacity the same mind, which adversity could not depress nor prosperity elate, the same selfsacrificing caution, which checked the ardour of an advance, and the same firm and unbounded reliance in his own genius and in the valour of his troops, which often wrung victory out of retreat, and converted a momentary disaster into a permanent triumph. Without "him there would probably have been no Assaye without him there would certainly have been no Waterloo. _ The same quick glance and unfaltering hardihood detected in both the possibility of" victory amid the elements of danger. Yet this daring man was not more daring than cautious The masterly retreat into Portugal, the lines of Torres Vedvas, and the advance into the South of France, all testify that the one quality was as natural to him as the other. Unlike ordinary campaigners, the whole events of the war he conducted bear the impress of his single mind and our interest is, in spite of ourselves, concentrated on the General. Nor should it be forgotton in estimating the claims of this greatest of our warriors to our gratitude and respect, that the Duke of Wellington had to create the military system under which he conquered, and which he has bequeathed to us The complete system of the commissariat which facilitated so much the operations of his later campaigns was the creation of his untiring diligence—the painful result of his unremitting labour. He found our army a disorganized mass; he left it at the end of the Peninsulawar an instrument of detraction as complete and efficient as genius ever framed or skill ever wielded. Nothing that related to the comfort ot the soldier was to him a matter of indifference- His method of cooking, the time and manner of receiving his pay, aml m t , things which to ordinary minds would appear below the dignity of the heroic stature, were o..j«csof constant attention to him, while hwas manceuvreingi,, the f ilce of a powerful nnd skilfulenemy, was stri-.ing to animate his allies with his own spun, cjoiing half a dozen obi stmaie and intriguing Juntas, checking the anxiety oi the Engi^h Ministiy for a"little bloodsheo to help then, tl.rui.eh the Parliamentary campaign, advising Bp,inon the treatment of her revolted colonies, and emeri»<v into ii Jiancial speculations- to obtain f im ds for tl le payment of his army. Without this spirit which could dare everything and endure everything, winch could grasp the mightest events yet not neglect the smallest details, it is indeed difficult to conceive how the Peninsular war could have been carried to a successful termi nation. The Duke of Wellington alone of all

whom history mentions soared superior to mere good fortune, and impressed upon the proceedings of the clay the unvarying stamp of his own vigilance and genius. We are, therefore, justiI fied in concluding that we were successful because we had him for our commander —that he was not carried on by an irresistable tide of events, but made for himself those opportunities which he knew so well how to improve. "If this was not also the case in his political career, it was probably because he had no deal with events over which no individual mind can exercise a commanding influence ; but even here dangers which lie could not avert were clearly foreseen, justly appreciated, and prudently met. The simplicity, uprightness, and massiveness of his character, free from all those perplexing influences of vanity, passion, irresolution, or selfishness which blind the vision of ordinary mortals, gave his firm and impassible glance a peculiar and inexplicable intuition into the immediate results of every conjuncture of affairs, civil or military. The medium was clear, solid, and without a flaw, and the refraction was free from distortion or the delusive brilliancy of prismatic colouring. A want of the imaginative faculty rendered him, it is true, a just rather than a farsighted observer, but if the range of mental vision was limited, the vision within those limits was exquisitely and unerringly correct. Like Themistocles, he could foresee the better and the worse, and, like him, by the mere effort of natural genius he could strike out the course that ought to be adopted. Such a power, limited as it was to the more immediate results of existing conjunctures, was the highest perfection of the practical intellect; had it extended to more remote contingencies, it would have been, not intuition, but inspiration. "Almost the only good fortune we can ascribe to this extraordinary man was, that his position in life gave him, in common with thousands o,f others who are gone down to. the grave unremembered, an easy access to the sphere of command and activity, and that his mental qualities were such as eminently qualified him to be of the utmost service to his country in an age of war from without and of faction and tumult from within. If his caution and valour repeatedly saved us from the most imminent danger, his wisdom, patriotism, and moderation preserved us at least as frequently from internal discord—perhaps from revolution. The very narrowness of the political school in which he was educated probably served his country just as effectually as his more brilliant qualifications. A man more desirous of popularity, more open to impulse, more carried away by "imagination and feeling, would never have obtained that hold over the minds of the aristocracy which the Duke of Wellington so frequently exerted at critical dangerous moments. A weak man advising concession, a timid man advocating conciliation, or a v;iin man speaking on the popular side, would have carried but little weight, but when the strong, the bold and sin-gle-minded soldier counselled peace and compromise, it would have argued desperate rashness in the House of Peers to have resisted the opinion of one whose judgment was never swayed by fear, and whose wisdom never courted or shunned the applause of the multitude. How often has the Duke.of Wellington interposed between his own order and its passions and prejudices ! How often has the dauntless soldier been the advocate and counsellor of peace!

•ISlothing- shows more clearly the intellectual stature of the man than the undoubted fact that, bowed down as he was by the unceasing toils of more than eighty years, he was, up to the last moment of his life, not only a mighty memory and glorious record of the "heroic past, but an actual power whose existence every one knew, and whose intervention the country was re-idy at any moment to invoice. Haviiv survived the generals, the subalterns, and the armies he commanded, his friends, his colleagues and his subordinates in office, he still remained the »-reat mediator between the conflicting powers of the State, the adviser of the Crown, and the moderator of the Peers. But he is gone suddenly, though not prematurely, with his years and his honours, and where shall we find the man who can in the slightest degree fill the void which-a personage so august lias left behind him ? There has been but one such subject since England was a monarchy, and a wonderful combination of circumstances must occur before there can be such another. We are not of those who underrate the existin* generation of men in order to render exa-^era"

ted and often undeserved honour to their predecessors. There is not another actor on the political scene whose place cannot be supplied, but never the place once filled by Arthur Wellesley. Truly we may say to those who would treat the death of the Duke as a theme for reviving old party dissensions, who contrast his political with his military career, and introduce the paltry criticisms of partisanship into their estimate of a character too vast to be held in the bonds of faction, even as David said when they told him of the death of Abner, —" Know ye not that a Prince and a great man has fallen this day in Israel,"