prepared to stay the destructive flood, and to preserve from the deluge the liberty and independence of three armed nations. The sight filled me with admiration, with confidence, and with hope.

Impressed with these sentiments I returned to England. Being some time in the succeeding autumn at Lord Grey's at Howick, I betted a guinea with his brother-inlaw, Lord Ponsonby, that at that time next year Lord Wellington would still hold the lines of Torres Vedras. Lord Grey thought that I had made a foolish bet, and referred to the lines of Marshal Villars, called the ne plus ultra of Marlborough, and which Marlborough successfully penetrated, as a proof that the lines could not be held. At the end of a year Lord Ponsonby paid me my bet.

I remember that in the year 1812 being at dinner at Lord Wellington's head-quarters, he called to Lord March (afterwards Duke of Richmond), 'What are you talking of at that end of the table?' Lord March: We are discussing, sir, the question whether if we went back to the lines at Torres Vedras, we should again be able to hold them.' Lord Wellington said: That may be a political question, but as a military question, I would go back twenty times to the lines, and be confident of holding them.' I saw Lord Wellington on three other occasions during the Peninsular war.

The second was, when in company with my cousin George Bridgeman, and my friend Robert Clive, I entered Spain from Oporto. We joined the army at the time when Lord Wellington, after the victory of Salamanca and the capture of Madrid, had failed in his siege of the castle of Burgos. I sat next to him at dinner in the evening when he had made up his mind to retire, and to withdraw his army both from the siege of Burgos and the occupation of Madrid. I knew nothing of this important and mortifying decision, nor could anything less prepare me for it than

the conversation of the great commander. He said he was sorry he could not show me the castle; talked of the advance of the French army, of which I had been a witness, as a forte reconnaissance, and laughed at the luxury of a Highland soldier, who had piled up a whole tree and set it in a blaze, in order to make himself a comfortable fire-side. The rest of his conversation was taken up by comic descriptions of the defects of his three iron gunsThunder, Lightning, and Nelson-of which one had a severe wound in the mouth, and another had lost its trunnions by the fire of the enemy. After dinner, my companions and I were informed by Colonel Ponsonby that a retreat was resolved upon for that night, and we were advised to pack ourselves off as quickly as we could. We lost no time in following that advice, and, for my part, I found a very comfortable bed on a heap of chopped straw some leagues from Burgos. We tried to reach Madrid by San Ildefonso, but were again driven back by the French advance, and forced to proceed by Salamanca and the Sierra de Gata to Badajoz, Seville, and Cadiz.

At Cadiz, during the winter, I met the Duke of Wellington when he paid a visit to that town, to concert with the Government and the Cortes as to future measures. Lord Wellesley had been urging in Parliament the expediency of sending large reinforcements to the British Army in the Peninsula, but Lord Wellington did not share in this opinion. He related at some length the difficulties encountered in transporting two regiments from Lisbon to the army on the frontier of Portugal, and observed how little statesmen at home knew of these difficulties, and of the time and money expended in overcoming them. Lord Wellington was no less solicitous about the arrangements to be made for transporting and provisioning the army, than about the military operations themselves. Mr. Bissett, who acted as Chief Commissary during the absence

of Mr. Kennedy, told me that on the day of the Battle of Salamanca, Lord Wellington sent for him. He found him lying on his camp-bed, having devoted an hour or two to repose, while a division which he had sent for, to take part in the battle, was coming up from a distance. Mr. Bissett told me that Lord Wellington entered with the greatest detail into the arrangements to be made for the transport and supply of the army with provisions. Thus, on the eve of a great battle, Lord Wellington could refresh his bodily energies by a short repose, and dictate the complicated arrangements necessary for an army whose means of transport and whose food were paid for and not extorted by force. While he did so, his mind was undisturbed by the immediate prospect of an impending battle, in which his fame and his life were to be exposed to a hazard which might have appalled men of the greatest courage.

In the autumn of 1813, I again saw Lord Wellington at his head-quarters in the Pyrenees. It was either at Lesaca or at Vera that I was for a day at the British head-quarters. I could not but feel admiration and joy at beholding the General whom I had visited in a critical position, defending with difficulty the capital of Portugal, now advancing in command of an admirable army to the invasion of France. The same coolness, the same imperturbable judgment in the midst of danger distinguished him in the advance, as had marked his prudent defence of the lines of Torres Vedras. My brother, Lord William Russell, who was on his staff, told me that on one occasion a single division of the army having crossed a river, Lord Wellington with a few officers of his staff likewise crossed with a view to observe the enemy. In the evening the river was flooded, and it swelled with such rapidity that it was impossible to pass from one bank to the other. The officers of the staff showed some anxiety lest the French should take advantage of the dangerous

position of a single division of the army and overwhelm General and troops with their superior forces. Lord Wellington, alone, remained perfectly calm, and never betrayed the slightest symptom of uneasiness or anxiety. Such was, in fact, the strength of mind upon which the whole British Army relied, stronger than the arms they bore, unconquerable as the discipline by which they were united and controlled. Thus Ovid in describing Cadmus when about to encounter the Python, says,

telum splendenti lancea ferro,

Et jaculum; teloque animus præstantior ullo.

Such was the spirit by which, at the end of this great contest, the constancy, courage, and perseverance of the British people, animating the prostrate nations of the Continent, at length achieved a triumph over the most formidable combination of military genius, warlike population, conquering armies, and political talent, which ever threatened the independence of our country.

In 1814, happening to be with my father at Florence, I found there was an opportunity of going to Elba in a brig of war, and I eagerly availed myself of the occasion to have an interview with the late master of Europe. With Lord Ebrington (afterwards Lord Fortescue) he had spoken fully of his past life, and the accusations which history might bring against him, but when I saw him he was in evident anxiety respecting the state of France, and his chances of again seizing the crown which he had worn for ten years. I was so struck with his restless inquiry, that I expressed in a letter to my brother in England my conviction that he would make some fresh attempt to disturb France and govern Europe.

In speaking of the Duke of Wellington, he said it was a mistake to send him as Ambassador to Paris :-' On n'aime pas un homme par qui on a été battu.'

The coalition of 1815 and the Battle of Waterloo put

an end to Napoleon's enterprise and restored peace to Europe.

I have pointed out what I conceive to have been the error of policy of the Whig party, when they failed to see that the war of 1808 was a war in a great popular struggle, linked closely with the cause of the independence of Europe. After the peace of 1815 the Tory party committed an error as great, and still more irretrievable.

During the continuance of the war, men readily listened to the saying of Windham, that it is dangerous to repair our house in the hurricane season, and thus Lord Eldon, Lord Sidmouth and other bigoted Tories were permitted to leave unaltered the windows which shut out the light from every corner of the Palace and the Parliament. But when the storm was over, men would naturally survey the building, repair the crumbling walls, and admit the excluded rays of the sun.-A wise Ministry would have studied Mr. Pitt's policy from 1784 to 1792, and would have found how little ground there was for considering him as an enemy to extended commerce and religious freedom.

As, however, the majority of the ministers preserved in 1816 the attitude their great leader had taken in 1793, it behoved the Whigs, who had toasted in the worst of times The cause of civil and religious liberty all over the world,' to come forward and under happier auspices to reform our foreign policy, our financial system, our commercial exclusions, our intolerant laws, and lastly our Parliamentary representation.

The foreign policy of our Government was at this time a timid repudiation of all those doctrines of national liberty and independence which had been inscribed on our flag at the end of the war, and which had led Madame de Staël to declare that the Tories of England were the Whigs of Europe.

Our financial system was based on the necessity of