events, when he found there was no bread, he made quite a little scene, called his servant, and, before the whole company, gave him a shilling, and ordered him to go and buy a roll, saying aloud: "It is hard that after fighting my country's battles, I should be grudged her bread." One would not like to have been present at that dinner party, still less to have been the host; and, in truth, either Nelson should not have been invited, or an exception should have been made in his favour.

It is also part of the ill-natured gossip of history that Nelson's last signal was not "England" but "Nelson expects every man to do his duty," and that the officer to whom the order was given affected to have misunderstood his directions, and substituted the sentence which was actually telegraphed. Southey says it was received by the fleet with enthusiasm, but an eye-witness of the battle has recorded the equally probable fact, that some unideal Britons could not well make out what it meant. "Do our duty?" quoth one of them, "why, of course we shall." In truth, the English dislike of rhetoric (strange enough in a country which has given Parliamentary institutions to the world) amounts to a fault; it makes us think that heroic words are never found in company with heroic acts. This is far from being the case, as a

notable incident in the life of General Wolfe will show. After his appointment to the command of the expedition against Canada, and on the day preceding his embarkation, Pitt invited him to dinner. The only other guest was Lord Temple, Pitt's brother-in-law, who afterwards told the story to Thomas Grenville. As the evening advanced, Wolfe, ever so slightly warmed with wine, or, it may be, merely fired by his own thoughts, broke forth into a strain of gasconade. He drew his sword-he rapped the table with it-he flourished it round the room -he talked of the mighty things that sword was to achieve. The two Ministers sat aghast, at an exhibition so unusual from any man of real sense and spirit, and when at last Wolfe had taken his leave, and his carriage was heard to roll from the door, Pitt seemed for the moment shaken in the high opinion which he had formed of Wolfe: he lifted up his eyes and arms, and exclaimed to Lord Temple, "Good God! that I should have entrusted the fate of the country and of the administration to such hands!" Few anecdotes rest on better authority, yet it may be hoped that Lord Temple or Mr. Grenville was guilty of a slight inaccuracy in putting into the mouth of Pitt the words, "and of the administration," which sound like bathos, whereas Pitt always spoke and thought in the loftiest strain. Indeed, in judging Wolfe, the great statesman might have known, from the best of evidence, that "tall talk" is occasionally the herald of great actions. "My Lord," he had said in 1757 to the Duke of Devonshire, "I am sure that I can save this country, and that nobody else can "-which proved to be the true state of the case.

In spite of "goody " books, which profess that genius is invariably accompanied by modesty, at least half the famous men of history have been intensely egotistical, and strenuous asserters of their own merits.

"After all, what have I done?" exclaimed Napoleon one day, as if to silence a flatterer. "Is it anything compared with what Christ has done?" Indeed, one of Napoleon's arguments for the truth of Christianity seemed to be that Christ, having founded a mightier empire than his own, must necessarily have been more than mortal. Heroes are apt to reason curiously. Nelson told Lord Holland that he often felt pain in the arm he had lost, "which," added the gallant warrior, "is a clear proof of the immortality of the soul-and sets the question completely at rest." This remark would have been hailed with delight by that ingenious theorist who held that puzzle-headedness conduced to celebrity, and who, by the way, defended his opinions with singular skill. He had once maintained at a dinner party that most men who have attained suddenly and rapidly to fame have been puzzle-headed. "What do you say," objected one of the company, "to Mr. Pitt? He was an admired statesman at the age of twenty-three; and was he a puzzle-headed man?" "Why, not generally such," was the answer, "but he was such in reference to the particular point which mainly contributed to obtain him that early and speedy popularity. Look at the portraits of him at that time, and you will see a paper in his hand, or on his table, inscribed 'Sinking Fund.' It was his eloquent advocacy of that delusion (as all, now, admit it to have been) which brought him such sudden renown. And he could not have so ably recommended-nor indeed would he probably have adopted—that juggle of Dr. Price's if he had not been himself the dupe of his fallacy; as Lord Grenville also was; who afterwards published a pamphlet in which he frankly exposed the delusion."

As a rule, to be puzzle-headed is not so great a hindrance to success in life as want of fixed opinions and principles. A strange story is told of Berryer which illustrates both the utility and the possibility of early making up one's mind, on some of the great questions of religion and politics. When a very young man, with fame and fortune yet to win, Berryer is said to have considered the arguments for Atheism and Republicanism (too often mixed up together in France) as being on the whole quite as good as those for Religion and Legitimism. He felt, moreover, that for worldly success it was requisite that he should not continue all his life a doubter, but have some sort of creed. Should he range himself on the side of Church and King, or for "the immortal principles of 1789?" After trying in vain to balance the considerations for and against either belief, he gave up the task in disgust, and decided the course of his life in a singular, one is tempted to say impious, fashion. He took a louis-d'or from his pocket, tossed it up, and said, "Heads, King; tail, Republic." Heads it was, and from that moment Berryer became the sworn champion of Legitimism, and ultimately, no doubt, grew to believe himself the advocate of a true cause. But what if, to use Plato's expression, he did, on that memorable day, take a lie into his soul? There are better rewards than those of worldly success, "the inquiry of truth,” as Lord Bacon finely observes, "which is the love-making, or wooing of

it and the belief of truth, which is the enjoying of it being the sovereign good of human nature." Those words have the ring of a morality at once healthy, honest, and sublime. They are separated toto cœlo from the strange advice given by Keble to Arnold, when the latter was troubled with doubts as to the doctrine of the Trinity. Keble counselled his friend to take a living and preach incessantly to his parishioners the doctrine in which he only half believed, by way of strengthening his own faith. The advice would seem positively immoral did one not remember that Keble scarcely conceived that doubt could ever be honest, much less well-founded. He was once urged by an admirer to write on the subject of the Inspiration of the Seriptures, the limits of inspiration being a subject that was causing difficulties to many thoughtful persons. Keble replied that he feared those who found any difficulties were too wicked to be open to conviction. So unamiable and unjust could be the thoughts of the man who was considered by many of his friends as a saint, and who really was a conspicuous example of human virtue and goodness.

The fact is that the character which has, in a somewhat narrow sense, been peculiarly called "saintly" is very far from being agreeable. It is not pleasant to read of Thomas à Becket that "he swarmed with vermin" (effervescebat vermibus), nor does one like Isabella the Catholic any the better for learning that she was wont to rejoice and give thanks at the sight of a gallows with a man hanging therefrom, which may possibly be the origin of the story about the traveller who was delighted to see a gibbet, as a proof that he was in a civilised country. Pleasanter is that trait of Queen Henrietta Maria, who fell down on her knees, crossed herself and uttered a short prayer, when, in one of her first walks on English soil, she came suddenly in view of Tyburn, with its ghastly spectacle of corpses swinging in the wind. And here it may be observed that the gossip of history, if it tends to lower some great names in our esteem, yet helps to raise others. In the kingdom of knowledge, as in the kingdom of heaven, many that are first shall be last and the last first. The character of Noy, Charles I.'s Attorney-General, is not a lofty one, yet there is something very human and even touching in the account of his last will. He bequeathed a fine fortune to his son "to be squandered as he shall think fit-I leave it him for that purpose, and I hope no better from him." Noy drew the writ for levying ship-money, and did many other improper things, but one may take leave to like him quite as much as a model reformer of prisons. Noy evidently loved his son, and could not bear to be harsh to him, possibly too he thought he discerned in the young man some feeling of pride which would spur him so to live as to falsify the prediction. Unhappily, the lad only fulfilled the anticipation expressed in his will :

Drank, revelled, fought, and in a duel died

if one may slightly modify a verse of Pope in deference to the susceptibilities of Mrs. Grundy.

Sixty years ago the name most abhorred by lovers of freedom in England and elsewhere was that of Lord Castlereagh. The Tory Minister for Foreign Affairs, in the days of the Holy Alliance, was supposed to be the determined enemy of liberty throughout the world, a man of harsh and cruel purposes, ruthless in carrying them out. When the unhappy statesman died by his own hand, many must have been surprised at the evidence given by his valet on the inquest. "Had he any reason to suppose that his Lordship's mind had been deranged of late?" "Well, his Lordship had been a little strange of late.""For instance?"—"Well, he spoke harshly to me a day or two before his death." It is satisfactory to think that the political fame of a man who was evidently so genial and kindly in private life is beginning to clear itself by the light of contemporary memoirs. Whatever may have been his faults, Castlereagh was a true Englishman, and had the interests of his country sincerely at heart. In any case his is the merit, in great part, of the two last and only successful coalitions against Napoleon; and it must have been a patient and skilful diplomacy which combined the forces destined to conquer at Leipsic and Waterloo.

Some novelists, if no serious historians, have attempted to draw flattering likenesses of James II., but most men will be of opinion that he was fairly gibbeted by Macaulay. The man looks so contemptible, deserting a young and pretty wife, for ugly mistresses. "I can't find what he sees to admire in me," said Catherine Sedley; "certainly 'tis not for my beauty-and as to my wit, he has not enough to see that I have any." The accomplished Marquis of Halifax had an equally poor opinion of his intellect, and was wont to say of Charles and James, that "the elder could see things if he would, while the younger would see things if he could;" a cruel sentence, which is yet something of a compliment to the moral nature of James. He must, indeed, have had some good qualities, for he was devotedly served in the days of his exile, and men rarely devote themselves for a principle which is not more or less amiably incarnate. There is a little story told of James, which shows that he possessed at least some of the Stuart urbanity. He was sitting to Sir Godfrey Kneller for a portrait designed as a present to Pepys, when the news of the landing of the Prince of Orange was brought to him. The King commanded the painter to proceed and finish the portrait, that his friend might not be disappointed.

Of James's successful rival, on the other hand, Macaulay's portrait must be considered too flattering, especially by contrast. William was not only an unfaithful husband, but as ostentatious in his infidelities, as careless of conventionalities, as little regardful of his wife's feelings as Charles II. Now, Macaulay gives one a good deal of precise information about the private life of the two last Stuart kings, and touches but lightly on the failings of William. He even goes out of the way to praise the latter for trying to compel one of his officers to marry a young lady whom he had wronged-excellent counsel, no doubt, but which

must have come with bad grace from a man whose morals were in no wise above the level of the age in which he lived.

There is an anecdote told of our Dutch ruler which reflects some little credit on him, though not much-for he could hardly have acted otherwise--but which is chiefly worth relating for the curious light in which it sets the first constitutional King of England. William had sentenced an insubordinate regiment to be decimated. The soldiers accordingly drew lots, every tenth man, of course, drawing a prize the prize of death. Not unnaturally one of the winners felt disposed to sell the lot he had drawn, if haply he could find a purchaser. One poor fellow at length agreed to be shot in his stead for a hundred pistoles to be paid to his relatives after his execution. William, having been informed of the bargain, sent for the soldier, and asked whether what he had been told was true. " Yes," replied the man, sulkily, "I have run the risk of being killed all my life for next to nothing a day, and now I can secure my wife and children something substantial. I am ready to die." William pardoned the man-he could hardly do less, and gave him the hundred pistoles. Martial law was formally recognised by Parliament in 1689, but the decimated regiment must have been a Dutch or German one, for English public opinion would at no time have tolerated such a barbarous mockery of justice. Dutch ideas of liberty, however, were always curious, or at any rate exhibited a striking discrepancy on some points from English ideas, and, somehow or other, we incline to the latter as the sounder.

Yet there was much that was loveable in the character of William, who was a staunch friend and a generous foe; and perhaps he is the most estimable in the long line of our sovereigns, with the exception of Alfred, and perhaps of Cromwell. Alfred, by the way, comes nearer to perfection than any prince of whom history makes mention, though scandal was once busy even with his stainless name. In youth he is said to have been dissipated, and even to have alienated his subjects by his misgovernment and immoralities. If so, he made a noble atonement. A propos of the great English king, every one knows the story of the burnt cakes and the scolding he received from the cowherd's wife, but the conclusion of the story is not so generally known. According to William of Malmesbury and other later chroniclers, the cowherd, whose name was Denulf, having afterwards, on Alfred's recommendation, applied himself to letters, was made by him Bishop of Winchester, and was the same Denulf who died occupant of that see in 909. But what became of Mrs. Denulf? Possibly she lived to be an antetype of Mrs. Proudie, for the English clergy in the pre-Conquest days were not averse from marriage, and nearly two centuries were yet to elapse before Gregory VII. should introduce a uniformity of celibacy and hypocrisy into the Church. But of course the assertions of the worthy precentor of Malmesbury must be taken with an occasional grain of salt, as when, praising the strict and efficient police kept by Alfred in his dominions, he says that a purse