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boast to my schoolfellows of having made the acquaintance of two such celebrities. The appearance of the late combatants was curious. The black man had beaten the white one black and blue. The white man, the black one green and yellow.'

On one occasion when the Lady de Clifford and the Princess. had driven to Westminster to see him, he was in the fighting green, the grass quadrangle of the great cloisters, whither they repaired in search of him

'While my good grandmamma was reading quaint monumental inscriptions, her royal charge was grasping the rails of the Cloister and eagerly straining her eyes to watch the motions of the combatants. Her Royal Highness was in high luck, for I appeal to my contemporaries whether they ever witnessed a better fought battle than that between John Erskine, afterwards Earl of Mar, and Paddy Brown, afterwards Sir John Benyon de Beauvoir.'

The fisty duel was equally at vogue at the other public schools. The Iron Duke's first victory was over Bobus Smith in a fair stand-up fight at Eton: his only recorded defeat, by a young blacksmith in Wales; and many a laudator temporis acti may be still heard regretting that affairs of honour, between boys or men, are not still encouraged by the authorities as in the olden time.

Amongst the traits of manners which Lord Albemarle appropriately recalls is the 'Four-in-Hand Club,' established in 1808, when the rage for driving had attained its acme

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The Etonians, who were always lording it over us Westminsters with their superior gentility, used to boast that they would never condescend to handle the ribbons unless with four sprightly nags at their feet; in other words, they drove stage and we hackney coaches. For my part I was well content with the humbler vehicle. One Sunday evening several of us boys met by agreement at the top of St. James's Street. Each engaged a hackney coach for himself, and having deposited his "Jarvey" inside, we mounted our respective boxes and raced down to Westminster, the north archway into Dean's Yard being the winning-post. Over such roads, and with such sorry cattle, the wonder is that we reached the goal. Luckily for us our course was all down hill.'

We have heard of races between sedan chairs at Bath, but never before of races between hackney coaches in London, and it is to be hoped that the institution will not be revived with cabs. When railways were unknown, an excellent school for driving was supplied by the road. 'When' (says Lord Albemarle) I became big enough to manage a team, I had the honour of driving the London and Norwich Royal Mail. I generally selected the stage from Bury to Thetford, the last of

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my journey homewards.' The skill thus acquired by the connivance of the regular driver was occasionally at the expense of the passengers; but the art of handling the ribbons' was pretty generally diffused, and now that driving four-in-hand has lost its practical utility and business-like air, the new or revived club bears about the same relation to the original one as the Eglintoun tournament to the 'gentle passage of arms' commemorated in Ivanhoe.'

A very remarkable letter, now printed for the first time, was addressed by the Princess to Lord Albemarle (the father), dated January 17th, 1812, in which, with a sneer at her tutor, the Bishop of Salisbury, she declares herself an out-and-out Foxite. It is too long to quote. Lady de Clifford had frequent occasion to reprove her pupil's levity of conduct and expression, and the Princess used to complain to her playfellow of harsh treatment on the part of her governess; but after all,' she would say in her cooler moments, there are many worse persons in the world than your snuffy old grandmother.'

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We have here, on Lady de Clifford's authority, the true version of the disputed scene with Lord Eldon on Sunday, 17th January, 1812, when the Princess went to the Castle at Windsor, attended by her governess.

'In the Queen's room were assembled Her Majesty, Princess Mary, afterwards Duchess of Gloucester, and the Prince Regent, who had brought with him Lord Chancellor Eldon. This great legal functionary pointed out to the Princess the somewhat despotic power which the law gives to the Sovereign over the members of the Royal family. During the interview the Regent loaded his daughter with reproaches. At last turning to the Chancellor he asked him what he would do with such a daughter. "If she were mine," was the answer, "I would lock her up." The Princess burst into tears. What," she exclaimed, "would the poor King have said if he could understand that his grand-daughter had been likened to the grand-daughter of a coal-heaver!"'

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Lord Albemarle states that he had always been taught to look to the Bar as his profession, but his confirmed habit of breaking bounds and getting into scrapes led to a sudden change of destination. One fine morning, after a fresh breach of discipline, a letter from his father informed him that his school-days had come to an end. Inclosed was one from Dr. Page to him, dissuading him from thinking any more of a learned profession for me, and recommending him to choose one in which physical rather than mental exertion would be requisite.'

In April 1815, being then under sixteen, he was gazetted to an ensigncy in the 14th Foot, and was immediately ordered to

join the third battalion of his regiment in Flanders. When he joined it, fourteen of the officers and three hundred of the men were under twenty years of age. These last consisted principally of Buckinghamshire lads, fresh from the plough, whose rustic appearance procured for them the appellation of the "Peasants." The Duke always declared that his Waterloo army was the worst he ever commanded, and that if it had been composed of his old Peninsular troops, the battle would have been decided in three hours. An old General Mackenzie, who inspected the battalion at Brussels, no sooner set eyes on them than he called out, 'Well, I never saw such a set of boys, both officers and men.' Yet this set of boys gave speedy and ample proof of the cool, tenacious, enduring courage which has been correctly designated as the distinctive quality of the race.*

At a more advanced period of his narrative, Lord Albemarle relates that, during the Peninsular War, Lord Wellington was asked, at his own dinner-table, on whom, in his opinion, in the event of anything happening to him, the command should devolve. After some hesitation he named Beresford. There was a general expression of surprise. 'I see,' he said, 'what you mean, by your looks. If it were a question of handling troops, some of you fellows might do as well, perhaps better than he; but what we now want is some one to feed our troops; and I know of no one fitter for the purpose than Beresford.' A confirmatory anecdote is told by Mr. Mark Boyd: 'On one occasion he (a foreign prince) took the opportunity of asking his Grace what was the best method of making good soldiers. "A very proper question, Prince," said the Duke, “for, although you are now a young man, you may have to command an army. Feed them well, and house them well, and you will make good soldiers."'†

Now it is incidentally shown in this publication that, during the whole of the campaign of 1815, including the march to Paris, the Duke either neglected his own maxim or was very badly served by his commissariat; for the British army was neither fed well nor housed well. Indeed, during the twenty

* Mais pour ce qui regarde la guerre, l'histoire du passé nous rassure quant aux chances de l'avenir. Il n'y a certainement pas de nation qui puisse se vanter d'être plus brave que la nation française, mais je crois que nos hommes ont quelques dix minutes de ténacité plus que les vôtres; et lorsque le courage est égal des deux côtés, c'est la ténacité qui décide du sort du combat.' (Lord Palmerston to Count Persigny in 1860. Life,' by the Hon. E. Ashley, vol. ii. p. 194.) This is one instance, amongst many, of the boldness and clearness of view which form the distinctive merit of Lord Palmerston's letters; and Mr. Ashley has acted most judiciously in allowing them to speak for themselves.

† Social Gleanings.' By Mark Boyd. London, 1875.

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four hours preceding the decisive battle many of his troops were neither fed nor housed at all.

'Prior to taking up our position for the night of the 17th, the regiment filed past a large tubful of gin. Every officer and man was, in turn, presented with a little tin-pot full. No fermented liquor that has since passed my lips could vie with that delicious schnapps. As soon as each man was served, the precious contents that remained in the tub were tilted over on to the ground.

'We soon after halted and piled arms on the brow of a hill.

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For about an hour before sunset, the rain that had so persecuted us on our march relieved us for a time from its unwelcome presence, but as night closed in, it came down again with increased violence, and accompanied by thunder and lightning. For a time I abode, as I best could, the pitiless pelting of the storm: at last my exhausted frame disabled me to bid defiance to the elements. Wearied with two days of incessant marching, I threw myself on the slope of the hill on which I had been standing. It was like lying in a mountain torrent; I nevertheless slept soundly till two in the morning, when I was awoke by my soldier-servant, Bill Moles.'

In a neighbouring cottage, to which he repaired to warm himself, he found three officers drying their clothes by a fire of broken chairs and tables. One of them was Sir John Colborne, afterwards Lord Seaton :

'He had known my brother, Bury, in the Peninsula. Towards morning his servant brought him his breakfast, of which he asked me to partake, but the portion was so infinitesimally small that, hungry as I was, I could not bring myself to take advantage of an offer that could only have been made in courtesy.'

A singularly apposite anecdote expresses what must be the feelings of the bravest on the eve of a battle:

'If I were asked what were my sensations in the dreary interval between daylight and the firing of the first cannon-shot, on this eventful morning, I should say that all I can now remember on the subject is, that my mind was constantly recurring to the account my father had given me of his interview with Henry Pearce, otherwise the Game Chicken, just before his great battle with Mendoza for the championship of England. "Well, Pearce," asked my father, "how do you feel? "Why, my lord," was the answer, "I wish it was fit (fought)." Without presuming to imply any resemblance to the Game Chicken, I had thus much in common with that great man—I wished the fight was fit.'

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'Depend upon it,' says General Mercer, he who pretends to give a general account of a great battle from his own observation deceives you; believe him not. He can see no further (that is,

if he was personally engaged in it) than the length of his nose.' In what he says of the battle, Lord Albemarle strictly confines himself to what he individually felt and saw. After remaining some hours in a ravine, his regiment was brought forward to assist in filling up a gap in the line.

'We halted and formed square in the middle of the plain. As we were performing this movement, a bugler of the 51st, who had been out with skirmishers, and had mistaken our square for his own, exclaimed, "Here I am again, safe enough." The words were scarcely out of his mouth, when a round shot took off his head and spattered the whole battalion with his brains, the colours and the ensigns in charge of them coming in for an extra share. One of them, Charles Fraser, a fine gentleman in speech and manner, raised a laugh by drawling out, "How extremely disgusting!" A second shot carried off six of the men's bayonets, a third broke the breast-bone of a lance Sergeant (Robinson), whose piteous cries were anything but encouraging to his youthful comrades. The soldier's belief that "every bullet has its billet," was strengthened by another shot striking Ensign Cooper, the shortest man in the regiment, and in the very centre of the square.

"These casualties were the affair of a second. We were now ordered to lie down. Our square, hardly large enough to hold us when standing upright, was too small for us in a recumbent position. Our men lay packed together like herrings in a barrel. Not finding a vacant spot, I seated myself on a drum. Behind me was the Colonel's charger, which, with his head pressed against mine, was mumbling my epaulette; while I patted his cheek. Suddenly my drum capsized and I was thrown prostrate, with the feeling of a blow on the right cheek. I put my hand to my head, thinking half my face was shot away, but the skin was not even abraded. A piece of shell had struck the horse on the nose exactly between my hand and my head, and killed him instantly. The blow I received was from the embossed crown on the horse's bit.'

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They were moved forward to a position where a partial protection was afforded by the nature of the ground. As he was rising, a bullet struck a man immediately in front, who, falling backwards, knocked him down again. With some difficulty I crawled from under him. The man appeared to have died without a struggle. In my effort to rejoin my regiment I trod upon his body. The act, although involuntary, caused me a disagreeable sensation whenever it recurred to my mind.'

If we are to believe M. Thiers, there was hardly a battalion of the British army that was not culbuté (his pet word) three or four times; and the wonder is how enough of them were left upon their legs to make the final advance when the Prussians Vol. 141.-No. 282.

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