Calcutta. Sir Arthur Wellesley returned to England in September,
1805. For three years he was now pretty well occupied as Irish
Secretary, Privy Councillor, and Member of Parliament. His
next military service was at Copenhagen, where he commanded
the troops in the notorious foray of 1807, and conducted the
negotiations which resulted in the surrender of the Danish fleet.
In 1808, when the patriots in Spain and Portugal rose against
the French yoke, the English government resolved to assist
them; Sir Arthur Wellesley was sent to Portugal at the head
of an armament, and landed in Mondego Bay in the month of
August, he was opposed by Junot at the head of a superior
force. Several minor encounters led to the battle of Vimiera, in
which the French were completely defeated; but Sir Arthur was
prevented from following up his victory by the arrival of Sir
Harry Burrard, by whom he had been superseded. Sir Harry
in his turn was superseded by Sir Hew Dalrymple. After
receiving from Sir Arthur a brief but clear statement of his operations,
Sir Hew gave the order to advance, but it was too late,
and the advantages which the victory would have conferred upon
our army were thrown away. The treaty of Cintra, which concluded
this campaign, excited in England the utmost wonder
and disgust. Sir Arthur Wellesley, who had strenuously opposed
its principal provisions, in a fit of indignant chagrin had,
immediately after its completion, returned home—Sir Hew
Dalrymple was recalled, and Sir Harry Burrard resigned on the
plea of ill-health; so that the command of the army devolved
on Sir John Moore. An inquiry was instituted by command of
the king, but the subject was suffered to drop. After the disastrous
campaign of Sir John Moore, Sir Arthur Wellesley was
sent to co-operate with Beresford, to whom the Portuguese army
was intrusted. He arrived in the Tagus in April, 1809, and
that series of operations followed which ended in the famous
passage of the Douro on the 12th of May, and the defeat of Soult
with the loss of his cannon and baggage. Then came, the drawn
battle of Talavera, on the 28th of July; Sir Arthur Wellesley
became Baron Douro and Viscount Wellington. But the Spanish
generals were ignorant, vacillating, and obstinate; Wellington
could not get them to act with him; neither could he rely on
their movements if he endeavoured to act with them. Napoleon
now literally occupied Spain with great armies. There were
nearly three hundred thousand men in the field, commanded by
Ney, Suchet, Massena, Soult, Mortier, Victor, and a host of
inferior but able officers. Against these, when he opened
the campaign of 1810, Wellington had nominally about
one hundred and twenty thousand; of whom, however,
not more than thirty thousand were British soldiers.
Followed by Massena, Wellington first fought and won the
battle of Busaco; then took refuge behind the strong intrenchments
known as the lines of Torres Vedras; and remained there
in perfect security. Massena waited a month before these lines,
and then retired with Wellington at his heels. Massena was
beaten at Fuentes d'Onor; Almeida fell; Ciudad Rodrigo was
captured in ten days, in January, 1812; in April Badajoz was
stormed; the army of Marmont was routed at Salamanca in
July; and Wellington entered Madrid in August. The check
before Burgos, in September, caused him to retreat to his former
position on the Agueda, as the French marshals were closing
round him—During the winter-months he obtained the sole
command of the Spanish as well as British forces; and thus he
opened the campaign of 1813 with improved prospects of success,
lie had good reason for his anticipations of victory. By an
unexpected movement he got in the rear of the French defences;
a retreat was inevitable; at Vittoria it became a flight, until
the French were folded in the passes of the Pyrenees. Soult
was now sent to retrieve the day; but it was too late. Wellington
drove him from rock to rock in the Pyrenees; and on the 9th of
November, 1813, slept for the last time on Spanish ground. How
he crossed the Bidassoa, and the Nivelle—how Soult arrested
his advance for a moment at Toulouse—and how Napoleon
finally succumbed—are sufficiently well known. When the
war was over, Wellington was employed as British Minister at
Paris, royal adviser at Madrid, and Plenipotentiary at Vienna.
When he returned to England, and took his place for the first
tune in the House of Lords, all the patents of his dignities were
read in one day: Talavera had made him a baron and viscount
Cuidad Rodrigo an earl, Salamanca a marquis, and Vittoria a
duke: while honours and orders were heaped upon him by all
the kings of Christendom. The rest of the military life of
Wellington is familiarly known, Napoleon escaped from Elba
in 1815; he reigned one hundred days, and Waterloo closed his
career. Wellington was richly rewarded for his splendid
services: foreign potentates had showered upon him rank,
orders, presents, honours; he was at once a field-marshal in the
British, Austrian, Russian, and Prussian armies. He was
appointed Generalissimo of the Allied Forces occupying
France in 1816; and the term of his command was originally
set down for five years. Strathfieldsaye was purchased at the
national cost; and the grand ceremony of opening Waterloo
Bridge, when the Prince Regent rode with the Duke of York on
his right and the Duke of Wellington on his left hand, and
when 202 guns were fired in honour of the day, had been
performed on the anniversary of Waterloo. War being finally
terminated, Wellington entered opon a new career as a
diplomatist and a statesman. At every great meeting of the
Powers he was the leading representative of England at
Vienna in 1815, at Aix-la-Chapelle in1818, at Verona in 1822;
and his solid sense and sagatious judgement served to mitigate
the coercive tendencies of his royal colleagues. By his advice,
France was evacuated in 1818; and thus by his own act he threw
up his lucrative and powerful post as generalissimo. At Verona,
in obedience to the instructions of Mr. Canning, who had
become Minister for Foreign Affairs on the death of Lord
Londonderry, he remonstrated against the French expedition to
put down the constitutional party in Spain. During Lord
Liverpool's administration he had a seat in the cabinet, and
took a share in the unpopular measures of the time. When
Lord Liverpool died, in 1827, and Canning was called on to form
a cabinet, the Duke, Peel, and others, resigned: and in a few
months Canning died. The cabinet of Lord Goderieh followed,
existing precariously for a few months; and then the Duke of
Wellington was made Prime Minister of England: but bis
cabinet was not destined to survive long. Before breaking up,
however, the Duke of Wellington, yielding to his good sense and
perception of what the time demanded, accepted Lord John
Russell's bill for the Repeal of the Corporation and Test Acts,
and triumphantly carried it through the House of Peers; and
then, with the aid of Peel, accomplished, in 1829, the great
measure of Catholic Emancipation. He remained, nevertheless,
an enemy to Parliamentary Reform. In the new parliament,
on the accession of William IV., be delivered his memorable
declaration, "that the country already possessed a legislature
which answered all the good purposes of legislation; that the
system of representation possessed the full and entire confidence
of the country; and that he was not only not prepared to bring
forward any measure of reform, but would resist such as long as
he held any station in the government of the country." These
few words decided the destinies of the government and the
country too. The government was dissolved, and the Reform
Act was passed after a long and stormy opposition. In 1884,
when the Whigs were dismissed at the death of Earl Spencer,
and a messenger was sent to Rome for Sir Robert Peel, the Duke
held for a while eight of the state portfolios, and was sole
minister ad interim. After this he disappeared from official
political life, although not from the arena of the House of
Lords. When Peel returned to power in 1841, the Duke was
with him. When Peel resigned on the Corn-Iaw question, and
Lord John Russell could not form a cabinet, the Duke came
forward to "stand by" Peel, and to assist in carrying on the
Queen's government by carrying out Corn-law Repeal. With
the Peel ministry of 1846 the Duke's political career came to an
end; though, to the honour of all parties, he retained the office
of Commander-in-Chief. His last speech in the House of Peers
was made at the second reading of the Militia Bill, on the 15th
of June last, when he gave his support to that measure.

The following letter, written by the Earl of Derby at the
command of her Majesty and addressed to the Home Secretary.
has excited great public interest:

                                "Balmoral, Sept. 20, 1S52.
"Sir,—Her Majesty received with the deepest grief, on
Thursday last, the afflicting intelligence of the sudden death of
his Grace the late Duke of Wellington.

''Although the Queen could not for a moment doubt that the
voice of the country would be unanimous upon the subject of
the honours to be paid to the memory of the greatest man of
the age, her Majesty considered it due to the feelings of his
Grace's surviving relations that no step should be taken, even in
his honour, without their previous concurrence; and, accordingly,
the same evening, in obedience to her Majesty's commands, I
wrote to Lord Charles Wellesley (the present Duke having not
then returned to England) to ascertain whether the late Duke
had left any directions, or whether his family desired to express
any wish upon the subject, and suggesting the course which
appeared to her Majesty best calculated to give expression to
those feelings in which the nation, as one man, will sympathise
with her Majesty.

"Having this day received letters from the present Duke
and his brother, to the effect that the late Duke had left no
directions on the subject, and placing themselves wholly in her
Majesty's hands, I hasten to relieve the public anxiety by
signifying to you for public information the commands which I
have received from her Majesty.

"The great space which the name of the Duke of Wellington
has filled in the history of the last fifty years, his brilliant
achievements in the field, his high mental qualities, his long
and faithful services to the Crown, his untiring devotion to the
interests of the country, constitute claims upon the gratitude
of the nation which a public funeral, though it cannot satisfy, at
least may serve to recognise.
"Her Majesty is well aware that, as in the case of Lord
Nelson, she might of her own authority have given immediate
orders for this public mark of veneration for the memory of the
illustrious Duke, and has no doubt but that parliament and the
country would cordially have approved the step. But her
Majesty, anxious thai this tribute of gratitude and sorrow
should be deprived of nothing which could invest it with a
thoroughly national character—anxious that the greatest
possible number of her subjects should have an opportunity of
joining it—is anxious, above all, that such honours shold not
appear to emanate from the Crown alone, and that the two
Houses ot Parliament should have an opportunity, by their
previous sanction, of stamping the proposed ceremony with
increased solemnity, ans associating themselves with her
Majesty in paying honour to the memory of one whom no
Englishmanncan name without pride and sorrow.