affections, and apprise him of the pressing necessity for his early return to England: the application for permission to go ought to come from himself; and, at all events, the offer ought not to be made by me, and particularly not founded on the secret of this young lady. But this fortunate Major now commands his battalion, and I am very apprehensive that he could not with propriety quit it at present, even though the life of this female should depend upon it; and, therefore, I think that he will not ask for leave. We read occasionally of desperate cases of this description, but I cannot say that I have ever yet known of a young lady dying of love. They contrive, in some manner, to live, and look tolerably well, notwithstanding their despair and the continued absence of their lover; and some have even been known to recover so far as to be inclined to take another lover, if the absence of the first has lasted too long. I don't suppose that your protégée can ever recover so far, but I do hope that she will survive the continued necessary absence of the Major, and enjoy with him hereafter many happy days. I have, &c., WELLINGTON. CCXXXVII. Lord Wellington is writing from the once thriving port of St. Jean, the frontier town of France, where he established his headquarters in November 1813, after the battle of the Nivelle, and the retreat of Marshal Soult to his intrenched camp before Bayonne. On entering French territory Wellington ordered that all food and other supplies should be paid for: on the other hand it would seem that the French, after mercilessly exhausting the rich yields of Spain, systematically pillaged their own countrymen. Field-Marshal the Marquess of Wellington to Lord Burghersh. St. Jean de Luz: January 14, 1814. My dear Burghersh,-I have received your several letters to the 17th December, and I am very much obliged to you for the interesting details which they contain. You will have seen the official accounts of our proceedings; and the ministers will most probably have made you and Lord Aberdeen acquainted with the state of affairs here, as detailed to them in my reports. I was obliged to put the Spanish army into cantonments as soon as I passed the Nivelle. It would have been useless to attempt to keep them in the state in which they were, and I should have lost them all. This circumstance, but more particularly the state of the roads from the constant bad weather, has cramped my operations since; and I hope that I shall soon be able to renew them in style. In the meantime Soult has received another large reinforcement, being the third since the battle of Vitoria. We have found the French people exactly what we might expect (not from the lying accounts in the French newspapers, copied into all the others of the world, and believed by everybody, notwithstanding the internal sense of every man of their falsehood, but) from what we knew of the government of Napoleon, and the oppression of all descriptions under which his subjects have laboured. It is not easy to describe the detestation of this man. What do you think of the French people running into our posts for protection from the French troops, with their bundles on their heads, and their beds, as you recollect to have seen the people of Portugal and Spain? I entertain no doubt that, if the war should continue, and it should suit the policy of the allied powers to declare for the House of Bourbon, the whole of France will rise as one man in their favour, with the exception, possibly, of some of the préfets, and of the Senate, and that they will be replaced on the throne with the utmost ease. I think it probable that the Allies will at last be obliged to take this line, as you will see the trick that Bony has endeavoured to play by his treaty with King Ferdinand. If Priscilla is with you, give my best love to her. I received her letter from Berlin; and I have sat to Mr. Heaphey for a picture for her, which I suppose will be sent to her unless one of her sisters or her mother should seize it. Believe me, &c. WELLINGTON. CCXXXVIII. The exultant English public had enough and to spare of 'Accounts of the Battle of Waterloo' in the years 1815 and 1816; but unfortunately they were for the most part lamentably incorrect. Certain people who had chanced to converse with an officer or private actually engaged in the combat, or had gossiped Field-Marshal the Duke of Wellington to Sir J. Sinclair, Bart. Bruxelles: April 28, 1816. Sir, I have received your letter of the 20th. The people of England may be entitled to a detailed and accurate account of the battle of Waterloo, and I have no objection to their having it; but I do object to their being misinformed and misled by those novels called Relations,' and 'Impartial Accounts,' &c., &c., of that transaction, containing the stories which curious travellers have picked up from peasants, private soldiers, individual officers, &c., and have published to the world as the truth. Hougoumont was no more fortified than La Haye Sainte; and the latter was not lost for want of fortifications, but by one of those accidents from which human affairs are never entirely exempt. I am really disgusted with and ashamed of all that I have seen of the battle of Waterloo. The number of writings upon it would lead the world to suppose that the British army had never fought a battle before; and there is not one which contains a true representation, or even an idea, of the transaction; and this is because the writers have referred as above quoted instead of to the official sources and reports. It is not true that the British army was unprepared. The story of the Greek is equally unfounded as that of Vandamme having 46,000 men, upon which last point I refer you to Marshal Ney's report, who upon that point must be the best authority. I have, &c. WELLINGTON. CCXXXIX. Field-Marshal the Duke of Wellington to Francis Mudford. Sir, I have received your letter of the 21st May. I have already explained to you my reasons for declining to give a formal permission that any work with the contents of which I should not be acquainted should be dedicated to me, with which you appear to be satisfied; and I applied those reasons particularly to a work on the battle of Waterloo, because that, notwithstanding so much had been published on that event by so many people, there was but little truth. You now desire that I should point out to you where you could receive information on this event, on the truth of which you could rely. In answer to this desire, I can refer you only to my own despatches published in the London Gazette.' General Alava's report is the nearest to the truth of the other official reports published, but even that report contains some statements not exactly correct. The others that I have seen cannot be relied upon. To some of these may be attributed the source of the falsehoods since circulated through the medium of the unofficial publications with which the press has abounded. Of these a remarkable instance is to be found in the report of a meeting between Marshal Blücher and me at La Belle Alliance; and some have gone so far as to have seen the chair on which I sat down in that farm-house. It happens that the meeting took place after ten at night, at the village of Genappe; and anybody who attempts to describe with truth the operations of the different armies will see that it could not be otherwise. The other part is not so material; but, in truth, I was not off my horse till I returned to Waterloo between eleven and twelve o'clock at night. I have, &c. WELLINGTON. CCXL. A string of searching questions respecting our military esta- recommend the Ministers to gratify the curiosity of the Russian, or any foreign Government. The Duke considered there was sufficient publicity of details in the documents usually laid before Parliament, and that it would be inconvenient to encourage a comparative discussion of our system with that of other military establishments. And he had not forgotten that during his visit to Russia the War Minister at St. Petersburg refused him information on a simple point of military expenditure. Field-Marshal the Duke of Wellington to Lord FitzRoy Somerset. Sudbourne: October 20, 1829. My dear Lord FitzRoy,—I wish that you would look at and' show to Lord Hill my letter to Sir Herbert Taylor on the queries from the Emperor of Russia respecting the army. In truth the organisation and economy of our army are not its brilliant parts. Its conduct in the field is unrivalled. Its officers are gentlemen, and moreover the gentlemen of England. The organisation suits the purposes of our service in peace and war, scattered as the army is from Indus to the Pole, and from the pillars of Hercules to the Eastern extremities of the earth. But it would be ridiculous, when opened in all its details, to one of the military nations of Europe; and that for the purpose of being criticised. Ever yours, &c. WELLINGTON. CCXLI. The still waters of Wordsworth's affection ran very deep, and he never became entirely consoled for the loss of the brother whom he deplores in this touching letter. As he says in the fine verse that he dedicated to Captain Wordsworth's memory, the sailor to the sea had carried undying recollections' of the Cumberland landscape, and was one of the very few who understood the poet's peculiar mission from the first. He was wrecked off the Bill of Portland February 5, 1805. William Wordsworth to Sir George Beaumont. Grasmere: February 11, 1805. My dear Friend,-The public papers will already have broken the shock which the sight of this letter will give you. You will have learned by them the loss of the Earl of Abergavenny, East Indiaman, and along with her, of a great proportion of the crew-that of her captain, our brother, and a most |