was one utterly intolerable. The same testimony also gave us reason to believe that the manner of life which was common was quite conformable with the "corrupt communication which proceeded out of the mouth." Napoleon, in one of his conversations with Barry O'Meara, at St. Helena, expressed his wonder at the number of profligate women who were allowed to follow the English armies. His own personal knowledge of an English army could not extend beyond that which he met in June, 1815, but many officers of his staff had met the English forces repeatedly in the Peninsula.

This is a painful portion of the subject, but if we would write "the whole truth," it is necessary. In Holy Scripture, our great example, nothing is glossed over. There is no hesitation, no reserve, in letting us know that that same Solomon who was "wiser than all men," afterwards committed the enormous folly of collecting "seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines." And in the present case, to shut our eyes, wilfully, to any of the prominent facts of the Duke's life, is simply to prefer a fiction to the truth.

We pass on, then, to the remaining thirty years of the life of Wellington. And, assuredly, the first twenty, in which he was an active, earnest sharer in the party politics of his time, added nothing to his reputation. With all his practical sagacity and sterling good sense, he allowed himself, on three great occasions, to be led by a very inferior man,-Sir Robert Peel; and on each occasion he was drawn into a course which diminished his high standing in the public esteem.

He joined with Peel in the confederacy against Canning. He was one of those who protested, in 1827, that they could not act with Canning, lest he should do something to further the Catholic claims. The Duke, in saying this, was sincere and straightforward; but Peel, who led this confederacy, was insincere. On the 9th of June, 1828, the Duke took a prominent part in inducing the House of Lords to reject the Catholic claims. On the following morning we saw a brief note from him to a friend, which fully exhibited the earnestness and sincerity of the Duke's mind on this question. Yet, when Parliament had separated, Peel sat down at Brighton and wrote him a letter, stating his opinion, that the Catholic claims must be conceded; and tendering his resignation. This, to use a military phrase, "turned the Duke's flank at once." Wellington's first and main question always was, "How is the king's government to be carried on?" Loyalty to the crown was, with him, like the mainspring to a watch. He could not carry on the king's government without Peel, and therefore he succumbed. He consented to surrender his own convictions to what his meaner colleague represented as "a political necessity." But while Peel had, in eflecting his object, absolutely prostrated, for a time, himself,

he had also greatly diminished the public veneration for his great coadjutor. The Duke had lost, before Midsummer, 1829, more than one-half of the political estimation and influence which he possessed in Midsummer, 1828.

The following year completed the disastrous work. After resolving to concede what, if it were anything, was a question of principle-a question of conscience-Peel resolved, in 1830, to be firm, even to stubbornness, on a question of mere expediency. And he easily persuaded the Duke, whose tendencies were always opposed to movement, to join with him in declaring that there should be no reform. This closed, for a time, the career, as a public man, of the Great Duke. He was warned not to appear at a city banquet, for fear of a popular outbreak. His house was attacked, and the windows broken, and for a year or two he became one of the most unpopular men in England. All this he owed to the unwise submission of his own judgment to the influence of an inferior and less straightforward mind.

But years rolled away, and 1839 brought the Duke's seventieth birth-day. The irritation caused by the mistakes of 1829 and 1830 had subsided, and a sense of what England owed to her great captain for the lengthened tranquillity which his good sword had brought her, continually grew and strengthened, until, about this time, he began again to be regarded, almost universally, with the deepest respect and the most sincere veneration. Peel, too, always intent on the great object of his life-the lead of the House of Commons-had now upreared a great party, and was waiting for a fitting opportunity to overthrow the Whig government, and to assume the place of power on their retirement. In all this, the concurrence of the Duke greatly aided him. Peel had now apparently returned to his first faith; and the Duke, always heartily conservative, seconded him with his whole soul.

But, strange to say, the misfortunes and rebukes of 1829-30 had taught Peel nothing. Once more he committed the preposterous fault and fatal error of building up a government apon principles in which, in his innermost soul, he had no faith. He professed indignation at the alleged leanings of the Whigs to Romanism. He was full of wrath when they proposed to lower the duty upon corn. So he overthrew their administration and formed one of his own; and then, in some three years after, he endowed Maynooth college, and altogether abolished the duty on corn! And in these acts, which were treasons to his party, whatever they might be in themselves, he succeeded in inducing the Duke to concur.

We have always considered the manner in which Sir Robert Peel gained over the Duke on the corn-law question, to have been singularly characteristic of the two men. First, Sir Robert proposed to his cabinet to give up the protective duties,

and found almost all his colleagues, the Duke included, opposed to him. He then, naturally enough, resigned. This was inevitable; but it ought to have been followed by another step. Having persuaded himself that the corn-laws ought to be repealed, he ought to have given a hearty support to Lord John Russell in carrying that measure. But when Lord John asked for that support, it was withheld; and the Whig leader, knowing that Sir Robert had a majority in the House of Commons, was forced to give up the task. Then came the question, what was to be done? With a feigned gush of loyalty and patriotism, Peel said to the Duke, "I will not desert the queen!" And the Duke afterwards told the House of Lords: "I was delighted with him, and told him I would stand by him."

Now the difficulty was wholly of Peel's own making. If he had given his hearty support to Lord John Russell, all would have gone on smoothly. But he was bent on having the glory, such as it was, of repealing the corn-laws; and therefore, he first makes it impossible for Lord John to take the government, and then exclaims, in loyal fervour, "I will not desert the queen"!

That this "ingenious manoeuvre" should have succeeded with the Duke, showed convincingly that he was not the sagacious, far-seeing leader in politics which he was in war. He undertook the task which Peel had thus imposed upon him; forced the corn-law-repeal bill through the House of Lords, without saying one word in its favour; resigned, with the rest of the ministry, in the autumn, and declared his intention of taking no further share in party politics. And from that time commenced the last and most honoured and venerated stage of his life. Most men had known, all along, that, in taking part in political controversies, the Duke had never been actuated by any personal ambition. It was scarcely possible for either the Crown or the Parliament to add anything to the honours which he had already received. His duty to his sovereign, and the real interest which he felt in his country's welfare, had been his ruling motives at all periods. This circumstance, however, could not reconcile men to his support of Catholic emancipation, or to his opposition to reform. But now, all this was ended. His seventy-fifth year was passed, and men began to gaze on him with the calmness of admiration with which they behold the last minutes of the setting sun. "They loved his personal dignity, his manliness, his simplicity, and strength.' "His most remarkable characteristic was the union of common sense with lofty feeling; of matter of fact and chivalry. He was a man of great actions, but small professions; a knight errant without extravagance; a man of business, whose career was a romance. Recalling the memory of mighty contests and of

great successes, that good grey head, with its halo of former glories, stood amidst the later times like the peak of a submerged world."

Personally, his last days were doubtless his best days. Of the middle period of his life, when a widower still in his prime, and earnestly engaged in political strife, we cannot speak otherwise than doubtfully. Common rumour, Common rumour, often false, ascribed to him habits and manners akin to those of the camp which he had but recently left. But, unquestionably, from his seventieth year and onwards, an outward change took place, and with Wellington the outward and the inward always resembled each other. It is well known that during the last ten years of his life he read many books on the highest and noblest subjects; of which, in busier times, he would have little cared to hear. Mr. Elliott's great work on prophecy was carefully perused by him, and it was not the only work of that class which formed part of his studies. A singular incident is mentioned by colonel Hamley, of his latest days. On the 12th of September, 1852, he wrote to a friend: "I had a letter this morning from a madman, who announces that he is a messenger from the Lord, and that he will deliver his message to me to-morrow morning. We shall see.' On the 13th, not this messenger, but a different one came, and he was summoned to behold, personally, "Him, in whose hand his breath was, and whose were all his ways.'

Our readers will hardly be in any danger of confounding the different orders and classes of great men. It was a strong and remarkable distinction which was made by our Lord, when he said: "Among them that are born of women there hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist ;-notwithstanding he that is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he." And assuredly, if John fell far below Stephen or Paul, Abner the son of Ner ranked infinitely below John. Still, honour of a certain kind was his due. And when the eye ranges over the great men of the world's secular history, it can hardly disCover a name which shines with a brighter splendour, as a loyal subject, a true lover of his country, a high-minded and noble man, and a consummate general, than that of Arthur Wellesley, duke of Wellington.

THREE PAMPHLETS ON THE ATONEMENT CONTROVERSY.

1. The True Doctrine of the Atonement Asserted and Vindicated. By Daniel Wilson, M.A., Vicar of Islington, and Rural Dean. Seeley & Co., 1860.

2. The Atonement: An Argument. By the Very Rev. Daniel Bagot, B.D., Dean of Dromore, &c. London: Groombridge & Sons. 1860.

3. The Atonement, Considered in reference to Catholic Antiquity and Existing Controversy; with some notice of the Publications of Dean Bagot, and the Rev. Daniel Wilson. Rivington,

1860.

THERE is, we are told, no evil in the moral world without its corresponding good. The biting frost pulverizes the soil which it had hardened into stone; and the dreary winter of the Atonement controversy is already budding into spring. We have been contented too long with surface arguments and hackneyed statements of the truth. The plough begins to do its work again; and the rich sub-soil is thrown up to the surface. We have in the two pamphlets at the head of our list more of the results of patient thought upon this great doctrine than we have lately met within so small a compass; and in the third we have some views upon the subject which require attention.

The vicar of Islington first examines the doctrine of the Atonement as it is laid down in the word of God, and proceeds afterwards to point out the perils which arise to the church from inadequate and erroneous views regarding it. The doctrine he lays down is that which we believe to be the only scriptural one, namely, that Christ died on Calvary, that he might offer a propitiation for man's guilt; that his sufferings were vicarious; that he stood in our place; that he became our substitute, and endured the penalty which our sins had incurred. The proofs of this he gives from Scripture, and confirms his argument from our Prayer-Book, and Articles, and Homilies. Before entering on this inquiry, he premises two cautions: "the one, against making statements in reference to the Atonement which would seem to represent God the Father as a God of wrath and anger, taking pleasure in the sufferings inflicted on his Son;" the other. against speaking on the Atonement "as if it were the only method that God could have adopted for man's salvation." We have no right, he thinks, thus to limit the power and resources of an infinite Being. We agree with him in this; and would add, that there are other points in doctrinal theology on which it often gives us pain to hear broad assertions made as to what God is obliged to do,-what he can