the success that might accrue from some audacious venture, but if one step was obscure the idea was unhesitatingly rejected.  Undazzled by the prospect of personal glory, they formed “a true, not an untrue, picture of the business to be done,” and their plans, consequently, were without a flaw.  Brilliant, indeed, were the campaigns of Napoleon, and astonishing his successes, but he who had so often deceived others in the end deceived himself.  Accustomed to the dark dealings of intrigue and chicanery, his judgment, once so penetrating, became blunted.  He believed what he wished to believe, and not that which was fact.  More than once in his later campaigns he persuaded himself that the chances were with him when in reality they were terribly against him.  He trusted to the star that had befriended him at Marengo and at Aspern; that is, he would not admit the truth, even to himself, that he had been overdaring, that it was fortune, and fortune alone, that had saved him from destruction, and Moscow and Vittoria, Leipsic and Waterloo, were the result.

But although there was a signal resemblance, both in their military characters as in their methods of war, between Wellington and Jackson, the parallel cannot be pushed beyond certain well-defined limits.  It is impossible to compare their intellectual capacity.  Wellington was called to an ampler field and far heavier responsibilities.  Not as a soldier alone, but as financier, diplomatist, statesman, he had his part to play.  While Napoleon languished on his lonely island, his great conqueror, the plenipotentiary of his own Government, the most trusted counsellor of many sovereigns, the adviser of foreign Administrations, was universally acknowledged as the mastermind of Europe.  Nor was the mark which Wellington left on history insignificant.  The results of his victories were lasting.  The freedom of the nations was restored to them, and land and sea became the thoroughfares of peace.  America, on the other hand, owes no single material benefit to Stonewall Jackson.  In the cause of progress or of peace he accomplished nothing.  The principle he fought for, the right of secession, lives no longer, even in the South.  He won battles.  He enhanced the reputation of American soldiers.  He proved in his own person that the manhood of Virginia had suffered no decay.  And this was all.  But the fruits of a man’s work are not to be measured by a mere utilitarian standard.  In the minds of his own countrymen the memory of Wellington is hallowed not so much by his victories, as by his unfaltering honesty and his steadfast regard for duty, and the life of Stonewall Jackson is fraught with lessons of still deeper import.