It is possible that he might have been loved had the wretched Londonderry been his predecessor in the Ministry; but it happens that he is the successor of the noble Canning—­of the much-wept, adored, great Canning—­and he conquers where Canning was overwhelmed.  Without such an adversity of prosperity, Wellington would perhaps pass for a great man; people would not hate him, would not measure him too accurately, at least not with the heroic measure with which a Napoleon and a Canning are measured, and consequently it would never have been discovered how small he is as man.

He is a small man, and smaller than small at that.  The French could say nothing more sarcastic of Polignac than that he was a Wellington without celebrity.  In fact, what remains when we strip from a Wellington the field-marshal’s uniform of celebrity?

I have here given the best apology for Lord Wellington—­in the English sense of the word.  My readers will be astonished when I honorably confess that I once praised this hero—­and clapped on all sail in so doing.  It is a good story, and I will tell it here: 

My barber in London was a Radical, named Mr. White—­poor little man in a shabby black dress, worn until it almost shone white again; he was so lean that even his full face looked like a profile, and the sighs in his bosom were visible ere they rose.  These sighs were caused by the misfortunes of Old England—­by the impossibility of paying the National Debt.

“Ah!” I generally heard him sigh, “why need the English people trouble themselves as to who reigns in France, and what the French are a-doing at home?  But the high nobility, sir, and the High Church were afraid of the principles of liberty of the French Revolution; and to keep down these principles John Bull must give his gold and his blood, and make debts into the bargain.  We’ve got all we wanted out of the war—­the Revolution has been put down, the French eagles of liberty have had their wings cut, and the High Church may be cock-sure that none of these eagles will come a-flying over the Channel; and now the high nobility and the High Church between ’em ought to pay, anyway, for the debts which were made for their own good, and not for any good of the poor people.  Ah! the poor people!”

Whenever Mr. White came to the “poor people” he always sighed more deeply than ever, and the refrain then was that bread and porter were so dear that the poor people must starve to feed fat lords, stag-hounds, and priests, and that there was only one remedy.  At these words he was wont to whet his razor, and as he drew it murderously up and down the strop, he murmured grimly to himself, “Lords, priests, hounds!”

[Illustration:  THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON]

But his Radical rage boiled most fiercely against the Duke of Wellington; he spat gall and poison whenever he alluded to him, and as he lathered me he himself foamed with rage.  Once I was fairly frightened when he, while barbering away at my neck, burst out in wonted wise against Wellington, murmuring all the while, “If I only had him this way under my razor, I’d save him the trouble of cutting his own throat, as his brother in office and fellow-countryman, Londonderry, did, who killed himself that-a-way at North Cray in Kent—­God damn him!”