“The man of long-enduring blood,
     The statesman-warrior, moderate, resolute,
     Whole in himself, a common good;...
     ...The man of amplest influence,
     Yet clearest of ambitious crime,
     Our greatest yet with least pretence,
     Great in council and great in war,
     Foremost captain of his time,
     Rich in saving common-sense. 
     And, as the greatest only are. 
     In his simplicity sublime;... 
     Who never sold the truth to serve the hour,
     Nor paltered with Eternal God for power;
     Who let the turbid streams of rumour flow
     Through either babbling world of high and low;
     Whose life was work, whose language rife
     With rugged maxims hewn from life;
     Who never spoke against a foe;
     Whose eighty winters freeze with one rebuke
     All great self-seekers trampling on the right: 
     Truth-teller was our England’s Alfred named;
     Truth-lover was our English Duke;
     Whatever record leap to light
     He never shall be shamed.”

When, within so short a period after Wellington’s death, the nation once more found itself drawn into a European war, there were many whose regret for his removal was quickened into greater keenness.  “Had we but the Duke to lead our armies!” was the common cry; but even his military genius might have found itself disastrously fettered, had he occupied the position which his ancient subordinate and comrade, Lord Raglan, was made to assume.  It may be doubted if Wellington could have been induced to assume it.

Whether there ever would have been a Crimean war if no special friendliness had existed between France and England may be fair matter for speculation.  The quarrel issuing in that war was indeed begun by France; but it would have been difficult for England to take no part in it.  The apple of discord was supplied by a long-standing dispute between the Greek and Latin Churches as to the Holy Places situated in Palestine—­a dispute in which France posed as the champion of the Latin and Russia of the Greek right to the guardianship of the various shrines.  The claim of France was based on a treaty between Francis I and the then Sultan, and related to the Holy Places merely; the Russian claim, founded on a treaty between Turkey and Catherine II, was far wider, and embraced a protectorate over all Christians of the Greek Church in Turkey, and therefore over a great majority of the Sultan’s European subjects.  Such a construction of the treaty in question, however, had always been refused by England whenever Russia had stated it; and its assertion at this moment bore an ominous aspect in conjunction with the views which the reigning Czar Nicholas had made very plain to English statesmen, both when he visited England in 1844 and subsequently to that visit.  To use his own well-known phrase, he regarded Turkey as “a sick man”—­a death-doomed man, indeed—­and