The failures of the world are God’s successes,
      Although their coming be akin to pain;
    And frowns of Providence are but caresses,
      Prophetic of the rest sought long in vain.

* * * * *

XXXVI.

CHEERFUL AND BRAVE.

THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON—­SIR WALTER RALEIGH—­XENOPHON—­ CAESAR—­NELSON—­HENRY OF NAVARRE—­QUEEN ELIZABETH—­ SYDNEY SMITH—­ROBERT HALL—­LATIMER—­TOM HOOD.

Baron Muffling relates of the Duke of Wellington, that that great general remained at the Duchess of Richmond’s ball till about three o’clock on the morning of the 16th of June, 1815, “showing himself very cheerful.”  The baron, who is a very good authority on the subject, having previously proved that every plan was laid in the duke’s mind, and Quatre Bras and Waterloo fully detailed, we may comprehend the value of the sentence.  It was the bold, trusting heart of the hero that made him cheerful.  He showed himself cheerful, too, at Waterloo.  He was never very jocose; but on that memorable 18th of June he showed a symptom of it.  He rode along the line and cheered men by his look and his face, and they too cheered him.  But, when the danger was over—­when the 21,000 brave men of his own and the Prussian army lay stiffening in death—­the duke, who was so cheerful in the midst of his danger, covered his face with his hands and wept.  He asked for that friend, and he was slain; for this, and a bullet had pierced his heart.  The men who had devoted themselves to death for their leader and their country had been blown to pieces, or pierced with lances, or hacked with sabers, and lay, like Ponsonby covered with thirteen wounds, upon the ground.  Well might the duke weep, iron though he was.  “There is nothing,” he writes, “nothing in the world so dreadful as a battle lost, unless it be such a battle won.  Nothing can compensate for the dreadful cruelty, carnage, and misery of the scene, save the reflection on the public good which may arise from it.”

Forty years’ peace succeeded the great battle.  Forty years of prosperity, during which he himself went honored to his tomb, rewarded the constant brave look and tongue which answered his men, when he saw the whole side of a square blown in, with “Hard work, gentlemen!  They are pounding away!  We must see who can pound the longest.”  It is not too much to say that the constant cheerfulness of the Duke of Wellington was one great element of success in the greatest battle ever fought, one of the fifteen decisive battles in the world, great in the number engaged, greater in the slaughter, greatest in the results.  But all commanders ought to be cheerful.  Gloomy looks do not do in the army.  A set of filibusters or pirates may wear looks and brows as black as the sticking-plasters boots that their representatives are dressed in at the minor theaters; but a soldier or a sailor should be, and