Mr. Larpent's volumes, which we do, recommending them to all readers who wish to be amused while they are instructed, and who will find them to combine the utile cum dulci in very agreeable proportions. They have rapidly gone through the first edition, a second is announced, and their popularity cannot fail to be enduring. They will last and be referred to as a valuable appendage to the history of the greatest warrior of our age, and as containing anecdotes equally interesting and authentic of his private character and transactions. He was not a man of warm, enthusiastic impulse. Had he been so moulded he would have been less fitted for his post; but he was invariably just, honourable, and consistent, governed by sound principle and habitual self-control. If not given to inordinate praise, he was equally sparing of censure, and one leading reason which, in conversation, he assigned for not writing the history of his own campaigns was, that he should be compelled to speak the truth, and pare down reputations which had been inflated beyond their wholesome bulk. Voltaire, who delighted in undervaluing human nature, said, that no man was a hero to his valet-de-chambre-meaning that close intimacy unveils infirmities, and dissipates the halo of superiority with which greatness appears to be surrounded when viewed from a distance. The phrase has become proverbial, but is rather a pungent sarcasm than an aphoristic truth. There are characters which will endure the test of the most familiar scrutiny, and retain their pretensions even when we are introduced to them behind the scenes of every day life. The Duke was one of these rare examples. His nearest associates never felt their respect diminished by intimacy, and the veneration which all acknowledged for the patriot, the legis lator, and the victorious commander, is increased rather than diminished as we become better acquainted with the manners, opinions, and domestic habits of the individual man.

Baron Muffling's volume, entitled "Passages from my Life," ably edited by Colonel Philip Yorke, was origi

The

nally published in the early part of 1851, soon after the decease of the author. The book was reviewed at great length in the Quarterly Review for December, 1851, and especially recommended as deserving translation. The author left these memoirs as an inheritance to his children, and says himself, in his preface, that he considers them more in the light of family property than as documents suited for publication. In many respects they soar beyond personal anecdotes or private memoranda, and reach the importance of authentic history. There are points we shall select in which they are particularly valuable. portion of this work pre-eminently interesting to English readers, is that which treats of the campaign of Waterloo, where the author first came in contact with the Duke of Wellington, being attached to his headquarters to keep up the correspondence and connexion between the English commander-in-chief and the Prussian Field-Marshal Blucher. He proceeded to his appointment without much empressement, not anticipating that it would prove particularly satisfactory or important. The result equally falsified his expectations. By some strange misconception, General Von Gneisenau, the chief of the Prussian staff, had adopted a very erroneous estimate of the Duke of Wellington's character, which he endeavoured to impress on the envoy. He warned him on his departure to be much on his guard with the Duke, for, as he said, by his early relations with India, and his transactions with the deceitful nabobs, this distinguished general had so accustomed himself to duplicity, that he had at last become such a master in the art, as even to outwit the nabobs themselves. Englishmen can afford to smile while they are a little astonished at the extraordinary mistakes of foreigners, even when friends and allies. A more straightforward, guileless person than the Duke of Wellingtor never existed in the annals of public life. His unswerving honesty and singleness of purpose, is, perhaps, his highest distinguishing quality, a great secret of his constant success, and the undoubted

charm by which he won the confidence of all who came in contact with him, either when joined in command, associated in diplomacy, or entirely subordinate to his controlling genius. Baron Muffling soon found that Gneisenau (who in fact really commanded the Prussian army, while Blucher merely acted the part of " Marshal Forwards," as the bravest in battle and most indefatigable in exertion), had led him into a gross misconception as to the great man with whom he was now in constant intercourse. In a short time he won his entire confidence, which the Duke bestowed on him without reserve, when he found the Prussian officer, in every point discussed between them, told him the simple truth. Muffling says, "he had seen that I had the wellfare of all at heart, and that I entertained towards him the reverence due to those talents as a commander, which did not more distinguish him than the openness and rectitude of his character." The following remarks on the unlimited authority exercised by the English general are well worthy of being transcribed and remembered:

"I perceived" (says Baron Muffling), "that the Duke exercised far greater power in the army he commanded than Prince Blucher in the one committed to his care. The rules of the English service permitted the suspension of any officer, and sending him back to England. The Duke had used this power during the war in Spain, when disobedience showed itself amongst the higher officers. Sir Robert Wilson was an instance of this. Amongst all the generals, from the leaders of corps to the commanders of brigades, not one was to be found in the allied army who had been known as refractory. It was not the custom in this army to criticise or control the commander-in-chief. Discipline was strictly enforced, every one knew his rights and his duties. The Duke, in matters of service, was very short and decided. He allowed questions, but dismissed all such as were unnecessary. His detractors have accused him of being inclined to encroach on the functions of others, a charge which is at variance with my experience."

We have been so accustomed to think the code of military discipline in the Prussian service, established by Frederick William, and carried out with additional severity under his son and successor, Frederick the Great, as so stern and peremptory, so absolute in principle and detail, that we are rather surprised to find an unquestion

able authority representing it as lax and indulgent, when compared with our own. During the battle of Waterloo, Baron Muflling saw a very striking illustration of the uncompromising spirit with which English officers carry out the orders delivered to them. Two brigades of British cavalry stood on the left wing. He rode up to the commanders of both, and urged them at a critical moment to cut in upon the scattered infantry of the enemy, observing that they could not fail to bring back at least 3,000 prisoners. Both agreed with him fully, but, shrugging their shoulders, answered, "Alas! we dare not; the Duke of Wellington is very strict in enforcing obedience to prescribed regulations."

The Prussian general had afterwards an opportunity of speaking with the Duke on this point, which he did with the less reserve, as the two officers in question were amongst the most distinguished of the army, and had rendered signal services with their brigades in the proceedings of the day. The Duke replied at once, that the two generals were perfectly correct in their answer, for had they made such a gratuitous attack without his permission, even though the greatest success had crowned their attempt, he must have brought them to a court-martial. "With us," he added, "it is a fixed rule, that a general placed in a prearranged position has unlimited power to act within it, according to his judgment; for instance, if the enemy assails him, he may defend himself on the spot, or meet the foe from a covered position; and in both cases he may pursue them, but never further than the obstacle behind which the position assigned him lay; in one word, such obstacle, until fresh orders, is the limit of his action."

The idle tales that the allies were surprised at the opening of the campaign of 1815, their forces dislocated, and that the Prussians won the great fight, while the English only with difficulty held their position, have long been refuted by ample military investigation, and the sound conclusions are now fully confirmed by this memoir of Baron Muffling, which corroborates and enlarges on the opinion he delivered long since in a former published account of the battle of Waterloo. His testimony is most explicit as to the fact, "that the battle could have af

forded no favourable result to the enemy, even if the Prussians had never come up." Sir Walter Scott's conclusion was perfectly right, when he wound up his narrative by saying, “The laurels of Waterloo must be dividedthe British won the battle, the Prussians completed and rendered available the victory." It was an action of concert from the beginning, and the late arrival of the Prussians was not calculated on. In all reasonable estimate, they were expected on the ground earlier. The heavy rains had clogged and impeded the roads, and made them almost impassable for artillery, tumbrils, and ammunition wagons, rendering the march of infantry slow and irregular. The Duke himself said, "even if Blucher had not come up at all I would have held my ground through the night; he must have been with me early in the morning, and we then would not have left Bonaparte an army." In Captain Siborne's original model, the Prussian advance is represented as over-lapping the French right at Planchenôit at a much earlier hour in the day than this movement actually took place. He was long before he was convinced of this error, of which he finally received full conviction, and altered the model accordingly. The most remarkable incident alluded to in the memoirs of Baron Muffling, is the strange fact that Blucher positively intended to treat Napoleon as a brigand, and shoot him off hand, if the chances of war, a private treaty, or treachery, had placed him in his power; and that it was only through the urgent remonstrances of the Duke of Wellington that the savage old Prussian was induced to give up a measure of personal vengeance, which, if circumstances had allowed him to carry it into effect, would have tarnished his own laurels, and cast an indelible disgrace on his country. Muffling's account of this intended outrage, more worthy of Attila or Genghis, than of a warrior of the nineteenth century, is as characteristic as it is interesting. He says:—

"During the march on Paris, Field-Marshal Blucher had at one time a prospect of getting Napoleon into his power; the delivering up of Napoleon was the invariable condition stipulated by him in every conference with the French Commissioners sent to treat for peace or an armistice. I received from him instructions to inform the Duke of Wellington, that as the Congress of Vienna

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had declared Napoleon outlawed, it was his intention to have him shot, whenever he caught him. But he desired, at the same time to know what were the Duke's views on this subject, for should he entertain the same as himself, he wished to act in concert with him. The Duke stared at me in astonishment, and in the first place disputed the correctness of this interpretation of the Viennese declaration of outlawry, which was never meant to incite to the assassination of Napoleon. He therefore did not think that they could acquire from this act any right to order Napoleon to be shot, should they succeed in making him a prisoner of war. But be this as it may, as far as his own position, and that of the FieldMarshal with respect to Napoleon were concerned, it appeared to him that, since the battle they had won, they were become much too conspicuous personages to justify such a transaction in the eyes of Europe. I had already felt the force of the Duke's arguments before I most reluctantly undertook my mission, and was little disposed to dispute them. I, therefore,' continued the Duke, wish my friend and colleague to see this matter in the light I do; such an act would hand down our names to history stained by a crime, and posterity would say of us, that we did not deserve to be the conquerors of Napoleon; the more so as such a deed is now quite useless, and can have no object.'"

If Napoleon was made aware of the tender dispositions of Blucher towards him, we can readily understand his anxiety to escape from France, and the comparative security with which he must have felt himself surrounded, when treading the quarter-deck of a British seventy-four. It was not easy to divert Blucher from the object he had doggedly taken up, but the Duke prevailed and won him over. Gneisenau's final communication to Baron Muffling on the subject marks the yielding deference paid to the English general, while the Prussian authorities acknowledge no sympathy with his moral convictions:

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them; your Excellency will therefore only direct the negotiations, so that he may be delivered up to us. When the Duke of Wellington declares himself against the execution of Bonaparte, he thinks and acts in the matter as a Briton. Great Britain is under weightier obligations to no mortal man than to this very villain; for by the occurrences whereof he is the author, her greatness, prosperity and wealth, have attained their present elevation. It is quite otherwise with us Prussians. We have been impoverished by him. Our nobility will never be able to right itself again. But be it so! If others will assume a theatrical magnanimity, I shall not set myself against it. We act thus from esteem for the Duke, and-weakness.

This is unquestionably a very unique official document, and shows the lasting rancour which the excesses of the French in Prussia had implanted in the memories of her children and warriors. Our "gentlemen of England, who live at home at ease," know nothing of these little episodes of war, by practical experience, or they would listen with less unction to the harangues of peace-demagogues, who would fain persuade them that a standing army is an unnecessary evil, and that the soldier's calling is as unholy as it is wasteful and superfluous. An individual case of retaliation on the part of a Prussian officer, occurred within the writer's knowledge, soon after the occupation of Paris by the allies in 1815. He was billeted on a French family, who treated him with great kindness, and he conducted himself with reciprocal decorum.* After two or three months, the eldest son of the house, who had been taken prisoner in the retreat from Moscow, returned from Russia, and came home. The Prussian and he recognised each other at the first glance, and scarcely acnowledged acquaintanceship by a cold inclination. Dinner was announced. The Prussian, for the first time, found fault with everything, swore at the servants, flung the dishes about as wildly as Petruchio does in the farce, broke plates, glasses and decanters, dashed down his chair, and finally, drew his sword and began gesticulating like a madman, declaring that he would summon in his troop and inflict chastise

ment on the whole family. The women screamed and fainted. The father wept and implored, but the young Frenchman sat pallid, silent, and appalled. The English officer interfered, and tried to pacify his brother lodger, who, he thought, was seized with sudden insanity.

He became collected in a moment, and resumed his habitual mildness. "Madam," said he, addressing the lady of the mansion, "pardon me, while I explain my strange conduct. Your son, who stands there, was an inmate of my father's house in Berlin for two months. He was received as I have been by you, with kindness and respect, and all his wants anticipated; but his daily conduct, without the slightest provocation, was such as I have now exhibited; let him deny or resent this as he pleases. I leave your house, now that he has returned to it; and he knows where to find me." So

saying, he left the room. The young Frenchman was too conscious of the truth of this charge to take any further steps in the matter, or evince the slightest resentment. On the march up to Paris after Waterloo, the Prussians occupied the finest chateaux and most comfortable farms; and in the morning before their departure, generally burned the stables, broke the furniture, and particularly wreaked their vengeance on the ornamental glasses and large mirrors with which French mansions are so amply provided. The English army, who followed in their track, found the marks of their predecessors in visible desolation wherever they arrived. When the restoration of the pictures and statues in the Louvre was determined on, the French government entreated the Duke of Wellington to prevent their dispersion; but here he exercised the same conscientious integrity with which he had interdicted personal outrage on Napoleon. He refused peremptorily to interfere. As the French, he said, had seized these masterpieces of art by force of arms and as trophies of conquest, they had a just right to disgorge them when the tide of success turned back into another channel. It was an opportunity for teaching them a great moral lesson, which ought not to be neglected. But again, when Blucher, in an ebullition

brity. The author was attached to the Duke's family for three years, and bears ample testimony to the kindness and consideration with which he treated youth and inexperience. He mentions more than one instance of his uncommon patience in regard to his horses a point in which most men are particularly tenacious. On a particular occasion the young aid-de-camp had lamed the Duke's favourite hunter, for which, in an agony of terror, he expected summary dismissal. The Duke heard the story patiently, and only remarked, "You're not to blame

ing that in any complaint they would be supported by their own authorities, and that even a gross outrage would be unlistened to, or glossed over. The English were coerced within the strictest bonds of discipline; and a complaint on the part of a Frenchman, however slightly founded, was redressed on the instant. If you even laughed at your landlord which it was almost impossible to avoid, as he was generally in a state of excitement, gesticulating like a galvanised frog on the least provocation -you were certain to be reprimanded by your commanding-officer for a violation of international decorum. We could enumerate some amusing cases which came within our personal knowledge; but we reserve them for a more appropriate opportunity. On the whole, the Prussians were hated, but treated with respect and attention, at a very slight disbursement; while the English paid heavily for small accommodation, and were looked upon as fools, for passing by opportunities which they might fairly have used to their own advantage. But it has been ever thus from remote antiquity. We pay all, fight all, and lose all, by mistaken magnanimity, which nobody understands or reciprocates when all is in our power.

"Three Years with the Duke of Wellington in Private Life," generally supposed to be writen by Lord William Lennox, is a light, agreeable volume, more exclusively anecdotal and domestic than either of the works we have already noticed. Referring back to a period when the author was in the morning of life, it well expresses the admiration and respect of youth for a reputation and renown which filled the world with its loud report, and was then on the topmost pinnacle of cele

of Othello's remark-'never more be officer of mine,' came across the anxious mind of the delinquent) "but," continued the great chief, "I can't af ford to run the chance of losing all my best horses; so, in future" (the listener quaked, and thought the dreaded climax was coming), "so in future you shall have the brown horse and the chestnut mare; and, if you knock them up, you must afterwards mount yourself." The writer adds, "I left the hero of a hundred battles with but one sentiment, that of overpowering gratitude; and felt that Wellington was as good in all the kindly offices of social intercourse, as he was great in the more extended duties of the field." Anecdotes such as these may serve to unmystify those who, from a habitual misconception, fancy that the great soldier was always "the Iron Duke," and never had his moments of social familiarity, or his intervals of friendly consideration.

This little volume, in some minute details, is incorrect both in chronology and matter; but as they touch no point of historical interest, we pass them by with only a general notice. In one or two instances, we find passages which supply information soaring beyond familiar gossip. A letter to Sir Charles Stuart, on the subject of the meditated execution of Bonaparte, by Blucher, corroborates what we already find in the statement of Baron Muffling, and in nearly the same words. The Duke says, in a communication, dated June 28th, 1815

"I send you my despatches, which will make you acquainted with the state of affairs. You may show them to Talleyrand if you choose. General has been here this day, to negotiate for Napoleon's passing