previous habits; and in the end, after enduring great and excruciating sufferings, he was compelled to undergo an operation. He never recovered; for, despising all the suggestions of prudence, he undertook, almost immediately afterwards, a journey from Bristol to Southampton, "like a man," says Pope, "determined neither to live nor die like any other mortal." The consequence was, that, finding it necessary to seek a milder climate, and embarking with that view for Lisbon, he became alarmingly ill; and died at sea, on the 25th of October, 1735, in the seventyeighth year of his age.

The character which Walpole has given of this volatile but remarkable man appears in many respects so just, that we cannot refuse ourselves the gratification of transferring a portion of it to these pages. "He was," says our author, "one of those men of careless wit and negligent grace, who scatter a thousand bon-mots and idle verses, which we painful compilers gather and hoard, till the owners stare to find themselves authors. Such was this lord; an advantageous figure and enterprising spirit, as gallant as Amadis and as brave, but a little more expeditious in his journeys, for he is said to have seen more kings and more postilions than any man in Europe. His enmity to the duke of Marlborough, and his friendship with Pope, will preserve his name, when his genius, too romantic to have laid a solid foundation for fame; and his politics, too disinterested for his age and country; shall be equally forgotten. He was a man, as his poet said, who would neither live nor die like any other mortal; yet even particularities were becoming in him, as he had a natural ease that immediately adopted and saved them from the air of affectation." "He lived," continues the same writer, "in intimacy and correspondence with Swift and Pope; showing by his letters that he was as much formed to adorn a polite age, as to raise the glory of a martial one. He lived a romance, and was capable of making it a history."

There are few sentiments expressed in this passage, to which a ready assent may not be given, even by such as feel disposed to carry their researches beyond the extreme point at which the noble writer has stopped short. Looking to Peterborough, indeed, as a military commanderand it is in that light that we are bound chiefly to regard him,-scant justice will be done either to his excellences or his defects, if he be considered only as a brave gentleman. Courage, even to rashness, he undoubtedly possessed; but he possessed a great deal more,-namely, enterprise, activity, wariness, and address; and if his genius cannot be commended on the score of comprehensiveness or sobriety, it was at least versatile and brilliant in no ordinary degree. It is true that a question may be raised, whether, in the whole history of his active life, any evidence is afforded, that he ever planned, or was capable of planning,

a campaign on a large scale; while the same history distinctly proves that his was not a mind fit to control and regulate the conduct of a war spread over a widely extended surface. Nevertheless, we find enough to satisfy us that his military talents were of a high order; and that they fully entitled him to the peculiar and chivalrous renown which even now attaches to his memory.

Though his exploits were neither very influential in their consequences, nor performed on an arena of the lordliest kind, they suffice to rank him among the ablest partisan leaders of whom any record has been preserved; as a man admirably qualified to make the most of slender means, -fertile in expedients by which to deceive an enemy,-prompt in his decisions,-daring in his movements, and not over scrupulous touching the means to be employed, provided only the end were attained. Nor may the glory which attaches to the able leader in light warfare be esteemed either trifling in itself, or easy of attainment. Such leaders may, perhaps, be less rarely found than the small but gifted class by whose combination the destinies of empires are decided; but their paucity in the military annals of all nations, distinctly proves that the qualifications both of mind and body necessary to constitute the character, are not more infrequent than they are dazzling.

We have spoken of lord Peterborough as a brilliant partisan leader, not as a commander of the loftiest order: it is just that we assign some reasons for this opinion, less apparently trivial than are implied in the foregoing sentences.

He who examines with a philosophic eye the conduct of this singular man, will discover that almost all his actions, whether in war or diplomacy, sprang as much from impulse as from deliberation his plans, when he formed any, were continually changed, at the dictation rather of feeling than of reason; he was more frequently the puppet of caprice or wounded vanity, than the servant of his own matured and sober devices. We are not, indeed, prepared, with his personal enemies, to assert either that the capture of Barcelona was the work of another, or the mere gift of fortune,-though fortune has and always must have a considerable share in the success of such projects; neither would we detract in the smallest degree from the merits of the Valencia campaign, which belonged exclusively to him who conducted it. Both operations were deserving of all the glory which attended them; yet it were idle to assert that the advantages thus won were turned to the full account which those under whom Peterborough acted had a right to expect. If it be urged that the earl was not to blame for this, because the hostility of the king and the jealousy of his brother generals crossed him in all his undertakings, the question naturally arises, Whence did these unhappy sentiments spring? and, partial as we confess ourselves to be to the

memory of our illustrious countryman, we fear that there is but one answer to be given to it. An unfortunate temper,-the child of boundless vanity,-rendered Peterborough no agreeable coadjutor in any undertaking; nor does it appear that he ever strove to stifle the one or to repress the ebullitions of the other.

But the period in Peterborough's military career in which he undeniably appears to the least advantage, is included between the date of his second arrival at Valencia and his march to Guadalaxara. We do not question the truth of his own or Dr. Friend's assertions, that no formal announcement of the occupation of Madrid was sent to him by Das Minas or lord Galway. As little would we seem to defend the course adopted by Charles, or justify his insane journey to. Saragoza; yet, that Peterborough perfectly well knew how matters stood, and fully estimated the importance of a junction between his own forces and those of Das Minas, cannot, we presume, be disputed. Why, then, did he delay his movement to Madrid? Was it a matter of the slightest consequence, or affecting in any degree the issues of the war, whether Charles took possession of his capital under one escort or another? or is it probable that he, who set all orders at defiance as often as his fancy led him, really stood in need of a formal command from the king cre he could venture to quit his own province? No man will pretend to say that he was or could be guided by any such considerations. It only remains, then, to believe that an unconquerable distaste towards his colleagues, or a disinclination to act under them, kept him from executing a movement, of the importance of which he was aware; and surely we need not add, that he who endangers the success of a cause which he has once undertaken to serve, on account of any personal feelings or feuds whatsoever, may not with justice be placed among the heroes of his age. The really great commander maintains at all times a perfect ascendency as well over himself as over others; because it is only by acquiring the first that he can hope to attain the last, so as to wield those around him to his own purposes.

When we turn again from a consideration of the military character of lord Peterborough, and contemplate him in the light of a politician or statesman, we find a remarkable verification of the axiom elsewhere hazarded in this work, that a man's talents as a general are for the most part commensurate with his abilities as a diplomatist. Possessing considerable powers of mind, which he was by no means apt to under-rate, thirsting for renown, and impatient under obscurity, Peterborough not only embraced with eagerness every legitimate opportunity of distinguishing himself, but persisted in acting a prominent part at almost every court in Europe, long after authority so to do had been withdrawn from him by his own government. It has been seen, moreover, that in

the course of these voluntary labours he was not always careful to pursue the line which the government for which he professed to act had adopted: nay, that on more than one occasion he had well nigh brought ruin on the league, by advocating a course of proceeding totally incompatible with its existence. Was this the work of a man smarting from a sense of personal wrongs, and willing to take revenge even at the expense of his country's honour? or did his conduct proceed from a deeprooted abhorrence of Marlborough, whom, since he could not rival, he was willing to undermine? We do not hesitate to answer both of these questions in the negative. That Peterborough writhed under the slights to which he had been subjected, and of which he regarded Marlborough as the chief cause, ample proof remains; but there is proof equally conclusive, that his extravagances during the interval from 1707 to 1709 were in no way connected with these feelings. From first to last, Peterborough remained zealous for the war with France; he could not, therefore, desire the dissolution of treaties on which its continuance depended: is it not fair to conclude, that though some of his intrigues, more especially at Turin and Vienna, had wellnigh ended in this, no one would have more deeply lamented the catastrophe than he? His ill-timed diplomacy may therefore be attributed to that which formed the actuating principle of his whole public life,-a craving appetite for fame, which impelled him to seek notoriety by almost any means, rather than not obtain it at all. The truth, indeed, appears to be, that the genius of this singular man was not competent to carry him forward as he wished in the race of glory, simply because, in the composition of his mind, one most essential power was want. ing: had a sober judgment been present to direct him in the application of his talents, he might per. haps have performed fewer actions of which men spoke then, and speak still, as remarkable; but these would have at once told more powerfully on the state of his own times, and been better known and more highly esteemed by posterity. Peterborough became a distinguished, but not a really great man,-because he desired with vain ardour to be accounted the greatest of his day.

Perhaps there never lived a human being whose manners in private society contrasted more forcibly with the tone of his conversation and conduct while acting a part on the great stage of public life. As a general, as a minister, nay, even as a member of the house of lords, Peterborough seems to have paid little heed to the feelings and prejudices of those around him; overbearing, or striving to overbear, all opposition to his own views, and carrying his point usually by violence, seldom, if ever, by persuasion. Among the circle of his friends, on the other hand, he is represented as having been uniformly gay, gentle, sprightly, and well-bred. Eccentricities he doubtless had, which extended even to his mode of travelling; causing

him to move from place to place with extraordinary frequency, and always as if in a hurry; but, as has been well observed in the passage already quoted from lord Orford's "Noble Authors," 66 even particularities were becoming in him, as he had a natural ease that immediately adopted and saved them from the air of affectation." We cannot, therefore, be surprised to find that he succeeded in attaching to himself all persons among whom he chose familiarly to converse: or that, uniting to these elegances of manner a pleasing countenance, and a light though rather diminutive figure, he should have been a great favourite with that sex to which he professed especial devotion.

Peterborough was generous, even to profusion; and, as a necessary consequence, always in embarrassed circumstances. The common people, of course, esteemed him highly on this account; for there is no quality which more surely wins the hearts of the multitude; and they did not fail, especially towards the end of queen Anne's reign, to draw many and invidious comparisons between his conduct in money matters, and that of the illustrious Marlborough. That Peterborough felt the advantage which he so far possessed over his rival, and was not always careful to use it with moderation, the following anecdote will show :-It chanced, after Marlborough had fallen into disgrace, that a crowd, mistaking Peterborough's carriage for the duke's, surrounded it in a hostile manner, and

began to utter yells of disapprobation. Peterborough looked from the window and exclaimed, "Gentlemen, I will prove to you that you are mistaken; and that I am not the duke of Marlborough. In the first place, I have but five guineas in my pocket; in the next, they are very much at your service." So saying, he threw the money among them, and their yells were instantly changed to shouts of applause. But we have better proof of the liberality of lord Peterborough than is afforded here. His refusal to accept compensation for the loss of his baggage in Spain, the promptitude with which he was ever ready to expend his last shilling in the public service; these, with a variety of acts of private beneficence, bear full testimony to his open-heartedness. He was a strange compound of great and little qualities; of magnanimity and meanness; of patriotism and party prejudice: forming altogether at once the most selfish and the most disinterested public character of his own, or, perhaps, of any other age.

Peterborough was twice married: first, to Carey, daughter of sir Alexander Frazer, who died in the year 1709, after bringing him two sons and two daughters; and next, in 1735, only a few months previous to his decease, to Anastasia Robinson, a celebrated singer at the theatre. Of the latter union he was himself evidently ashamed; and it is more than once painfully alluded to by his correspondents who survived him.

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