October, continuing during all those months to attract many thousands
of visitors. It had charmed the world by the splendid embodiment of
peace and peaceful industries which it presented, and men willingly
took this festival as a sign bespeaking a yet longer reign of
world-tranquillity. It proved to be only a sort of rainbow, shining
in the black front of approaching tempest. When 1854 opened, the
third year from the Exhibition year, we were already committed to war
with Russia; and the forty years' peace with Europe, finally won at
Waterloo, was over and gone.

[Illustration: Duke of Wellington.]

In the interval another great spirit had passed away. The Duke of
Wellington died, very quietly and with little warning, at Walmer
Castle, on the 14th of September, 1852, "full of years and honours."
He was in his eighty-fourth year, and during the whole reign of Queen
Victoria he had occupied such a position as no English subject had
ever held before. At one time, before that reign began, his political
action had made him extraordinarily unpopular, in despite of the
splendid military services which no one could deny; now he was the
very idol of the nation, and at the same time was treated with the
utmost respect and reverent affection by the Sovereign--two
distinctions how seldom either attained or merited by one person! But
in Wellington's case there is no doubt that the popular adoration and
the royal regard were worthily bestowed and well earned. He had never
seemed stirred by the popular odium, he never seemed to prize the
popular praise, which he received; it was not for praise that he had
worked, but for simple duty; and his experience of the fickleness of
public favour might make him something scornful of it. To the honours
which his Sovereign delighted to shower on him--honours perhaps never
before bestowed on a subject by a monarch--he _was_ sensitive. The
Queen to him was the noblest personification of the country whose
good had ever been, not only the first, but the only object of his
public action: and with this patriotic loyalty there mingled
something of a personal feeling, more akin to romance in its paternal
tenderness than seemed consistent with the granite-hewn strength and
sternness of his general character. A thorough soldier, with a
soldier's contempt for fine-spun diplomacy, he had been led into many
a blunder when acting as a chief of party and of State; but his
absolute single-minded honesty had more than redeemed such errors;
"integrity and uprightness had preserved him," and through him the
land and its rulers, amid difficulties where the finest statecraft
might have made shipwreck of all.

He had his human failings; yet the moral grandeur of his whole career
cast such faults into the shade, and justified entirely the universal
grief at his not untimely death. The Queen deplored him as "our
immortal hero"--a servant of the Crown "devoted, loyal, and faithful"
beyond all example; the nation endeavoured by a funeral of
unprecedented sumptuousness to show its sense of loss; the poet
laureate devoted to his memory a majestic Ode, hardly surpassed by
any in the language for its stately, mournful music, and finely
faithful in its characterisation of the dead hero--

           "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