can earn five times as much, learn more, and enjoy better health at Sydney or Melbourne ? But, with wages rising on all sides, it is evident that every kind of commercial calculation will be seriously affected, and that building, road-making, the maintenance and service of railways, all our maritime and internal traffic, and above all agriculture, must in time, and in no great time, become much more expensive. The national defences, under all heads, must become, year by year, a more costly affair, even while the State to be defended becomes yearly more valuable, and more inviting to the cupidity of our great rival. Should social and political difficulties of this kind and of these dimensions thicken round us, they will far outbalance any merely financial easement that might arise from the cheapening of gold, and the virtual depreciation of the national debt. The mitigation they will probably receive through the arrival of continental artizans and labourers, much as we are disposed to rely on it, is of course problematical; and it is impossible to think of our army and navy being recruited from naturalized foreigners without some little misgiving. But whatever the precise form of the result, and whatever the pressure or mitigation of our difficulties, certain it is that we are rupidly passing from one important phase of our national life to another from a surplus to a deficiency of native population; and to this the attention of our rulers is imperatively demanded." HIS GRACE THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON. ENGRAVED BY J. B. HUNT FROM A PAINTING BY R. LEWIS. Arthur Wellesley, first Dake of Wellington, was born in Ireland in the spring of the year 1769. Singularly enough, there is a doubt both as to the day and place in which he was born. The first of May, however, for the one, and Dangan Castle, county Meath, for the other, are the most popularly accredited, though either has been met with many wellconsidered arguments against its claims. If Ireland thus ranks the hero amongst her many distinguished sons, the Mornington family, from which he descends, is still clearly of English extraction. The second Earl of Mornington, himself celebrated for his musical attainments, died when his son Arthur was yet at a very early age, and his education consequently was proceeded with under the direction of his mother, a daughter of Arthur Hill, Viscount Dungannon, a lady also of considerable talents. Yet the early promise of her son Arthur was by no means great, for both at Eton, as well as when afterwards with a private tutor at Brighton, he evinced anything but that success in elegant scholarship for which so many of his family have been renowned. In fact, his very inferiority in classic study is generally supposed to have led to his adoption of the army as a profession ; as a preparation for which, we find him ultimately removed to the military seminary at Angers, in France. Having spent six years here, the student returned in 1787 to take up his commission as ensign in the 73rd foot. Once entered, the family influence was found sufficient to ensure him quick promotion, and his frequent changes from one regiment to another, consequent of course on “ the steps ” he took, would be only tedious to trace out. Of all those he joined, and they included both cavalry and infantry, his name is chiefly identified with the 33rd, in which regiment he obtained his majority, and which subsequently he commanded, that is in the early stages of his career. This was commenced in 1794 (where it finished many years afterwards-on the plains of Belgium); the 33rd being sent out in aid of the discomfited forces of the Duke of York. Colonel Wellesley's services here, how. ever, were chiefly confined to the conducting of a retreat. In 1796 the same regiment, with which he continued in command, was ordered to India ; but their colonel was unable to proceed with them, his health having failed him. It is indeed remarkable that the Iron Duke of mature age, was, as a young man, often nearly mastered by debility and sickness. Still he was enabled to join them early in 1792, in the February of which year he landed at Calcutta, and from whence we may date the commencement of those famous campaigns that resulted in the establishment of our Eastern Empire. We can do no more than thus passingly allude to those glorious nine years of successful soldiership-services which, only justly rewarded, sent the Colonel Wellesley of '97 home again in the autumn of 1805 as a Major-General and a Knight of the Bath, with the thanks of his king and country awaiting him. For three years from this period Sir Arthur Wellesley occupied himself with the duties an Irish secretaryship and a seat in Parliament entailed on him, turning again, in the summer of 1808, to those pursuits for which he was so pre-eminently fitted. England's “greatest war," however, and the victories of the Peninsula, crowned as they were with “ Wellington and Waterloo,” must speak for themselves. They have long been household words. As a soldier the conclusion of this war left the Duke of Wellington amongst the greatest and most popular. His subsequent career as a statesman, while it could not endanger his real worth, for a long period lowered it in public opinion. As a General his judgment was almost always right, his actions almost as invariably successful. As a Prime Minister, on the other hand, he rarely carried out that he intended, and thus Catholic Emancipation and Parliamentary Reform were passed not at his direction, but conceded rather to the force of circumstances. The Duke himself well knew his true place in this arena, and it was not as a leader of a party, but as an uninfluenced adviser, that he regained to the full the general respect and admiration of his country. No man's popularity, be it remembered, was ever raised upon a purer foundation. It was the result of one long line of duty, directed by ability and determination, and never turned from its course by personal consideration of any kind. It was in this spirit that the Duke could receive the highest honours a grateful people could bestow; as, with the same inward feeling of having done his best, he could hear the comments on the victory of Talavera, or point to his wellguarded windows in Piccadilly. The tide of public favour might ebb or flow, but it never tried his courage or altered his position. His Grace married in 1806 the Honourable Catherine Pakenham, third daughter of Lord Longford, by whom he liad two sons, the Marquis of Douro, now the present Duke, and Lord Charles Wellesley, The Duchess died in 1831. THE UNSUCCESSFUL MAN; OR, PASSAGES IN THE LIFE OF TILBURY NOGO, ESQ. BY FOXGLOVE. CHAP. XXV. " Oh! how they bustled round him, How merrily they found him; Through each dingle and each dell! ORIGINAL HUNTING SONG. Fool. “Prythee, nuncle, be contented; this is A naughty night to swim in.” KING LEAR. A ring at the door-bell—a shuffling of feet—a banging of doors and that peculiar vibration which, even in the most solidly-built house, heralds " an arrival ”-announced that the Doctor had success. fully braved the dangers and difficulties of open commons, treacherous fords, muddy lanes, and dubious cross-roads, in defiance of the darkness and the gale. As I rushed into the entrance-hall to greet my guest, he was in the act of “ peeling ”-nor could “ Cheops " himself, thongh swathed in the multiplied paraphernalia of a “ mummy," have rejoiced in a greater number of defensive garments than those which enveloped the careful wayfarer. Off they came: first an oil-skin travelling head-dress, attached, like the mailed hood of some warlike Templar, to a set of waterproof robes that might defy a deluge-then a red silk handkerchief, bound skilfully round the ear-flaps of a fur cap-then a gaudy-patterned shawl, which had preserved nose and mouth from contact with the elements—then a series of great coats, commencing with a sporting wrap-rascal, and concluding with the well-known black “ Taglioni,” which was considered a sufficiently professional costume for the metropolis-lower down, drab mud-boots, and India-rubber goloshes, challenged even the casualties of an upset and a pedestrian pilgrimage through the mud till, skin after skin being cast off and laid aside, we came to the Doctor at last. “ Glad to see you looking so well, Mr. Nogo,” was his cheerful reply to my greetings. “Ah! nothing like country-air and exercise. This, sir, is indeed a delightful situation (it had been pitch dark for the last ten miles of the Doctor's journey)--50 wild, so free, so completely the country. Charmed to be presented to Mrs. Nogo. No more reckless escapadoes now-an altered man, sir, an altered man. The wildest of us tame at last, I say to Mrs. Dott; but the spirit remains the same." And, thus prattling on, the Doctor was ushered into the drawing-room, and set down to the teatable, where I was agreeably surprised to find Mrs. Nogo was inclined to be extremely affable and condescending. Our goodhumoured little guest was enchanted with all he saw and all he heard. The country cream was so rich-the country butter was so good-it was so pleasant to hear the wild wind howling round the house, uninterrupted by the muffin-man's bell, or the roll of the Kennington omnibus; but never shall I forget his delight when, on the retirement of Mrs. Nogo, I announced to him the arrangements I had made for the following day's sport, and the exciting intelligence that I had a “capital mount for him with my harriers.” "A thing I've pined for, for years, Mr. Nogo,” exclaimed this theoretical Nimrod. "Fond as I am, sir, of shooting, and other field sports, I despise them all as compared with the chase. Destiny, sir, has made me a doctor ; but Nature, Mr. Nogo-'pon my word, I sometimes think, Nature intended me for an Osbaldiston!” and with this comfortable assurance mr enthusiastic guest, refusing all offers of wine-and-water on the plea that he wished his nerves to be in tiptop order for the morrow, lit his bed-candle and retired to his chamber in that enviable state of anticipatory excitement which few of us are fortunate enough to experience after our school-boy days have been numbered with the past. Notwithstanding our illnatured remarks upon it, what a climate after all is our own! John Bull thinks it his right to abuse incessantly two things which he considers his peculiar property, and those are, his Ministry and his weather; yet if we can get him to reason no easy task-he must confess, that in no other country are public affairs managed with so much regard to public good, and under no other skies does animal life, whether of man or beast, thrive so well, or attain so high a degree of perfection. “Variety is charming,' and that charm no one can deny to the different kinds of weather which successively constitute an English summer's day; yet, with all its fickleness, all its changes, I doubt whether there is any other climate under the sun in which a person may be so many hours out-of-doors and taking exercise as in our own. Either it is too hot during one part of the year, or too cold during another, or there is a stillness which suffocates you, varied by a land breeze that produces, you know not why, ague, malaria, disease, and death; whilst in England that very mutability which disappoints you of your excursion in the morning, produces in the afternoon an atmosphere such as you have figured to yourself surrounded our first parents in Paradise-whilst a night of wind, rain, and tempest, is succeeded by a soft, sunny, mild, winter's morning, breathing fragance from saturated sward and dripping hawthorn, and reminding you, if a sportsman, of bounding steed and echoing hound, and the many fine runs you have seen and enjoyed, during that golden period of the fox-hunter's calendar, the sport-producing month of February. Such a moruing greeted the Doctor and myself as we started after a voluminous breakfast, to which I thought my guest did but scant justice-on our way to the meet. My hounds had gone on early. As we were to hunt in a wild moorland district several miles from the farm, and with a praiseworthy regard for his unaccustomed frame, and a due consideration of the “ loss of leather” sustained by the sportsman who can only obtain “an occasional day," I thought it best to take the Doctor on wheels” to the place of meeting, and thereby save him as large a portion as possible of that equestrian exercise which, when freely indulged in without proper preparation, makes “the rack of a too easy chair” anything but an ironical metaphor, or a poetic exaggeration. As we drove along through the fresh morning air my companion was loud in his anticipations of sport, and his implied compliments to his own prowess in the field, though I thought I detected a shade of nervousness in the rapidity of his utterance and the many questions he put to me as to the temperate deportment of his “mount.” The Doctor's costume too, though doubtless well adapted to encounter the “moving accidents of flood and field,” was hardly what we should call workmanlike in its general character and the way in which it was put on : Drab cord trowsers, thrust into the recesses of large jack boots, the latter appendages adorned with huge brass spurs, barmonized but ill with a black frock-coat and moleskin waistcoat; nor did the addition of a velvet hunting-cap, purchased for the occasion, at once confer upon the wearer that sporting air of distinction which he evidently desired to assume. However, the Doctor's dress was his own affair; it was my business, if possible, to show him a run; and when we drove up to our appointed “rendezvous,'' a small clump of firs on a wide open common, and found hounds, horses, one or two well-mounted gentlemen, a country horse-breaker, and several farmers, grouped about in picturesque confusion, I began to feel that my reputation, too, was at stake as a master of hounds, and to experience a sort of nervous anxiety to show them a fine day's sport! The first thing, however, was to give the Doctor a fair start, and in order to do so it was necessary to get him well established in the saddle. With this view mv grey horse Blueskin, the soberest and most tractable animal in my stable, was sidled up to the step of the dog-cart, in order that the Doctor might get upon him, in true Melton fashion, without soiling the brilliancy of his jack-boots--a man@uvre which the grey resented by putting his ears back, tucking in his tail, and looking very much inclined to kick. Why is it that whenever you have been boasting of any peculiar excellence in your steed, he should invariably take the first opportunity of showing himself to be in a diametrically opposite humour to that for which you have been praising him? Why is it that no sooner are the words out of your lips, “ This horse has never yet given me a fall," than down he goes neck-and-heels over a contemptible place at which a donkey would be ashamed to make a mistake? and that the docile animal, whom you have been recommending for his immoveable steadiness and general good couduct to carry a nervous lady or timid elderly gentleman, should, in the immediate presence of the disbelieving purchaser, think it necessary to squeal and gambol like the veriest two-year-old that ever ran unbroken |