[Coyne] THE TALBOT PAPERS : 23 
the twelfth year of his age. Within a few months he had been pro- 
moted to a lieutenancy, and then retired on half pay. It was probably 
at this time that he entered the Manchester Free School, where he 
obtained all the schooling he appears to have ever received. At sixteen, 
he is again on the act*ve list as lieutenant in the 24th foot. Appointed 
to the staff of the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, the Marquis (afterwards 
Duke) of Buckingham, he is associated with a brother aide-de-camp, 
Arthur Wellesley, better known to fame by his later appellation, as the 
Duke of Wellington. Wellesley was a year or two his senior. Their 
friendship, begun in early youth, was maintained throughout their ex- 
tended lives. After Talbot’s settlement in America, it was his custom 
to make periodical visits to England, and the two friends met again and 
again. Shortly before Wellington’s death, the hermit of Port Talbot 
was a guest at Apsley House, and the then octogenarians revived for 
the last time the faded memories of youthful days spent in the precincts 
of Dublin Castle. They had set out in the same profession with bril- 
_liant careers opening before them. Their paths had separated widely. 
Each had worked out his destiny in his own way and achieved his aim. 
The one became the “hero of a hundred fights, who never lost an Eng- 
lish gun,” conqueror of Napoleon, commander-in-chief, duke, prime 
minister. The other had opened up for settlement a portion of the 
almost endless forest of Upper Canada, and had seen the wilderness 
blossom as the rose. They died within a few months of each other. 
One was buried in imperial splendour in the great cathedral, at the 
very heart of the vast Empire he did so much to preserve, 
In streaming London’s central roar, 
Under the cross of gold 
That shines over city and river. 
The other lies far from the hum of men, in a lonely, rural graveyard 
on a high cliff overlooking Lake Erie, where around him the earliest 
of his pioneers rest well after long and weary toil, the silence broken 
only by the song of birds and the murmur of the great inland sea below. 
IIIl.—_WeEstwarp Ho! 
In the year 1790 Talbot tore himself away from the gaieties and 
frivolities of Dublin Castle, and we find him with his regiment at Que- 
bec. In August, 1791, the good ship Triton brought to the ancient 
capital His Royal Highness the Duke of Kent, in command of the 7th 
Royal Fusiliers. In the same regiment was an ensign of 15, James 
’ Archibald Stuart, afterward a prominent statesman and man of letters, 
