1831.] Af "hi- in General. 427 



their saying. Of all the eminent officers who signalized themselves in 

 the greatest of all wars, the French revolutionary war, Wellington alone 

 survives. Bhicher, Schwartzenberg, PlatofF, Bulow, Gneisenau, and a 

 crowd of others, have all gone. Yet there are from time to time, singular 

 instances of existence prolonged to a date and rendered memorable by a 

 good fortune, that almost contradict the common maxims of the novelist. 

 Let us take the ladies : — " The venerable Countess Dowager of 

 IVIornington, who died a fortnight ago, was the most aged of the 

 peeresses, having, at the age of 20, walked at the coronation of Geo. III. 

 and Queen Charlotte. Her ladyship was the only surviving female of 

 rank who officiated at the coronation of the illustrious parents of our 

 present monarch. The Countess was the eldest daughter of the first 

 Viscount Dungannon, and accepted the hand of the late Earl of IVIorn- 

 ington in 1759. By his lordship, who died in 1784, the Countess had 

 issue the Duke of Wellington, the Blarquis Wellesley, Lord Mary- 

 borough, Lord Cowley, the Honourable and Rev. Gerald Valerian Wel- 

 lesley, D.D., and one surviving daughter. Lady Anne Culling Smith. 

 Lady Mornington, who had for some years lived in retirement, was in 

 the receipt of a pension of £600 per annum from the civil list." 



Here was a mother of the Gracchi .^ The wife of an obscure Irish 

 peer, dies the mother of four lords, and would have died the mother of a 

 fifth, if the Rev. Gerald had played his cards a little more coolly. 

 However, he has no great reason to quarrel with the world, it having 

 given him four incomes, amounting to about i£7)000 a year. This fortu- 

 nate woman lived long enough to see her sons enjoying among them 

 the highest rank of subjects, and, in the instance of Wellington, the 

 liighest professional fame. It was not to the honour of any of those 

 sons that she should have been left in her old age a pensioner en the 

 public bounty, and a dweller under a public roof. But nothing will 

 ever cure a public man of his passion for grasping every farthing that 

 he can out of the national purse, and while the price of one of the Duke 

 of Wellington's dinners would have made her independent, she was 

 forced to linger on a pension ; and while a quarter's tithe of the Rev. 

 Gerald's living of Chelsea, might have given her a handsome house, she 

 was forced to lodge among the peerage rabble of Hampton Court. But 

 it is useless to expect high-mindedness among those people. 



The old Duchess of Rutland was another of those instances of pros- 

 perous longevity ; though her prosperity was of a less casual kind. 

 She saw no sons rising from comparatively humble life to eminence. 

 She began on the highest step. The wife of a duke, the mother of a duke, 

 and grandmother of a rising race of beauties and nobles ; she died, after 

 a period of undisturbed rank, opulence, public respect, and personal 

 esteem, at the great age of seventy-five, and rests honoured in the tomb 

 of her family. The funeral cavalcade was in the ancient English state, 

 a style which, however unsuited to the parvaiitx, whom we see aping 

 nobility, yet is graceful and becoming, where it belongs to the noble 

 and the honoured. " The cavalcade was joined about four miles from 

 Belvoir, by one hundred and fifty of the duke's tenantry, on horseback, 

 wearing black cloaks. The remains of her grace lay in state at the 

 castle during Sunday, and on Monday morning they were removed for 

 interment to the family mausoleum, within a short distance of the castle. 

 The funeral ceremony was performed by the Rev. Charles Thornton, in 

 the presence of the Duke of Rutland, the youthful INIarquia of Granby, 



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