“ For ever he is obscured by the more dazzling vision of Nelson. It weighs little in his favour that, devoid of the vanity and the weakness which made of the latter a lesser man even though a greater genius, Collingwood, throughout his life, exhibited a nobility of soul which was never marred by one self-seeking thought, one mean word, one base action. That very fact militates against him. Collingwood had no dramatic instinct, and in the great issues of life he never played to the gallery; he has not even attached to his memory, as has Nelson, the glamour of a baffling and arresting intrigue. ”

“ We were at the Opera on Saturday. Fuller of men I never saw it; the
boxes thin. The Duchess of A. was there looking fade. Kelly's
room is at an end; so we had the pleasure of waiting, or rather
starving in the great room for near an hour.
Marianne Stanhope, later, thus describes this room at the Opera where the audience assembled on leaving, and where each lady who was unattended by a cavalier of her own family, strove anxiously to escape the crowning ignominy of not having a beau to "hand her to her carriage." ”

“ With the same dauntless courage with which he had faced existence he now accepted the knowledge that this day—the thought of which had sustained him through loneliness and battle and tempest—was to prove the day of his death. History indeed presents few events of an irony more profound. At sunset on March 6th, Collingwood set sail for England; at sunset on the 7th, he lay dead, and that fortitude with which he met a fate, the harshness of which must have cruelly enhanced his bodily anguish, presents to all time a sublime ending to a sublime career. ”

“ Thus, while the circle of acquaintance with which the lives of Stanhope and his family at this date mingled serves to throw into sharper relief his own divergence of character from that of many of his contemporaries— those men who to great abilities, and sometimes to great achievement, joined the pettiness of a fop and the follies of a mountebank—still more did the typical man-about-town, with his whims and his foibles, his shallow aims and his lost opportunities, compare strangely with the larger souls of his generation. ”

“ I never heard a man talk more reasonably or eloquently than he did upon the state of the society at Verdun, and particularly upon the reprehensible consequences which invariably arose from successive drinking. The first thing I heard next morning was that Paddy Boyle had, after dinner, insulted every man at the table but one, uttering sarcasms founded doubtless upon truth, but as biting as they were clever. ”

“ Beyond dazzle of success and blaze of genius, I fancy shining a hundred and a hundred times higher the sublime purity of Collingwood's gentle glory. His heroism stirs British hearts when we recall it. His love and goodness and piety make one thrill with happy emotion.... There are no words to tell what the heart feels in reading the simple phrases of such a hero. Here is victory and courage, but love sublimer and superior."
Nevertheless there is, in truth, little which appeals to the imagination of posterity in the story of that drab martyrdom. ”

“ Then came the pleasures of the crush-room, that most singular of all places of amusement, where a mob of good company assemble twice a week, in a thorough draft of air, to enjoy the pleasure of inhaling the odours of expiring lamps, amid the ceaseless din of "Lady Townley's carriage stops the way"—"Lord D——'s servants'—"—"the Duchess of N—-'s carriage"—"Lord P——'s coming down"—"The Duke of S—— must drive off," and sounds such as these constantly reiterated. ”

“ Loud were the interruptions of horror which burst from the Members of the Institute, who, to the unutterable amusement of Stanhope and certain of his friends, took the remark literally.
"Que me fait une étoile?" continued de Baure with impassioned eloquence. "Que me fait une étoile whilst a chef who discovers a new dish which tempts me to begin again after I have satisfied my appetite confers upon me the greatest obligation which it lies in the power of one human being to confer upon another!" ”

“ As a churchman, as a parent, as a landowner, as a politician he fulfilled each avocation with credit. As a man of the world he could toy with but remain unmastered by the foibles of his age. While a Fox and a Pitt rose to heights and sank to depths which Stanhope never touched; while a Wilberforce was imbued with religious fervour as with a permeating flame, Stanhope, to his contemporaries, presented something of an anomaly. ”

“ But mark the Continentalist! how is he armed for conquest when he enters the ball-room?....
So accomplished a creature, so bewitching and bewitched must of course consider himself quite irresistible. Yet have all these Continentalists, and particularly the sons of France, the air of annihilating themselves before the fair; their obsequiousness and humility are unbounded: hence their rapid execution among the female sex. To be herself admired by an all-conquering Adonis, is so much more pleasing to a gay young woman than the having only to admire him. ”

“ He liked fame and was open to flattery so that people sometimes got about him who were unworthy of him. He is a loss to his country that cannot easily be replaced.
Thus in a few words, the very reticence of which enhances their significance, did Collingwood sum up the greatness and the weakness of Nelson. Gifted, brilliant, faulty by reason of his emotional temperament, strong by reason of his enthusiasm—his all-enthralling sense of duty, Nelson flashed like a meteor across the ken of his generation to vanish in a haze of glory. ”

“ On the day when she was to land, greatly to the relief of the authorities who dreaded a riot, there was an unusually heavy storm. The Heavens themselves seemed in league against the unhappy woman. It poured on her first arrival in England, it poured on her return from her long exile, it was destined to pour during her last sad exit from the scene of so many humiliations. John Stanhope, who had last seen Caroline as she wrathfully turned her back upon his friend, Mr Maxwell, at Naples, was anxious to witness her reception in England as Queen. ”

“ We mingle with the gay throng at the routs and assemblies which they frequented. We meet the "very fine" beaux at whom they mocked, and the "raging belles" whom they envied. Then the scene changes, and we are out on the ocean with Cuthbert Collingwood, in our ears rings a clash of arms long since hushed, a roar of cannon which has been silent throughout the passing of a century, while we gauge with a grim realisation the iron that entered into the soul of a strong man battling for his country's gain. ”

“ How much, perhaps, of the eccentricity for which Lord Petersham was remarkable, like that of the celebrated Lady Hester Stanhope, may be attributed to the buffetings of a secret fate? Yet, this man who, with exceptional abilities and exceptional opportunity for exercising those abilities, could contentedly fill his empty days with the manufacture of blacking, or pass an entire night, as Gronow relates him to have done, playing battledore and shuttlecock for a wager with Ball Hughes, was, in much, a typical product of his generation. ”

“ Celebrated for its hospitality in those the last days of its splendour, Bolton House had opened its portals nightly to the guests who drove down from town to take part in the festivities there, amongst the most frequent of whom had been Walter Stanhope and his young wife. The duchess, however, subsequent to her husband's death, had heard with dismay of a projected transformation in her surroundings. The erection of new buildings in the neighbourhood was predicted—houses which would blot out the rural scenery and for ever destroy the privacy of her country home. ”

“ He died at the psychological moment—his life, according to this account, the sacrifice to a dazzling folly. And the man whom he loved—the man whose sterling worth is swamped by Nelson's more vivid personality, was left to battle on alone through the weary years. The intoxication of victory did not blind Collingwood to the colossal task which yet lay before him. To Stanhope he wrote with undiminished anxiety:—
The idea that the Victory we gained has so entirely reduced the enemy's fleet that no danger is now to be apprehended from them, ought not to be encouraged. ”

“ We English view with such horror all despotic Governments that we cannot conceive the possibility of happiness existing under the sway of an absolute Sovereign. Yet such I found to be the case at Vienna. The Government of the Emperor is mild and paternal, the people seem to have as much freedom of speech as they could enjoy even in England, and at this particular moment the measures of the administration are anything but popular. The Emperor is supposed to be devoted to the cause of Napoleon, whilst his subjects are almost universally enthusiastic for the liberty of Germany. ”

“ ON DITS FROM YORKSHIRE, LONDON AND RAMSGATE Three years before his death, in the midst of the stress and labour which was undermining his bodily strength, Collingwood had written with regard to this same wearing anxiety—"My astonishment is to find that in England this does not seem to enter into the minds of the people, or at least not to interrupt their gaieties. England on the verge of ruin requires the care of all; but when that all is divided and contending for power, then it is that the foundation shakes." ”

“ Can, however, such men be expected to recover the high tone of feeling they once entertained? Can France ever be restored to a sound state?"
Yet one man stood alone in heroic opposition to the Conqueror of Christendom. Frail, old, and deserted even by those upon whose support he had relied, the Pope, Pius VII., had courage to oppose the Conqueror of the world. While John Stanhope was in Paris the celebrated interview took place between the aged Pontiff and the autocrat to whom the Vicar of Christ was but as a temporal Sovereign to be crushed beneath the might of an all-but universal monarchy. ”

“ True, that under stress of emotion he could rise to heights of impassioned oratory which provoked by its very evidence of latent power; but the tenor of his existence was scarcely in accordance with these brief flashes of genius, and the fulfilment of his prime belied its promise. The record of his life remains one which commands respect rather than admiration. Level-headed, sober in judgment and conduct, even while possessed of a wit which was rare and a discernment at times profound, his days flowed on in an undeviating adherence to duty which makes little appeal to the imagination. ”

“ In the midst of the general discontent, however, a ripple of merriment passed over Paris. Madame mère, who, of course, could not avoid following the new fashion, presented her horses as an offering to her son. They were at once, to the delight of the Parisians, returned to her as good for nothing! "Whether," says Stanhope, "she had selected her gift with a view to this verdict, or whether it represented the general state of her stud, I know not, but, from what I have seen, I conclude that the latter is not an unlikely case." ”

“ Another great drawback which John Stanhope found to life at Cadiz at that date was the prevalence of a condition of society which entailed that each Spanish lady should have her cortejo, or devoted attendant. "Behind each lady who smiles at you," he explains, "there stands—not a duenna, such a one as is represented on our stage—but a grim, black, ugly grandee, ready to avenge with the stiletto every glance you may chance to give to the lady of his love." ”

“ Paris soon rang with stories of the disastrous campaign—tales, in the most trivial of which the Parisians recognised the complex personality of that god or devil of their mingled idolatry or detestation. A French officer told John Stanhope two anecdotes, which, although in themselves slight, are strikingly illustrative both of Napoleon's shrewdness and of his brutality. On one occasion the Emperor heard some men murmuring and declaring that rather than suffer the torments which they were then enduring, they had better give up the struggle and make up their minds to go to Siberia. ”

“ All the south part of Europe seems as if within his grasp the moment peace is signed with Austria; he has long been intriguing with those countries, sometimes with the Government, in other places with the people against their Government; the arts, the dissimulations with which those intrigues are conducted, avail him more than even the rapidity of his armies—all the people he employs are equal to the task assigned them; while in Austria and Spain, the operations are often directed by men who, from Court favour, have got situations they are totally unfit for. ”

“ It was soon patent to all that the age of this competitor made its chance of success but small; and, in fact, General Cox's fleet little horse won in a canter. Everyone laughed loudly at Lord Blayney's folly in imagining that so obviously incompetent an animal could run against the beautiful little racer Sancho; only Lord Blayney himself seemed stupidly surprised at his own failure. None the less, he bore his loss with amiability, and as he had previously invited his antagonists to dine with him that night he did not omit to make them welcome. ”