THE PROTECTION GIANT.
“Fee, fi, fo, fum!
I smell the blood of an Englishman!
Be he alive or be he dead,
I’ll grind his bones to make my bread!”
(Mr. Punch’s idea of the policy of Lord Derby and Mr. Disraeli.)
Brief as was the duration of the Derby Ministry it outlived the days of one of its warmest friends. The Duke of Wellington drew his last breath at Walmer Castle on September 14, 1852. |Death of the Duke of Wellington.| To say that he was the most popular individual in the United Kingdom would be to apply a term which perhaps, of all others, he would have relished least; but without doubt “the Duke” was the best beloved. The first soldier in Europe, thirty-seven years of peace had not dimmed the lustre of his great renown in war, nor prevailed to make the nation forget his services in the hour of England’s greatest need. If, as a statesman, he could not command the same unanimous meed of “Well done!” he had established a standard of public life too often obscured in the heat of party strife. Vittoria, Salamanca, Talavera, Waterloo—the radiance from those far off conflagrations still glowed round that venerable head, but it was the honest purpose, bluntly spoken and fearlessly acted on, that won for Wellington a place in the hearts of his countrymen far more enduring than the reward of any commander, however successful—of any orator, however powerful.
THE WELLINGTON MONUMENT IN ST. PAUL’S CATHEDRAL,
AS IT IS TO BE WHEN COMPLETED.
From a Photograph taken in the Cathedral, to which the statue has been added from the sculptor’s model in the Architectural Court of the South Kensington Museum. The lower illustration represents the sarcophagus in the Crypt which contains the body of the Duke; the Funeral Car is also preserved in the Crypt. The tomb in the background is that of Nelson.
There was the precedent of the obsequies of Nelson to justify the Queen in commanding a funeral of the Great Duke at the public expense; but Her Majesty was desirous to associate her people with herself in doing honour to the memory of her greatest subject. The body of the Duke, therefore, was put in charge of a guard of honour till the meeting of Parliament in November, when the consent of both Houses was immediately given to a funeral at the public expense and the interment of Wellington in St. Paul’s Cathedral, beside the tomb of Nelson. All the Great Powers of Europe, save one, sent representatives to the ceremony. It would have caused no surprise had France, with a Napoleon once more in supreme power, refused to allow her Ambassador to attend the funeral of her ancient foe, but Louis Napoleon told Count Walewski he wished to forget the past and to continue on the best of terms with England. It was not France, but Austria, who was conspicuous by the absence of her Ambassador from St. Paul’s on this November day; and the reason was found in an extraordinary circumstance which had occurred a few weeks previously. |The Haynau Incident.| An Austrian notable, General Haynau, arrived in England early in September, on an unofficial visit. He had earned an unenviable reputation for cruelty in putting down insurrections in Italy and Hungary; ugly stories had been circulated about the flogging of Hungarian women and other barbarities, enough, whether true or not, to make his name detested by all who sympathised with the national movement on the Continent. One day he went to inspect Barclay’s brewery, and as soon as his identity with the “Austrian butcher” became known to the workmen there, they rushed at him with loud cries, pelted him, tore his coat and tried to cut off his long moustaches. Escaping from the brewery, he was assailed with equal fury in the street, and had to take refuge in a public house till the police came to his assistance. The Austrian Chargé d’Affaires appealed for redress, and Lord Palmerston called in person to express the deep regret of Her Majesty’s Government at the outrage.
WEIGHING ANCHOR ON A MODERN WARSHIP.