I knew his Grace when Captain Wellesley—Sir Arthur Wellesley—Secretary Wellesley—Ambassador Wellesley—and Duke of Wellington. In the first stage of this career, I was, as a public man, more than his equal; in the last, nobody is so much. However, it is a fine reflection for the contemporaries of great people, that it will be “all the same a hundred years hence!” and heroes, diplomatists,[[58]] &c. must either become very good-tempered fellows when they meet in the Elysian fields, or—there must be a very strong police to keep them in order.
[58]. The following unpublished lines, by Miss M. Tylden, the most talented young lady I ever met, depict the frivolity and short-lived nature of human vanities more forcibly than a hundred sermons—if we calmly reflect what a contemptible animal is man!—
“The kingdoms of the world have pass’d away,
And its strong empires moulder’d into dust,
Swift as the changes of a poet’s dream;
And kings and heroes, and the mighty minds
Whose hopes circled eternity, and seized
The stars as their inheritance, and grew
Too big for mortal frames—until they sank