The Sun.
London, England, 1852-09-17 00:00:00

DEATH

OF THE
DUKE OF WELLINGTON.

WALMEIL, SEPT. M.—To the particulars which
were published yesterday of the circumstances at-
tending the Duke of Wellington's sudden illness and
death nothing remains to be added that at all alters
its character, or could do more than minister to an
impertinent curiosity. It may be mentioned, how-
ever, that when his valet first roused him at half-past
six o'clock it struck him that his Grace appeared to
wake up with a greater effort than usual, and that
when at half-past seven o'clock he again went to him
he seemed still more disturbed. It was on the second
occasion that his Grace ordered the doctor to be sent
for, and the valet at once knew that his master must
then have been feeling very unwell, for he was always
reluctant to call in medical aid, believing that he knew
better than any one else how to manage his own con-
stitution. For some little time, and especially while
staying at Waliner Castle, the Duke has, when
so disposed, taken an additional hour or half-
hour's rest in the morning, and the circum-
stance, therefore, that he did not at once bestir him-
self when awakened of itself produced no alarm.
The arrangements for the funeral stand over until
the arrival of the new Duke, who is expected to-
morrow. In the interval there is a good deal of
speculation as to the form which the obsequies of so
gnat a man will take. Some say that he will be in-
terred as unostentatiously as possible at Strathheld-
saye, in a spot selected by himself for the purpose,
while others believe that he has made no such choice,
nor left any instructions whereby the natural wish of
the Sovereign and of the country to honour his re-
mains with a public funeral might be prevented. For
some time past an impression has certainly prevailed
that the Duke had expressed a wish to be buried at
Stratbfieldsaye, but those likely to be well informed
on the subject, seem to think that the Queen's plea-
sure will decide the manner and place of his interment.
It is not quite certain that the telegraphic mes-
sage recalling the Marquis of Douro to Weimer
Castle will have found him at Frankfort, but, as it
was sent through the Embassy, it was sure to reach
him with the least possibly delay.

PORTSMOUTH GARRISON, THURSDAY.—The follow-
ing district order was this day issued by the Acting
Lieutenant-Governor, on account of the lamented
death of Field-Marshal his Grace the Commander-
in-Chief :—" Until further orders no music is to play
in public, except what may be absolutely necessary for
the performance of duties."

WOOLWICH GARRISON, SEPT. 16.—The melancholy
intelligence of the death of the Duke of 'Wellington,
was telegraphed here on Tuesday afternoon, and
caused a universal feeling of the deepest regret. The
flags were raised yesterday half-mast high on the
various flagataffg, and the bands have been ordered to
discontinue playing until further orders.

(From th© Times )

We believe we should best describe the national feel-
fag at this remarkable period by saying that no one can
yet fully realize the loss which the country has sus-
tained. The Duke of Wellington, for generation after
generation, had lived among us so long, and had so
adapted his presence and capacities to the changing exi-
gencies of time, that it requires some effort to look back
on more than the last stage of such an eventful life. For
most political characters it would be distinction enough
to say that they had been appealed to for nearly twenty
years, in every crisis of the State ; but these twenty
years would not carry us even to the Duke's own Mi-
nisterial career, and this career itself did not commence
till a military life of prodigious celebrity and duration
had finished. Even Lord Grey's Premiership now wears
almcst an historical aspect, but the great Duke was
Premier beforo Lord Grey. He was the contemporary
and colleague of Liverpool, Melville, Sidmouth, Castle.
reagh, and Bathurst—names which have long been con-
signed, with various remembrances, to the pages of the
past. Though not absolutely a member of the Administra•
non he exerted a material influence on the policy of Eng-
land when existing Ministers were in their cradles. He
was a powerful and energetic mover in times which the
present generation can only reach by study, and can
scarcely comprehend without an effort. The great
Duke's actual span of life was extraordinary, but it
acquires almost a character of immensity when we think
of the events it embraced. Into the fourscore years of
Arthur Wellesley were crowded the revolutions and
wars of two ordinary centuries, and the course and con-
summation of these wars and revolutions were controlled
in no small degree by his own achievements. The pe-
rusal of the biography which these columns have con-
tained will have sufficed to show what stretch of com-
prehension is required for so marvellous a view, and,
what liberality of consideration is due to a representa-
tive of such bygone times. The great Duke had been
in the confidence of Cabinets who were little less des-
potic than the Cabinets of Austria or Naples, and yet he
survived till the days of Disraeli and Cobden, and
was not a Protectionist.

In directing our pze on a military life which had ter-
minated, after almost thirty years of conquest, before a
political life of more than thirty years of wisdom had
begun, the prospect is still more astonishing. When the
73d Regiment was first joined by the officer who but
this week was living still, there was scarely a single
feature of a soldier's condition or duties corresponding
to what we now see. Costume, character, discipline,
and equipment were all and altogether different, and the
uniform which Arthur `Wellesley first assumed would
now excite surprise in a dramatic representation.
Men wore powder and pomade, cocked hats
and pigtails, gaiters and breeches. They car-
ried muskets so bad as to be often unser-
viceable, and camp kettles so heavy es to re-
tard their march. They were mercilessly scourged
for the smallest transgression. Their officers, until the
exigencies of the war had induced wiser views, were aP •
class.
the
pointed and promoted through interest alone; and do ing
which would now set the kingdom in a blaze were then
s
transacted as the unquestionable privileges of a
It we are ever inclined to think disparagingly of
great Duke's military reforms, it should be our first duty
to recollect that he was reared in a school long past, and
that the abolition of corporal punishment and unlimited
service must at first sight have appeared in his eyes very
much as the five points of the Charter might have ap-
peared to Mr. Pitt.
At the commencement of that career which has only
just ended the very face of Europe itself was such as
can hardly be conceived. There are now five great
Powers; there were then nearly four hundred states
pretending to sovereignty. There was an empire of a
thousand years' renown which styled itself the Empire
of the Caesars, and there was a famous old republic
which had survived from ages earlier still. When Arthur
Wellesley received his first commission in the service of
Great Britain the monarchy of France was thought the
most absolute and stable in the world; Spain was a
powerful kingdom, and Poland an existing state. The
great Duke witnessed the extinction of Venice, the fall
of Poland, and the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire,
and ho contributed more or less directly to the creation or
recognition of half-a-dczsn kings. In the interval there
occurred the most monstrous metamorphosis of Europe
which had been seen since the days of Charlemagne.
All the kingdoms of the continent, from the frontier of
Purtugel to the banks of the Vistula, and from the Ger-
man Ocean to the Gulf of Otranto, were subjugated to
the sway
of a single French soldier, under whose unpa-
ralleled policy arid dominion a new race of statesmen
and generals sprang rapidly into being. But this mighty
revolution, which almost provokes the incredulity of the
present age, was but en episode in the life of
He
saw it
Duke. He lived both before it and after it.
rise, culminate, and sink, and a hundred names of im-
perishable memory passed away from the scene during
the continuance of one greater still.
In addition to such reflections as these, which of
themselves would suffice for a time to bewilder our
ideas, it must be remembered that the event which we
have now to solemnize is virtually without a precedent.
Neither this nor any other country has ever, in modern
times, lost such a son. The obsequies of French Mar-
shals have within a few years been celebrated with
becoming pomp; but, excepting that wonderful con-
queror, whose conquests did riot keep pace with his life,
there was no French General to be compared with ours.
Nur were the other belligerent States more productive.
If we were now to recapitulate the names and titles of
those Austrian cr Russian or Prussian commanders

who stood side by side with our great hero, or
fought in other fields for the same cause, they would
obtain but a partial recognition. Blucher's credit, as
Wellington's comrade, has giv(n him an incidental re-
nown; but Sehwarzenberg, Wurmser, Wittgenstein, and
Klrist have little honour beyond their own countries.
Niither can E! gland herself be said with justice to have
ever known before the obligations of to-day. The
deaths of Marlborough and Nelson supply the nearest
parallels, but the cases are far from similar. Marl-
borough's unrivalled generalship was tarnished by his
political disrepute, and so completely had the dotage of
senility combined with the stigma of treason to depress-
his fame, that his decease, in what was her,° the
chief chronicle of those times, is disposed of in
a footnote at the bottom of a pg.) as that
of " the father-in-law of the Earl of Sunderland."
More impressive, indeed, and affecting was Nelson's
departure, for he died in the arms of victory, on
England's own element, and before it had been shown
by the great Captain of the Peninsula that wo could
aspire
to military renown. But, though Nelson can
scarcely be soid to have done less than another, in
that he left nothing to be done, it would be hard to
withhold from the services of half a century some higher
meed than that of earn ten years' glory. Wellington
has been all that Nelson vat, and more than Nelson
was permitted to be. His years have beenremission protracted
to their longest span without an instant's remission of
his services in any capacity
which retnrned to him, and
it is now for us to render the lust acknowledgment
of deserts which have accumulated from one age to
another.

SUPPLEMENT, GRATIS I—ln consequence of the
death of his Grace the Duke of Wellington, the Proprietors
of the Wechlil hisTatch have determined upon
presenting a
supplement with their journal on Sunday next, the 19th inst.,
The supplement will contain a copious biography of his
Grace, comprising his military and political career, with
such episodical matter connected with so eminent an indivi-
dual as may complete the sketch of his varied and extraor-
dinary life. All orders should be given to the newsvendors
in town and country without delay, or forwarded to the
Dispatch Office,

COL. tii`
BALMORAL, SEPT. 15.

Her Majesty and his Royal Highness Prince
Albert went yesterday to the Balloch Buie, accom-
panied by the Princess Royal.
The dinner party yesterday included her Royal
Highness the Duchess of Kent, her Serene High-
ness the Princess Hohenlohe Langenbourg, Lady
Augusta Bruce, Mr. and Ludy Agnes Dutl, and Mr.
Brooke.

Mr. Secretary Walpole, accompanied by Colonel
Jebb, visited Parkhurst Prison, in the Isle of Wight,
yesterday.
Dispatches were sent to the Governors of the
West India Islands, from the Colonial-office, yes-
terday.

THE QUEEN AT LOCRNAGAR.
CRATME, TUEEDAY.--Siliee Sunday the weather
has been very cold and wintry, and our loftier hills
have more than once assumed their winter shroud of
snow. Yesterday her Majesty walked out and visited
several of her cottars, with whom she left appropriate
marks of her Royal benevolence in the shape of
useful articles of clothing for the winter season. His
Royal Highness went out shooting, and killed five
beautiful stage—the best day's sport he has yet had.
In the evening her Majesty and his Royal Highness
drove down to Abergeldie to attend a ball given by
the Duchess of Kent in honour of the birth-day of
his Royal Highness the Prince Leiningen. The
piper of Captain Forbes, of Blelack, Was present, with
other district celebrities, and a very happy evening
was spent. The Royal party returned to Balmoral
about eleven P.M.

Today the weather is still wintry, but her Majesty,
with that courage and self-confidence which she is
at all times ready to display, ascended Lochnagar, on
which the snow was lying in some places pretty thick.
The atmosphere was exceeding chilly, but the exer-
tion necessary for the ascent in a great measure
nullified this inconvenience, and her Majesty seemed
to enjoy the somewhat adventurous excursion very
much. She was accompanied by Prince Albert and
the Royal suite.