at the removal should be so
regulated and should be attended by such circumstances as would
tend to relieve the transaction from the erroneous but inconvenient
impression which had been created.

The Duke apprehended that he might find it impossible to perform the
duties with which he had been entrusted, and therefore, when Lord John
Russell wrote to him, he deprecated the measure in contemplation;
and he rejoices sincerely that your Majesty has been most graciously
pleased to countermand the order for the removal of the statue.

All of which is most humbly submitted to your Majesty by your
Majesty's most dutiful Subject and most devoted Servant,

WELLINGTON.[6]

[Footnote 6: The Duke of Wellington wrote to Croker, 19th
of December 1846:--"I should desire never to move from my
principles of indifference and non-interference on the subject
of a statue of myself to commemorate my own actions."

And again, on the 14th of June 1847, the Duke wrote to
Croker:--"It has always been my practice, and is my invariable
habit, to say nothing about myself and my own actions.

"More than forty years ago Mr Pitt observed that I talked
as little of myself or my own acts as if I had been an
assistant-surgeon of the army....

"I follow the habit of avoiding to talk of myself and of what
I have done; with the exception only of occasions when I am
urging upon modern contemporaries measures which they don't
like, and when I tell them I have some experience, and
have had some success in these affairs, and feel they would
experience the benefit of attending to my advice, I never talk
of myself.

"These are the reasons for which they think that I don't care
what they do with the statue.

"But they must be idiots to suppose it possible that a man who
is working day and night, without any object in view excepting
the public benefit, will not be sensible of a disgrace
inflicted upon him by the Sovereign and Government whom he is
serving. The ridicule will be felt, if nothing else is!"...]

_Queen Victoria to Lord Palmerston._

BUCKINGHAM PALACE, _12th July 1847._

The Queen has been informed by Lord John Russell that the Duke of
Wellington is apprehensive that the removal of his statue from the
Arch to another pedestal might be construed as a mark of displeasure
on her part. Although the Queen had hoped that her esteem and
friend