e, 'he appears to have retained his serene demeanour and stern
dominion of his will.' It is difficult for us who have followed his
career to realise the terrible upsetting of the balance of the great
brain which had brought such an act within the bounds of possibility.

[Footnote 7: Lord Stanhope relates a story regarding the manner of
Clive's death, told by the Earl of Shelburne, afterwards the first
Marquis of Lansdowne, to the person from whom he (Lord Stanhope)
received it. 'It so chanced, that a young lady, an attached friend of
his (Clive's) family, was then upon a visit at his house in Berkeley
Square, and sat writing a letter, in one of its apartments. Seeing
Lord Clive walk through, she called him to come and mend her pen.
Lord Clive obeyed her summons, and taking out his penknife fulfilled
her request; after which, passing on to another chamber, he turned
the same knife against himself.']

'Such was the end,' says a French writer, 'of one of the men who did
the most for the greatness of England.' That foreign verdict is at
least incontestable. Caesar conquered Gaul for his country; Hannibal
caused unrest to Rome for nearly a quarter of a century; Wellington
drove the French from Portugal and Spain. The achievement of Clive
was more splendid than any one of these. He founded for this little
island in the {211}Atlantic a magnificent empire; an empire famous in
antiquity, renowned since the time of Alexander, whose greatest
sovereign had been the contemporary of Queen Elizabeth, more
enlightened than any of her predecessors, more tolerant, a more
far-sighted statesman even than she. He was, according to Lord
Stanhope, emphatically 'a great man.' But he was more than a great
man. Like Caius Julius, he united two personalities; he was a great
statesman and a great soldier. He was a man of thought as well as a
man of action. No administration surpasses, in the strength of will
of the administrator, in excellence of design, in thoroughness of
purpose, and, as far as his masters would permit, in thoroughness of
action, his second administration of Bengal. No general who ever
fought displayed greater calmness in danger, more coolness of brain,
than did Clive at Kaveripak, at Samiaveram, at Calcutta, when, on the
fog rising, he found himself enveloped by the Subahdar's army, 40,000
strong. Nothing daunted him; nothing clouded his judgement; his
decision, the decision of the moment, was always right. In a word, he
was