most prominent "of Marlborough's captains and Eugenio's friends." If
you are acquainted with the history of those times, you have read how
Cadogan had his feuds and hatreds too, as Tickell's patron had his, as
Cadogan's great chief had his. "The Duke of Marlborough's character has
been so variously drawn" (writes a famous contemporary of the duke's),
"that it is hard to pronounce on either side without the suspicion
of flattery or detraction. I shall say nothing of his military
accomplishments, which the opposite reports of his friends and enemies
among the soldiers have rendered problematical. Those maligners who deny
him personal valor, seem not to consider that this accusation is charged
at a venture, since the person of a general is too seldom exposed, and
that fear which is said sometimes to have disconcerted him before action
might probably be more for his army than himself." If Swift could hint
a doubt of Marlborough's courage, what wonder that a nameless scribe of
our day should question the honor of Clyde?

THE LAST SKETCH.

Not many days since I went to visit a house where in former years I
had received many a friendly welcome. We went into the owner's--an
artist's--studio. Prints, pictures, and sketches hung on the walls as I
had last seen and remembered them. The implements of the painter's
art were there. The light which had shone upon so many, many hours of
patient and cheerful toil, poured through the northern window upon print
and bust, lay figure and sketch, and upon the easel before which the
good, the gentle, the beloved Leslie labored. In this room the busy
brain had devised, and the skilful hand executed, I know not how many
of the noble works which have delighted the world with their beauty and
charming humor. Here the poet called up into pictorial presence, and
informed with life, grace, beauty, infinite friendly mirth and wondrous
naturalness of expression, the people of whom his dear books told him
the stories,--his Shakspeare, his Cervantes, his Moliere, his Le Sage.
There was his last work on the easel--a beautiful fresh smiling shape
of Titania, such as his sweet guileless fancy imagined the Midsummer
Night's queen to be. Gracious, and pure, and bright, the sweet smiling
image glimmers on the canvas. Fairy elves, no doubt, were to have been
grouped around their mistress in laughing clusters. Honest Bottom's
grotesque head and form are indicated as reposing by the side of the
consumma