kings,
which seemed, like another Field of the Cloth of Gold, to
have been got up to realize before his eyes some of his own
splendid descriptions. I begged him to tell me what was the
general impression left on his mind. He answered, that he
might now say he had seen and conversed with all classes of
society, from the palace to the cottage, and including every
conceivable shade of science and ignorance--but that he had
never felt awed or abashed except in the presence of one
man--the Duke of Wellington. I expressed some surprise. He
said I ought not, for that the Duke of Wellington possessed
every one mighty quality of the mind in a higher degree than
any other man did, or had ever done. He said he beheld in
him a great soldier and a great statesman--the greatest of
each. When it was suggested that the Duke, on his part, saw
before him a great poet and novelist, he smiled, and said,
'What would the Duke of Wellington think of a few _bits of
novels_, which perhaps he had never read, and for which the
strong probability is that he would not care a sixpence if
he had?' You are not" (adds Ballantyne) "to suppose that he
looked either sheepish or embarrassed in the presence of the
Duke--indeed you well know that he did not, and could not do
so; but the feeling, qualified and modified as I have
described it, unquestionably did exist to a certain extent.
Its origin forms a curious moral problem; and may probably
be traced to a secret consciousness, which he might not
himself advert to, that the Duke, however great as a soldier
and statesman, was so defective in imagination as to be
incapable of appreciating that which had formed the charm of
his own life, as well as of his works."

It is proper to add to Mr. Ballantyne's solution of his "curious moral
problem," that he was in his latter days a strenuous opponent of the
Duke of Wellington's politics; {p.067} to which circumstance he
ascribes, in these same _memoranda_, the only coolness that ever
occurred between him and Scott. I need hardly repeat, what has been
already distinctly stated more than once, that Scott never considered
any amount of literary distinction as entitled to be spoken of in the
same breath with mastery in the higher departments of practical
life--least of all, with the glory of a first-rate captain. To have
d