"His administrative qualities seem to have been of the humblest, or of the most indolent, order. For fourteen years he was in possession of, or in influence with, all the powers of southern Italy, then the richest portion of the peninsula. Yet this possession was wrested from him without an effort; and where he might have been a monarch, he was only a pensioner. His _punic_ faith, his flight, his refuge, and his death in captivity, might find a more complete resemblance in the history of Napoleon."
The following, concluding sentence of Dr. Croly's note conveys a truer and far more just comparison with another great general:
"The life of the first Cæsar forms a much fairer comparison with that of Wellington. Both nobly born; both forcing their way up through the gradations of service, outstripping all their age; forming their characters by warfare in foreign countries; always commanding small armies, yet always invincible (Cæsar won the World at Pharsalia with only 25,000 men): both alike courageous and clement, unfailing in resources, and indefatigable in their objects; receiving the highest rewards, and arising to the highest rank of their times; never beaten: both of first-rate ability in council. The difference being in their objects; one to serve himself, the other to serve his country; one impelled by ambition, the other by duty; one destroying the constitution of his country, the other sustaining it. Wellington, too, has given the soldier and statesman his 'Commentaries,' one of the noblest transcripts of a great administrative mind."
_Beech-trees struck by Lightning_ (Vol. vi., p. 129.).--On Thinnigrove Common, near Nettlebed, Oxon, a beech-tree, one of three or four growing round a pit, was shattered by lightning about thirteen or fourteen years ago. A gentleman who has lived sixty years in the neighbourhood of the beech woods near Henly, tells me that he remembers three or four similar cases. Single beech-trees, which are very ornamental, generally grow very low and wide-spreading, which may be the reason why they often escape. On the other hand, in the woods where they run up close and very high, they present so many points of attraction to the electric fluid, that probably for that cause it is not often the case that one tree in particular is struck.