Few things can be more agreeable than listening to anecdotes told at the dinner-table at Parell of the Duke of Wellington by officers who have formerly sat at the same board with him, who have served under his command in India, and who delight in recording those early traits of character which impressed all who knew him with the conviction that he was destined to become the greatest man of the age. The Duke of Wellington, though wholly unacquainted with the language spoken in India, was always held in the highest esteem by the natives, with whom, generally speaking, in order to become popular, it is absolutely necessary to be able to converse in their own tongue. He obtained, however, a perfect knowledge of their modes of feeling, thinking, and acting, and by a liberal policy, never before experienced, endeared himself to all ranks and classes. It is recollected at this day that, in times of scarcity, he ordered all the rice sent up for the subsistence of the troops to be sold, at a moderate price, to the starving multitude; and that, while more short-sighted people prophesied the worst results from this measure, it obtained for him abundant supplies, together with a name that will never be forgotten.
A re-perusal at Parell of the "Life of Sir James Mackintosh" also affords interest, though of a different kind. The house which Sir James designates as large and convenient, with two really good rooms, has been much improved since his time. It could not be expected that a man like Sir James Mackintosh would employ many words in the description of a mansion chiefly interesting on account of its former occupants; but that he should have dismissed the whole of the presidency in as summary a manner, seems perfectly unaccountable.
It does not appear that the importance and value of British India ever made any strong impression upon Sir James Mackintosh, who seems to have looked upon its various inhabitants with a cold and careless eye; to have done nothing in the way of making the people of England better acquainted with their fellow-subjects in the East, and never to have felt any desire to assist in the work of their improvement, or to facilitate its progress. During his subsequent career, India appears to have been totally forgotten, or remembered only as the scene of an exile, in which he had found nothing to compensate for the loss of literary society and the learned idling away of time, from which so much was expected, and which produced so little.