all are tutelar: not the warrior and the statesman only; not only the
philosopher; but also the historian who follows them step by step, and
the poet who secures us from peril and dejection by his counter-charm.
Philosophers in most places are unwelcome: but there is no better
reason why Shaftesbury and Hobbes should be excluded from our
gallery, than why Epicurus should have been from Cicero's or Zeno from
Lucullus's. Of our sovereigns, I think Alfred, Cromwell, and William
III alone are eligible; and they, because they opposed successfully
the subverters of the laws. Three viceroys of Ireland will deservedly
be placed in the same receptacle; Sir John Perrot, Lord Chesterfield,
and (in due time) the last Lord-Deputy. One Speaker, one only, of the
Parliament; he without whom no Parliament would be now existing;
he who declared to Henry IV. that until all public grievances were
removed, no subsidy should be granted. The name of this Speaker may be
found in Rapin; English historians talk about facts, forgetting men.

Admirals and generals are numerous and conspicuous. Drake, Blake,
Rodney, Jervis, Nelson, Collingwood; the subduer of Algiers beaten
down for the French to occupy: and the defender of Acre, the first who
defeated, discomfited, routed, broke, and threw into shameful flight,
Bonaparte. Our generals are Marlborough, Peterborough, Wellington, and
that successor to his fame in India, who established the empire that
was falling from us, who achieved in a few days two arduous victories,
who never failed in any enterprise, who accomplished the most
difficult with the smallest expenditure of blood, who corrected
the disorders of the military, who gave the soldier an example of
temperance, the civilian of simplicity and frugality, and whose sole
(but exceedingly great) reward, was the approbation of our greatest
man.