Not One Of The Least Pleasing Sensations Excited By A Residence At
Parell, Is The Recollection Of The Distinguished Persons Who Have
Inhabited The Same Chambers, And Sat In The Same Halls.
The Duke
of Wellington is said frequently to have expressed a partiality for
Parell, and to look back to the days of his sojourn within its walls
with pleasure.
Here he reposed after those battles in which he
laid the foundation of his future glory, and to which, after long
experience, and so many subsequent triumphs as almost to eclipse
their splendour, he recurs with peculiar satisfaction. So far from
underrating, as is the fashion with many of the military servants of
the Crown, the merits of a successful campaign in India, the great
captain of the age, than whom there can be no better judge, rates the
laurels that he gathered in his earliest fields as highly as those
wrested from the soldiers of France, glorying in the title given him
by Napoleon, of "the Sepoy General."
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.
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