"In spite of some foibles and faults, he was, beyond all doubt, a very great man—the only great man of the present time—and comparable, in point of greatness, to the most eminent of those who have lived before him. His greatness was the result of a few striking qualities—a perfect simplicity of character without a particle of vanity or conceit, but with a thorough and strenuous self-reliance, a severe truthfulness, never misled by fancy or exaggeration, and an ever-abiding sense of duty and obligation which made him the humblest of citizens and most obedient of subjects. The Crown never possessed a more faithful, devoted, and disinterested subject. Without personal attachment to any of the monarchs whom he served, and fully understanding and appreciating their individual merits and demerits, he alike reverenced their great office in the persons of each of them, and would at any time have sacrificed his ease, his fortune, or his life, to serve the Sovereign and the State. Passing almost his whole life in command and authority, and regarded with universal deference and submission, his head was never turned by the exalted position he occupied, and there was no duty, however humble, he would not have been ready to undertake at the bidding of his lawful superiors, whose behests he would never have hesitated to obey. Notwithstanding his age and his diminished strength, he would most assuredly have gone anywhere and have accepted any post in which his personal assistance might have been essential to the safety or advantage of the realm. He had more pride in obeying than in commanding, and he never for a moment considered that his great position and elevation above all other subjects released him from the same obligation which the humblest of them acknowledged. He was utterly devoid of personal and selfish ambition, and there never was a man whose greatness was so thrust upon him. It was in this dispassionate unselfishness, and sense of duty and moral obligation, that he was so superior to Napoleon Bonaparte."