3-020-990 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

"In Commemoration of the Duke's Birthday", 1869. 'The incident which Mr. Friston has put before us, in the picture we have engraved, is one that will explain itself when the reader is reminded that the date of our present Number, May 1, is the hundredth anniversary of the great Duke of Wellington's birthday...The lapse of time which brought his long life to an honoured and not untimely close in September, 1852, has now completed a whole century since the puling babe who was to subdue the conqueror of Europe first lay in his nurse's arms. Another century may pass, and yet another..., before his glory will fade in the esteem of his fellow-countrymen; and the worthy landlord of a comfortable inn, which bears the name of the Duke of Wellington, in some town of provincial England where the popular spirit of patriotism still remembers the feats of British valour, is perfectly justified in getting his sign-portrait freshly touched up by the painter, in anticipation of the Duke's birthday. This is the subject here so agreeably treated, with two or three accessories in the background which tell us what great social changes have altered the condition of humanity since the times when France and Great Britain were at war with each other'. From "Illustrated London News", 1869.