ao THE EDITOR OP THE "SPECTATOR.") Snz,—All that Mr. Lionel
Tollemache writes in your columns and elsewhere is invariably interesting and attractive. I too knew the old Lord Combermere, and dined with him on his ninetieth birthday. Fresh as one of the pink thorns in his own park, he had just been riding sixteen miles on his pony to scare a misguided vicar who proposed to tear down the Cotton hatchments from the walls of his church. The Iron Duke was in varying moods as regards the Stapleton Cotton of the Peninsular War, for, while he wished to have the gallant salrmur in command of horse at Waterloo, as Mr. Tollemache states, his Grace was successful years after—so I was more than once told—in preventing him being raised to the dignity of an earldom. Mr. Tollemache mentions that one of his grand- mothers was kissed upon the band by the great Duke. When
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