Page:Tupper family records - 1835.djvu/124

 102 MEMOIR OF COLONEL TUPPER.

brillante valeur des connaissances tres-distinguees." — His tall, manly, and strikingly handsome person, his almost Herculean strength, the elegance of his manners, and his impetuous valour in battle, gave the impression rather of a royal knight of chivalry, than of a republican soldier.* The influence and popularity which in a few short years he acquired in his adopted country, by his own unaided exertions, and under the many disadvantages of being a stranger in a strange land, best prove that his talents were of the first order, and that he was no common character. The attachment of his men to him was constant and unbounded, for he not only possessed that bravery which, with the brave, is the surest passport to affection, but that kindness of heart which ever wins a way to the human breast. The union of so many excellent qualities, joined to his previous services to Chile, ought at least to have procured him quarter; but unfortunately in civil wars, they who aim at arbi- trary power seldom spare any one who may success- fully oppose their despotic views, and both gratitude and humanity would fain throw a veil over his last moments. He deserved far better than to have fallen by the order of a band of assassins, whose cause and conduct were in every way worthy of so foul a deed. The opinion of his friends, however, will correct the errors of fortune, which denied him a better field for the exercise of his endowments. He is dead, but his memory lives, and though his mangled corse now lies far from the tombs of his forefathers,

" Unknell'd, uncoffin'd, and unknown."

yet it is some melancholy consolation to his deeply

model of strength and symmetry. His countenance was benign and " pleinc de franchise," — his complexion florid, — and he had a profusion of beautiful dark chesnut hair.
 * In height he was about six feet two inches, and his figure was a perfect

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