text:  Yet what man within human recollection had lived so long if we are to reckon life not by the calendar but by triumphs? What minister of England what minister of Europe but himself was the head of his government for three-and-twenty years? What man had attained so high an European rank? What mind had influenced so large an extent of European interests? What name was so instinctively pronounced by every nation as the first among mankind? To have earned distinctions like these was to have obtained all that time could give