"There is no mistake."

—The Duke of Wellington's reply to Mr. Huskisson, "There is no mistake," has become familiar in the mouths of both those who remember the political circumstances that gave rise to it, and those who have received it traditionally, without inquiring into the origin of it. You may perhaps think it worthy of a "Note" that this was not the first occasion on which the Duke used those celebrated words. The Duke (then Earl of Wellington) in a private letter to Lord Bathurst, dated Flores de Avila, 24th July, 1812, writes in the following easy style:

"I hope that you will be pleased with our battle, of which the dispatch contains as accurate an account as I can give you. There was no mistake, everything went on as it ought; and there never was an army so beaten in so short a time."

The whole letter is well deserving of insertion; but my object is simply to draw attention to the occasion on which the Duke first used the sentence now so well known.

F. W. J.