Of languages, by the help of a memory singularly powerful, he learned as much as was necessary to enable him to comprehend and answer without assistance everything that was said to him, and every letter which he received.

The Dutch was his own tongue.

He understood Latin, Italian, and Spanish.

He spoke and wrote French, English, and German, inelegantly, it is true, and inexactly, but fluently and intelligibly.

No qualification could be more important to a man whose life was to be passed in organizing great alliances, and in commanding armies assembled from different countries.
One class of philosophical questions had been forced on his attention by circumstances, and seems to have interested him more than might have been expected from his general character.