DEATHS.

1860.

Jan. 4. At Vicarage-gardens, Kensington, aged 47, Lieut.-Col. J. Abercrombie, H.M. Bengal Horse Artillery.

Dec. 14. At Argyll-house, in his 77th year, the Right Hon. George HamiltonGordon, fourth Earl of Aberdeen, Viscount Formartin, Baron Haddo, Methlic, Tarves, and Kellie, in the peerage of Scotland, Viscount Gordon of Aberdeen in that of the United Kingdom, a Baronet of Scotland and of Nova Scotia; Lord Lieutenant of Aberdeenshire, and hereditary Sheriff of Aberdeen; Chancellor of the University and King's College of Aberdeen; K.G, K.T.; and a Privy Councillor.

This eminent statesman was born at Edinburgh on the 28th January, 1784. His father, Lord Haddo, who married a sister of Sir David Baird, died in the lifetime of his father, the third Earl of Aberdeen. His family is accounted a younger branch of the Gordons of Huntley, Dukes of Gordon; but, in truth, the latter noble race are descended from Sir Alexander Seton, who, having married the heiress of the Huntley Gordons, assumed her name. The Gordons of Methlic and Haddo, therefore, represent in the male line that Bertram de Gourdon who shot the arrow fatal to Richard Coeur de Lion, and whom heralds assign as the founder of the race.

George Gordon was educated in the traditions of the Tories, went to Harrow (a little before Peel, Palmerston, and Byron), and after Harrow entered at St. John's College, Cambridge, which University, although prescriptively belonging to the Whigs, Pitt then represented in Parliament. These were the days of Tory ascendancy, when Pitt was all in all at the Treasury, when Melville ruled at the Admiralty, and when, in opposition to the Duchess of Devonshire and Mrs. Crewe, the Duchess of Gordon dispensed the charms of society to Tory voters. By the influence of this lady, and partly through the Edinburgh connections of Lord Melville, George Gordon, on quitting Scotland at the early age of 10, was placed in the very centre of Tory influence, was brought under the special notice

of the Premier, and, in point of fact, spent most of the time which he was permitted to pass in London either at the residence of the First Lord of the Treasury or at the residence of the First Lord of the Admiralty. In this way he was early initiated into the mysteries of official life, and had opportunities of watching the conflict of Parliamentary parties at a time when Pitt and Fox, Burke and Sheridan, Granville, Grey, Wyndham, and a host of great men headed the conflicting factions.

Lord Aberdeen graduated in 1804. But he had by no means been wholly occupied up to this period in scholastic pursuits. On the contrary, he had already plunged into politics, and he had travelled further than most persons venture in the whole course of their lives. He was in 1801 attached to the embassy sent under Lord Cornwallis to negotiate with Napoleon the Peace of Amiens, which was signed in March of the following year. At Paris a new world burst upon his view. He came in contact with the leaders of the Revolution, and many great generals of the war; he had constant intercourse with Marmont, Ney, and Moreau among the rest, and, while doing full justice to their abilities, he was always emphatic in expressing disgust at the grossness of their manner and the selfishness of their aims. If Lord Aberdeen could not admire these men, he at all events measured them; and he furnished himself with the materials by which some years afterwards he was able to out-manoeuvre Napoleon in his diplomatic relations with Austria.

He did not confine his visit to France. It was evident that the Peace of Amiens would not last long, and the young politician became aware that he must either return to England or extend his travels beyond the territory claimed by the First Consul, which comprised nearly the whole of Western Europe. He turned southwards to Greece, and about the time when his countryman, Lord Elgin, was despoiling that classic land of some of its finest marbles, he roamed with the enthusiasm of a scholar over ground where every stream has its deity, every stone its tradition. every hill, every valley, a name glorified in immortal song. His wanderings extended into other lands celebrated in

classic lore, or rendered illustrious by their connection with the land of his idolatry. He returned home through Turkey, Russia, and the Baltic, having not as yet completed his twentieth year. The enthusiasm he had nourished by these travels was so earnest that it was communicated to all generous spirits who came within his sphere; and from his example, and that of Lord Elgin and Sir W. Hamilton, was derived that deep seated feeling in favour of the revival of Greek nationality, which afterwards involved Byron and so many other noble Englishmen in the Greek insurrection.

One of the first acts of his fresh enthusiasm on his return to England was the establishment of the Athenian Society, one essential rule of which was that every member should have visited Greece. From this, and his absorp tion in this one idea, he was dubbed "Athenian Aberdeen." An article which he wrote in the Edinburgh Review on the topography of Troy brought him in the category of those whom Byron lashed in his "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers" as "that travelled Thane, Athenian Aberdeen." A family feud, probably, had something to do with this attack upon the writer of a tasteful essay; for Byron's mother was the heiress of the Gordons of Gicht, and when the thriftlessness of her father enforced the sale of the lands of Gicht, they were purchased for Lord Haddo, the Earl's father. Although the Earl published no connected narrative of his travels, he gave to the world his opinions and observations through numerous channels, in essays exhibiting great knowledge and taste.

In 1506, the Eari was elected a representative Peer of Scotland. It was a period of gloom and almost of despair. In that year Nelson, Pitt, and Fox were consigned to the tomb; the glories of the Peninsular war had not yet dawned. The strength of parties had been dispersed by the loss of the leaders. The Coalition" Government—the “Ministry of all the Talents had been formed remarkable for the lack of talent it exhibited, but note worthy to us, for Lord Henry Petty, the now venerable Marquess of Lansdowne, was its Chancellor of the Exchequer. The rupture of the Peace or Truce of Amiens had been followed by consequences of momentous import. Although the great victory

at Trafalgar swept the French fleet from the seas, and England was secure in her island home and mistress of the ocean, the Continent of Europe was at the feet of the Emperor Napoleon; Austria was humbled to the dust, and Prussia crushed almost out of existence. An extraordinary series of events raised the nations from the abyss. The low ambition of Napoleon to conneet himself with the ancient Royal races had brought about his alliance with the House of Austria, “ a veritable abyss covered by flowers," and a mortal quarrel with Russia. Napoleon precipitated his vast arinies upon the interior of Russia, and his myriads perished in the snows of his disastrous retreat. The crushed nations raised their heads. As the Emperor of Russia advanced, the Prussians rose to throw off the yoke; there were even hopes that the Emperor of Austria would cast aside the ties of family bonds and seek to restore his diminished empire. It was in the delicate task of inducing the Austrian Emperor to join the Alliance against his son-in-law that the Earl of Aberdeen received his first important public employment. The Earl was at this time scarce thirty years of age. He must already have exhibited rare tact, graced by a refined intellect, and large knowledge, to be thus early entrusted with a mission of such difficulty and importance. The destinies of Europe depended upon his success.

The Earl fulfilled his mission with an address that fully justified the selection of the Government. At first Austria assumed the position of perfect neutrality; from neutrality she advanced to mediation; then, in order to be an impartial mediator, she discovered that the alliance between her and France must not be annulled, but temporarily suspended; finally, by the Treaty of Toplitz (Sept. 1813), she broke with Napoleon and threw in her lot with the aliied Sovereigns. To this she was in a great measure assisted by the promise of a large subsidy, by the ineffective character of the victories obtained by Napoleon at Lutzen and Bautzen, and by the decisive results of the great battle of Vittoria, which drove the French out of the Peninsula. Austria immediately joined the alliance, and with it fought the battles of Dresden and Leipsic. From this moment every one save the Emperor saw the danger

of the Empire. Dresden was the last of Napoleon's great victories. Leipsic began the series of his defeats.

At most of these battles Lord Aberdeen was present, and learnt that horror of war for which in later life he received many reproaches. He saw Lützen, he saw Bautzen; it was in his quarters that Morcau died after receiving at Dresden his mortal wound; he rode over the field at Leipsic, in company with Humboldt: he was present at Hanau; and he followed the movements of the army so closely, getting into the thick of fighting and danger, that on one occasion, near Chaumont, he had, with the Emperor of Austria and the whole diplomatic staff, to mount horse and to fly, without halt, some 13 leagues across country to Dijon. But he was more than a spectator in these exploits; he was a very active agent. He had been so successful in detaching Napoleon's father-inlaw from the French alliance that he was immediately employed in the not less delicate mission of detaching Napoleon's brother-in-law; and not long after Leipsic the public were surprised with the announcement that the Alliance had found a new adherent in the person of Murat, the King of Naples. Thus, by the contrivance of the English Minister, the Emperor lost friend after friend; he was left alone on the Continent; adversaries hemmed him in on all sides; he was forced to retreat; victory forsook his legions; and at length, having not only lost all the territory which he had acquired, but also a third of France, which was now in possession of the allies, he consented to the Congress of Chatillon. At this moment, when Lord Aberdeen was pushing his diplomatic victories with a vigour which made them the worthy counterpart of the military victories of Wellington, his chief, the Foreign Secretary, Lord Castlereagh, went to the Continent to conduct in person those difficult negotiations. Except the King of England, all the Sovereigns who formed the Alliance were personally present at the Congress-the Emperor Alexander, whose nation alone, of all the peoples of the Continent, had repelled the invader, whose armies formed the most efficient part of the allied force, and who had acquired a supremacy over the minds of men by the force of his character and his position;

the King of Prussia, whose general, Blucher, had inflicted some of the most disastrous defeats upon the French army, and who was the faithful adherent of Alexander; and the Emperor of Austria, who had 'great losses to recover, and whose position placed the scales in his hands. It was thought necessary to counterbalace the great weight of these potentates by the presence of the Secretary of State, representing the nation who was the paymaster of all, and whose armies were in occupation of the south of France. But Lord Aberdeen was not superseded by his chief. The Earl, with Lord Cathcart and Sir Charles Stewart (the late Marquess of Londonderry), were colleagues, not subordinates of Lord Castlereagh, in the Congress. It is not improbable that the calm, practical, common sense of the two Scotchmen had that control over the impetuosity of the two Irishmen, which induced the British plenipotentiaries to accept the proposition, that Napoleon should remain Emperor of France, reduced to her ancient limits. But what the Congress would grant, the Emperor would not accept; he insisted on all, and he lost everything.

After the cessation of hostilities, Lord Aberdeen returned to England, to enjoy his honours in that studious retirement from which it is not impossible that but for a private sorrow he might never have emerged, as he did in 1813, to follow the sovereigns and armies of Europe from town to town, and from battlefield to battlefield. He bad married in 1805 a daughter of the first Marquess of Abercorn; it was shortly after her death that, with very little previous experience of the diplomatic art, he undertook the responsible mission to Austria; and it is not unlikely that a man of his disposition, at once fond of society, but reserving his heart for a few, felt the loss so keenly as to grasp at active employment which he might otherwise have shrunk from undertaking. He returned to England to marry a second time, and to seek a retirement from which nothing allured him for some fourteen years. He married the sister-in-law of his first wife, the widow of Viscount Hamilton, and the mother of the second Marquess of Abercorn. Henceforth, to the formation of the Duke of Wellington's Administration in 1828, he contented