The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1875-03-27 00:00:00

THE 6foLittBRIDGE OBSERVEIL

dreamland to the greatest chymist of the day. He
forwarded it with the suggestion that it was worth
while to test it. Overwhelmed, as Faraday then was,
with work, he answered not with neglect or with cheap
flattery. He wrote to the unknown youth as follows :
"I have no hesitation in advising you to experiment in
suport of your views. because, whether you confirm or con-
fute them, good must come out of your experiments. With
regard to the views themselves, I can say nothing of them
except that they are useful in exciting the mind to inquiry.
A very brief consideration of the progress of experimental
philosophy will show you that it is a great disturber of pre-
conceived theories. I have thought long and closely on the
theories of attraction and of particles and atoms of matter,
and the more I think, in association with experiments, the
less distinct does my idea of an atom or a particle of matter
become."

---- ---
In whatever epoch, continued the lecturer, we shall
seek for models of human existence, we can find no
two examples more conspicuous for their intellectual
worth, more admirable for their lofty views of duty,
than Michael Faraday and Justus Liebig. (Loud ap-
plause.)

The Chairman then presented to Dr Hofmann the
Faraday Medal the highest token of recognition which
the Society had in its power to bestow. By asking
the leaders of scientific thought abroad to deliver this
lecture, the Society gained the great advantage of
personal communication, which mere literature could
not afford. The name of Liebig, always honoured in
England, would now be always associated with the
address to which they had just had the opportunity of
listening. It is Liebig we owe the early training of a
Hofmann and the-direct and indirect advantages which
we have thereby derived.
In acknowledging the gift, Professor Hofmann said
it was the highest honour a cultivator of chymical
science could receive. The name of Faraday is asso-
ciated with our race's most glorious conquests; it was
on,that spot Faraday used to enchant us with the
beauties of philosophy, and there the present lecturer
used to sit at the feet of the great master. The sym-
pathy he had received from that assembly gave a re-
markable sanction to the gift; and there was one
whose presence honoured them all, and recalled to the
lecturer's mind his father of glorious memory (loud
applause), to whom he was indebtedfor what he should
always consider the most auspicious memories af his
existence, his long and happy stay in dear old Eng-
land.

in public estimation must be made by our single
women, who, not being , bound like married women, to
care for the things which please their husbands, may
claim the right to devote themselves to the things of
the Lord, the cultivation of whatever faculty He has
given them towards perfection. They need not be
social superfluities; and many of them are, indeed,
necessaries,—though often, like other necessaries of
life, thanklessly used till their loss teaches us their
value: true followers as they are of Him who came,
not to be ministered unto, but to minister.

In which no proofs of his ability as a master of internEttional
policy could have been given. Nevertheless, the confidence
that was felt in the Comte de Jarnac's capacity, both in the
country to which he was sent and in that which he repre-
sented, so far from suffering any abatement, had increased;
Marshal MacMahon's choice was unquestionably most
popular in France, and in England Mr. Disraeli
and Lord Derby had borne public testimony to the
satisfaction with which English statesmen found them-
selves brought into relation with so admirable a re-
presentative of what was best in French character
and English experience. It must now be felt that, besides
the political deprivation which France and England must
suffer by the Comte de Jarnac's untimely death, the social
loss will be severe, for the Count was not only an able and
devoted servant of his country, but a most valued ornament
of English society. His knowledge of England and our
knowledge of him were not of yesterday's growth; and now,
when they were ripening into fruitful possibilities of mutual
service, death cuts down all the hopes that had been founded,
not unreasonably, on a most rare combination of qualities
and relations.

"The Comte de Jarnac was the son of a French emigre
nobleman who had served with distinction in the British
Army. On the mother's side he was partly an Irishman, for
he was the nephew of the late Duke of Leinster. His
aristocratic connexions did not, however, prevent him from
adhering with loyal devotion to Constitutional principles
and the Monarchy which was founded on those principles in
1830. When the convulsion came which shook down the
throne of Louis Philippe the Comte de Jarnac was just
entering upon public life, and his English relationships had
led him to look for success in the career of diplomacy.
At the moment when the revolution of February burst
upon France his merits had received so much recognition
that he was already Chief Secretary of the French Embassy
at the Court of St. James's. In London society and in his
intercourse with English statesmen he had made an impres-
sion beyond the strict limits of his official rank, and perhaps
no Incident of personal ill-fortune was more generally the
subject of regret in the amazing collapse of reputations and
ambitions which followed the proclamation of the Second
Republic than the abrupt closing of the Comte de Jarnac's
scarcely opened, but most promising, career. How thoroughly
the Secretary of Legation had won the confidence
and respect of English public men is illustrated by
the fact that when the House of Orleans was driven
from France by the violence of the revolutionary factions,
and it was uncertain whether the exiled Princes had not
been stripped of their private fortunes as well as of their
power and dignity, three English statesmen very different in
their character, but actuated in this case by the same im-
pulse, Lord Aberdeen, Sir Robert Peel, and Lord Palmerston
—were desirous of tendering some assistance to the victims of
so sudden a blow, and all of them selected the Count as the
intermediary in this most delicate negotiation. A few months
ago the Count himself published in the Revue 'des deux
Mondes the correspondence which told the story of these ge-
nerous offers, and certainly the choice of the English states-
men, who desired to do a liberal act without jarring upon the
sensibilities of unfortunate Royalty, was justified by the spirit
In which the Comte de Jarnac performed his difficult task.
The Princes of the exiled family were not the less grateful
for the generosity of these offers—the names of those who
made them being kept secret with due discretion by the
Count till all need of secrecy had passed away with the per-
sons concerned. Having done a last service to his master's
family by conducting his honourable negotiation to a
close, Comte de Jarnac retired from the service of his
country. To the Governments of the Second Republic and
the Second Empire he tendered no allegiance. Yet his re-
tirement was not prompted by a sullen and barren discon-
tent. If France had called upon him he would have been as
ready, we feel assured, to serve her then, as he was later.
But in the turmoil of the Republic there was no place for
him, and under the Empire official promotion was the re-
ward of compliances to which a sincere Constitutionalist
could not stoop.
- - - • -

"Fortunately, the Comte de Jarnac found new duties
ready to his hand just as the path of politics was
closed to him. He inherited a large property near
Thomastown, in the County Kilkenny, and his connection
with the Duke of Leinster gave him the opportunity of
taking a high place among the resident aristocracy of
Ireland. An Irish landlord's life, indeed, was never less
attractive than in 1848, when the exhaustion following the
Famine was galvanised by a feverish disaffection. A
wealthy foreigner might have chosen a far pleasanter
life, and, as it then appeared, a much more
profitable one, than that which offered itself to the
Comte de Jarnac. But he believed sincerely in the
responsibilities of ownership, and he was not forget-
ful of his Irish blood. The Count settled down at
Thomastown, improved his estates, became speedily popular
with his tenants, introduced improved systems of agricul-
ture and stock-breeding, and stregthened his British citizen.
ship by nis services to the people among whom he had
chosen to live. How dfficult the task was few who did not
know Ireland during that painful period of transition can telL
But the dfficulties never dismayed the Comte.deJarnac, and
they gradually disappeared. The improvement of the land
was sufficiently laborious and costly, and at the outset the pro-
spect of ultimate remuneration seemed inconceivably small.
To stimulate the energies of a despondent population was ap-
parently yet more hopeless. But patience, kindliness, gaiety
of spirits, and an urbanity that could not be ruffled con-
quered in time. The Comte de Jarnac's individual activity
and the force of his example did much to beat down
agrarian crime in the district in which he lived. They were
yet mere successful in arousing the dormant energies of the
peasantry and in lifting the country out of the old rut of
bad habits in agriculture.

"The best part of the Comte de Jarnac's work in Ireland
had been accomplished when the overthrow of the Second
Empire opened to him once more the chances of a political
career in France or in the service of France. His family ties,
his long residence in Ireland, and his early labours in diplo-
macy marked out the line upon which he might most use-
fully and brilliantly serve his native country. It was felt
that his claims had been recognised not at all too soon
when Marshal MacMahon, last autumn, nominated him
Ambassador at St. James's in the place of the Due de
la Rochefoucault-Bisaccia. The Count's services to Ire-
land have been rewarded since his high promotion in a
manner most gratifying to him, by expressions of gratitude
not only from distinguished statesmen and aristocratic neigh-
bours, but from the peasantry whose condition he had done so
much to improve. The people of Kilkenny and Tipperary could
not hope to have retained in the Ambassador of France the
kindly master, landlord, and neighbour for whom more than
20 years they had known at Thomastown, but not the less will
they feel acutely the news of his premature decease. The en-
grossing claims of politics, too, had forbidden us to hope that
the Gount would give to the world many more of those clear
and pointed essays with which he has illustrated in the
Revue des deux Mondes : at one time the agrarian problem
In Ireland, at another time the secret history of The Year
of Revolutions.' But now we may not expect even an occa-
sional fragment.
"The Comte de jarnac may be said to have died young,
for he was only in his 54th year when he expired yesterday
evening, at half-past six o'clock. His father, the Vicomte Sc
Chabot, was a Major-General in the British Army, and served
through the wars at the beginning of this century under
the British colours in the Low Countries and the Peninsula.
He married Lady Isabella Fitzgerald, the sister, as we
have said, of the late Duke of Leinster. Their eldest son,
the late Ambassador, thus had a good deal of the English-
man in his nature. By marriage, too, he was further
Anglicised, for in 1844 he took to wife his cousin, the Hon.
Geraldine Foley. Hardly another foreigner, certainly none
filling the same station, could be mentioned who understood
Englishmen so well or who was so well appreciated by them
In return."