The Sun.
London, England, 1864-10-19 00:00:00

The Duke of Newcastle, K.G,

The chequered life of the Duke of Newcastle was
brought to a premature, but not unexpected, close
yesterday evening, at 47 minutes pie. six, at Clime,
ber. His grace had been suffering for a lengthened
period from the same incurable disease which killed
poor LDrd Herbert, his old Oxford friend and poli-
tical colleague, at whose touching funeral at Wilton
a few years back, the duke might have been seen a
most deeply-grieved mourner. Like Lord Herbert,
the duke had resigned his office in the Ministry;
but if he did not actually die in harness, he died—
as Lord Herbert, too, died—from the effects of
overwork in the public service—unspared labour—
ceaseless anxiety—insensibility to fatigue or sick-
ness—work to which both clung with a fatal tena■
city, and with a too conscientious and sensitive de-
votion, long after exhausted nature and the
entreaties of their dearest friends bade them rest.

The Duke of Newcastle was not a great states-
but he was emphatically an honest one, He
entered public life from motives of self-aggrann
disement, but from the considerations of a noble
ambition with which the career of Peel had fired so
many of his young Oxford contemporaries. His
motive was the good of his country; his stronghold
was a firm religious belief. The latter he opposed
unflinchingly to the doctrines of expediency and
vacillation—political hedging, in fact—so prevalent
in more accommodating quarters ; the former he
pursued unswervingly, through difficulties and
obloquy which might have appalled a less con •
scientious man. He sacrificed the comforts of
domestic life; he sacrificed his seat in Parliament;
he sacrificed his popularity whenever and wherever
he considered that the claims of his country were
paramount to personal feelings. Happy it was fur
the duke that he lived to see a varied political career
closed amid general honour and esteem ; happy
that, after a brief period of undeserved ostracism, he
returned to public life, and that having passed a loyal
and honoured career in still greater services to his
country and his Sovereign, he has not now been comrn
pelled to let his fame be posthumously re-established
in the sense of Horace's old but true apophthegm—
" Virtutem incolumem odimus,
Sublatam ex oculis quaarimus invidi."

In good truth the sound sense and the good feelings
of Englishmen generally prevail over a momentary
panic of passion, and it is plain to calm thinkers that
the duke had been somewhat hardly dealt with in
being made a Jonah for the neglect of the entire Mi-
nistry in the Crimean war. He has served her Majesty
again with the highest distinction,and in the highest
posts of dignity; he was selected by her to accompany
the heir to the Throne to her Canadian possessions ;
and on his death-bed her Majesty twice came from
her long retirement and paid a visit of kindness to
her noble subject. The Prince of Wales came also
to see the duke the day after the Queen's first visit,
and it need hardly be said that the grief of his
royal highness for his grace's death will be no tran-
sitory or commonplace emotion. He was permitted,
just before his death, to see his infant grandson, the
future heir of his illustrious house; his tenants, who
painfully watched their lord as he was slowly borne
to his ancestral halls a dying man, made their
obeisances in silence more touching than words, and
the same tenants united in cordial congratulations
on the birth of the heir which his grace was unable
to receive, and to which he was obliged to depute
his younger son to respond. This was the last time
his, grace's name appeared before the public, and so
his eyes may be said to have closed in domestic
peace, alike with the respect of his countrymen and
the regard of his Sovereign.
Born in the good old 'Tory days (1811), the son
of a Tory of the Tories, it was the assumed busi
ness and interest of a Pelham-Clinton to keep up
the policy of a very curious father in a world which
was moving nn, Like all his family he was educated
at Eton, where the brightest lustre is shed on his
father's fame in the present generation, by his
munificence in founding, 35 years ago, the classical
scholarship which was named after him, and will be
gratefully remembered when his political weak-
nesses are forgotten. Entering Christ Church,
Oxford, Lord Lincoln became a contemporary of
that singular galaxy of men destined hereafter to
win high reputations in the political world—Glad.
stone, Bruce (Lord Elgin), Canning, Herbert,
Ramsay (Marquis of Dalhousie), an astonishing
list of fellow-collegians, four from Eton, two from
Harrow—an astonishing list and a mournful one,
too, when it is considered that of that brilliant