The Sun.
London, England, 1863-07-29 00:00:00

THERMOMETER.

This morning
This day at Two o'clock 7O
Barometer-30.20.
Wind—West ; light, with fine weather,

HIGH WATER AT LONDON BRIDGE.
Cltis DA.T.—Morning, 12h. 24m.—Afternoon, 12h. 55m.
To-gonnow.-Morning, Ih. 25m.—Afternoon, Ih. 52m.

1.4. k
ttg 014* (N.,151,01111111111170:±1 airNe\s'L

LONDON, WEDNESDAY, JULY 29, 1863.

Yesterday—upon the very morning of the day
upon which the Parliamentary Session of 1863 came
to an end—expired, in the 66th year of his age,
CONSTANTINE, Marquis of Normanby. Scarcely is
the breath out of his body, when a sneering, super-
cilious, almost spiteful, certainly a most depreciatory
notice of the noble dead, appears in the columns of
the chief of our contemporaries. For what it is
worth, we transcribe it, in its entirety, in another
part of our own impression of this evening : com-
mending to its perusal those who list—convinced
that it can in no way prove injurious to the
reputation of the departed peer in the esti-
mation at least of those who come to a perusal
of so supercilious an epitome of his career in any
way d'spassionately. When it is borne in recollec-
tion, as is here distinctly acknowledged, indeed, in
the very outset of this scornful memoir, that the
deceased had won for himself so many high honours,
during a not very protracted lifetime, it must
assuredly appear, to the judgment of any rational
observer somewhat of an extravagance to attribute
the acquisition of these high houours, one and
all, to the influence of a nameless something,
a je-ne-sais- gaol, a simple charm of manner, the
glamour of the witcheey of a smile. Suavely, by the
side of his inanimate remains, it is remarked some-
what under breath " Everybody liked him "—hut
then acidly, in a whisper, in a sort of confidential
" aside" to the whole world—" nobody knew why."
Yet, immediately upon this, come those very incon-
gruous acknowledgments already referred to,
acknowledgments in no way harmonising with the
writer's vague and eccentric hypothesis as to the
secret of the late Lord NORMANDY'S success in life
—as a patrician, as a politician, as a diplomatist, as
an administrator, as a viceroy, and as an ambassa-
dor. The late Lord NORMANDY, heir to an earldom,
won for himself a Marquisate. He became a Knight
of the Garter. Twice he was Secretary of State—
now over the Colonial Department, now over the
Home Department. He was British Ambassador
at Paris during several years, all of them important,
some of them very momentous ; the noble marquis
continuing there as ambassador during the whole
of the various stages of the French Revolution
of 1848, in effect up to the coup d'etat of the
PRINCE PRESIDENT. He was British Ambassador
at Florence also at a very notable epoch until
the stormy waves of the Italian Revolution had
rolled over the whole of the Roman peninsula.
He was for about a year Governor of the most
important among our West Indian Colonies
—Jamaica. But, above all, during very
nearly one whole lustre, he was not only
uninterruptedly Lord Lieutenant of Ireland,
but
from first to last, from 1831 to the turn
of the year 1838-9, he was, without any excep-
tion whatever, the most popular Lord Lieutenant of
whom u
iree4s_
Englist;anuanadas
even now, any recollection. An
pronounced, a Protestant, he was nevertheless
at the time, by O'CONNELL, the best
Englishman
Ireland
11ad, ever seen ! " His reception
in the sister
island,"
been
of this morning
theee
mentions as having
departure from enthusiastic." His
Ireland, at the close of his
reign, we well remember
as having been marked
not according to the ordia
by enthusiasm—but by g dry. sense of the phrase
tunef Irish enthusiasm !
Lord NORMANDY'S departure
Dublin, and his final farewell rom
the Castle at
t
Ireland when he
embarked on board the steam:
harbour:of Kingstown, being, in
Pa.
n the beautiful
quite literally, an ovation! Vet, all this, of fact
and
.
asked to regard as simply and solely we are
the recom-
pense accorded by his countrymen to - for his
possession of a handsome form and features,
set off,
to the admiration of all, by the fasci •
nations of a
winning deportment. This demand upon our
credulity is in itself, to our thinking, utterly and
flagrantly ridiculous.
Another version we have to give of Lord NOR-
mANBY'S character, and we believe it to be the true
one. It certainly appears to us, far more readily to
explain
his many successes in life, the lore and re-
pect of the Irish
people, the manly and dispas-
sionate panegyric pronounced
upon him by
the Liberator, and the cordial confidence
reposed in Lord NORMANDY by two Liberal Prime
Ministers, as shrewd in their estimate of adminis-
trative and diplomatic worth, as most men of their
time, to wit, Lord MELBOURNE
and Lord JOHN
RUSSELL. Born of an old Tory family, Lord
NORMAN BY, of his own free will and choice, entered
upon public life, not as a Tory, but as a thoroughly
independent and liberal-minded politician—as a
Whig, almost as a Radical To his honour be it
said—his maiden speech was in favour of Catholic
Emancipation. it was because he remained true