The Sun.
London, England, 1865-10-19 00:00:00

lIIE SUN, LONDON, TB URSDAY FWININO, OCTOBER 19. 1865.

THIRD EDITION

Constance Sherwood. By Lady Georgiana Fullerton.
Three Vols. Bentley.
One of the most charming heroines yet intro-
duced to us by Lady Georgiana Fullerton is Con-
stance Sherwood, and the story which she relates to
us—another chapter from the romantic but disas-
trous annals of religious persecution—is full of in-
tense interest throughout. In her early girlhood
Constance becomes acquainted with one whose
friendship is thedelight of her life, sweet mistress Ann
Dacre, the step-daughter of the Duke of Norfolk, and
afterwards the wife of the Earl of Arundel and Surrey.
Lady Arundel divides with Constance the interest
and admiration of the reader. Her character,
whether as seen in the occasional glimpses which
history reveals to us, or in the more fully developed
but evidently most truthful portraiture of Lady
Georgiana, is singularly attractive and exquisitely
natural. Adorned with all the virtues of her sex,
and yielding to some of its weaknesses also, Ann
Dacre is one whom a novel -writer might readily
select for a heroine, and as her story is narrated by
the lips of her tender and worthy friend Constance
it loses nothing in interest or adherence to truth. The
friends are separated for some time after the mar-
riage of the young countess, who is compelled for- a
while to share the gaieties of the court. Very
grievous is it to Constance when she again meets
her early companion and discovers that both Lady
Arundel and her husband, like so many of the
other courtiers, have conformed to the. reformed
religion. But the early faith of the young countess
soon re-asserts its influence, and very charming and
very natural is her letter to Constance, in which she
reveals her dread of confiding the change to her
husband. Thereupon, it is, she narrates how,
on his return from London, he walks with her in
the garden, and tells her that his sister has returned
to the old religion, and hailing the opportunity, she,
clinging to him, timidly whispers, "So has N an"._
the tender abbreviation of her name. Though fully
aware of the danger of the step, the young earl
makes no objection, and soon after follows the
example of his wife. The trials and sufferings which
this declaration of faith brought upon the pair are
matter of history, or indeed they might be deemed'
impossible, and yet, perhaps, for their very im-
probability, they should he classed with those
things which Lady Georgiana Fullerton has
styled " too strange not to be true." We
will dwell no further upon this portion of the
tale, except to say that the authoress has done
full justice to the interest of her theme, and has
recorded these trials, and the fortitude with which
they were borne, with exquisite simplicity and
tenderness. The individual story of Constance
Sherwood, the ostensible heroine of the work, we
shall not betray. Constance herself is not among
the waverers. She is most true throughout
to her early belief, and faithful to her
earliest affections. When one of the courtier states-
men of the Queen endeavours to persuade her to
yield to the views of policy and ambition, she boldly
tells him that, wise and learned and astute as he
may be, there are two things beyond his powers of
appreciation—" the heart of a woman and the faith
of a Catholic." Like her heroine, the fair authoress
reveals in every page how eminently she is herself
endowed with these possessions, and among the
readers who differ from her belief there will be
found none to quarrel with her as a controversialist,
or to charge her with any want of Christian charity.
The authoress of " Lady-bird," and " Grantley
Manor," and " Ellen Middleton," may be fairly
congratulated on the success of " Constance Sher-
wood."

LORD PA.LMERSTOZT.

subject of the present sketch ; the younger was
afterwards known as Sir William Temple, the
British Envoy at the Court of Naples.
Not much is known regarding the early life of
Henry John Temple. He was one of the late flower-
ing plants. Always remarkable for his ability, and
generally successful in his undertakings, he rejoiced
in a.,splendid constitution, and had to get rid of a
certain excess of animal spirits before his ambition
could rise to the level of his powers. There is a long
period of some five and forty years—considerably
more than the half of a man's life—which Lord Pal-
merston passed in comparative inactivity, and which
is a puzzle to the biographer whose idea of the man
is derived from the later glories of his career. To
account for this anomaly, it has by some of his eulo-
gists been asserted that he was never at heart a Tory,
that he was out of his element in the Ministry of
Liverpool and Castlereagh, and that he never truly
lived until he escaped from the thraldom of Tory
ideas and joined the friends of liberality and pro-
gress. This theory is quite unfounded. Lord Pal-
merston was at the last whathe was at the first. There
is no real difference between Palmerston Secretary-
at-War, Palmerston Foreign Secretary, Palmerston
Home Secretary, and Palmerston Prime Minister.
The explanation of his backwardness lies wholly
on the surface, and is what we have already indi-
cated. He was never what would be called an am-
bitious man ;- and, delighting in society, he found,
in the pleasures of private life what, together with
the cares of his particular office, was sufficient in
his hot youth, if not fully to occupy his powers, at
all events to employ his time. Whatever he had to
do he did well, but it is quite evident in his Parlia-
mentary history that he never cared to go out of his
way for work. As Secretary-at-War for some 20
years he hardly ever made a speech except on the
subject of the army, and then only when he was
compelled to do so. As Foreign Secretary for a
period little less, he in like manner confined his at-
tention to the business of his own department. At
a time when he was the most popular statesman in
England, he was content to serve now under his
junior, and now under his rival. On the dissolu-
tion of the Aberdeen Cabinet he consented to serve
even under Lord Derby if certain of his colleagues
could be induced to follow the same course. It was
not until every possible combination had been tried,
and every possible Premier had given up the task in
despair, that, as a last resource, Lord Palmerston
was asked to form a Government. He at once
accepted the position which he had not sought, and
filled with dignity to himself and advantage to the
country an office which, from his never having
grasped at it, persons who measure men, not accord-
ing to their deserts, but according to their demands,
regarded as beyond his power.
In the little that is known concerning the early
life of Lord Palmerston there is not much that is re-
markable. He received his education at Harrow,
at Edinburgh, and at Cambridge. He went to
Harrow a little after Lord Aberdeen, and about the
same time as Sir Robert Peel and Lord Byron.
Thence he proceeded to Edinburgh, to enjoy the
benefit of Dugald Stewart's instruction ; and, by
the way, it may be noted as something peculiar that
he was one of the very fgw Tories who followed the
example of the young Whigs of that generation in
sitting at the feet of the great Whig Professor of
Moral Philosophy and Political Economy. It
certainly does not appear that he entered with
any enthusiasm into the studies which absorbed
every inmate of Stewart's family ; and one might
with some show of reason accept it as a proof of
this apathy that his name is not to be found among
the members of that Speculative Society which was
joined by every man of mark in the University,
and which, besides Lord Lansdowne, Henry
Brougham, Sydney Smith, Francis Jeffrey, Francis
Horner, Walter Scott, and Lord John Russell, in-
cluded Lord Palmerston's own brother, Sir William
Temple. But he himself stated about two years
ago in one of his speeches, " I passed three years of
my youth in studying at the University of Edin-
burgh, and I will frankly own, without disparage-
ment to any other seat of learning at which I had
the fortune to reside, that I enjoyed greater ad-
vantages in the acquirement of useful knowledge
and sound principles during the three years' resi-
dence in Edinburgh than I possessed at any other
place." Certainly, the influence of Stewart's training
was at a later period apparent in the strong deter-
mination expressed by Lord Palmerston to maintain
those principles of government of which Huskisson
was the exponent. So long as Huskisson remained
in the Cabinet he felt certain that these doctrines
would be honoured; when Huskisson was ejected
from the Duke of Wellington's Ministry on purely
personal grounds he too seceded, because he had
no guarantee, he said, that these doctrines would
have the weight to which they were entitled. We
may add that it must have been in Stewart's class-
room that a phrase which he often turned to good
account in his speeches, and on one memorable
occasion with most brilliant effect, first caught his
fancy and left upon it an indelible impression—
" The fortuitous concourse of atoms." Having been
inoculated at Edinburgh, where he remained three
years, with these liberal views and his inkling of
philosophy, he turned southward again to the Uni-
versity which Pitt represented in Parliament, and
which was at that time the chief school of thought
in England. Almost all his political contemporaries
who took a leading position, whether in the Whig or
in the Tory ranks, were. Cambridge men. If Byron,
Coleridge, and Wordsworth are to be classed among
our greatest poets, it would appear that in other de-
partments than that of politics Cambridge had, at
the beginning of the present century, a pre-eminence
over the sister University of Oxford. Lord Palmer-
ston, who had in the meantime succeeded to his title
through the death of his father, entered at St. John's
College in 1803, and worked in good earnest for
academical success at a time when it was not usual
for a nobleman to present himself for any but an
honorary degree.
The Temples were a family predestined to rule.
Within the space of 50 years Macaulay has counted
among the sons and grandsons of the Countess
Temple alone, and she died in 1752, three First
Lords of the Treasury (Geo. Grenville, W. Pitt, and
Lord Grenville), three Secretaries of State, two
Keepers of the Privy Seal, and four First Lords of
the Admiralty. Although Lord Palmerston belonged
to a different branch of the Temple family, he too,
whose father had been a Lord both of the Admiralty
and of the Treasury, looked forward to political
life, and, in 1806, immediately on the death of Pitt,
offered himself to the University of Cambridge as a
candidate to represent it in Parliament. He was
opposed, on this occasion, by Lord Henry Petty,
who had become Chancellor of the Exchequer in
room of the " heaven-born Minister," and who •
thus came to the election with a weight of Minis-
terial influence which his rival found it vain to
withstand. That rival, however, was not to be dis-
couraged. He presented himself again as a candi-
date in 1807, when he failed of success by only two
votes ; and in 1811 he tried his fortune a third
time, in this case attaining the object of his ambi-
tion so unmistakably that he continued to represent
the University until, in 1831, he gave mortal offence
to hhowever,constituents
byhefound
joining the Whigs. In the
meantime,
his way into Parlia-
ment, at first through the pocket borough of Bletch-
ingicy, and then through the borough of Newport,
i
in the Isle of Wight. Nor was he long in Parlia-
ment before he enjoyed the sweets of office. The
notorious Ministry of " All the Talents" soon fell
to pieces, and, as if in mockery of that splendid
coalition, a Ministry succeeded to power headed by
a nobleman whose natural incapacity was aided by
a natural indolence, andiwhose indolence was aggra-
vated not only by sickness, but also, to make
assurance doubly sure, by continual opiates, under
the influence of which he would fall asleep over his
papers. Not able to touch animal food, not caring
to open his mouth, often found sleeping at his desk,
ment that
it would be one of the marvels of govern

The fears which for months past the state of
Lord Palmerston's health has excited have at length
been realized. The great statesman is no more.
Many who saw him towards the close of last Par-
liament, broken and bent by a recent attack of ill-
ness, shook their heads and whispered to each other
that he could never meet another Parliament. That
fear has been quickly and fatally verified. The
bulletins we have published will have prepared most
persons for the sad news whicliwe have to announce
to-day, that Lord Palmerston died yesterday morn-
ing, at a quarter to 11. -
There never was a statesman who more truly re-
presented England than Lord Palmerston. His
name is now added to that splendid but very short
list of Ministers, from Walpole to Pitt and from
Pitt to Peel, who in times of great difficulty have
rendered England prosperous at home and famous
abroad, and who, while obtaining place from the
Court, derived their chief power from the country.
Pitt, properly speaking, belonged to the last century,
and there have been but three men in the present
century who attained to the same enviable position.
The first was Canning, a great spirit, but greater
in what he devised than in what he accomplished ;
for no sooner had he reached the pinnacle of power,
and excited the brightest hopes of the nation, than,
sick at heart, he fell before the intrigues of rivals,
leaving it to others to avenge his death and to pro-
secute his policy. After Canning, two statesmen
from among his colleagues, the one his rival the
other his disciple—Peel and Palmerston—gradually
rose to the highest offices in the realm, and won, as
only great characters win, the sweet voices of the
multitude. They have this in common—both were
trained in the Tory camp, both forsook the tradi-
tions of Toryism, both have been decried as the most
inconsistent statesmen that ever lived. Yet no two
men could be more unlike, and the inconsistency of
each was so different, that what in the one was a fail-
ing in the other was a virtue. Sir Robert Peel gave up
his principles ; Lord Palmerston merely relinquished
his party. Less sociable than Palmerston, and less
capable of forming new alliances, Peel clung to the
Tories while rejecting their dogmas, and compelled
them again and again to follow a course which they
had learnt from his own lips to regard as the road
to destruction. Free and frank, of a jovial nature,
hail fellow with good men and true of every rank
and politicians of every shade, Lord Palmerston was
less fettered by party ties, and, so the objects dearest
to his heart were attained, cared little whether the
men with whom he sat on the Treasury benches
were styled Whigs or Tories, Liberal-Conservatives,
or Conservative-Liberals. his very consistency in
this respect has been denounced as a fault. It has
been said that he was constant only in the retention
of office ; that he was fixed only to the Treasury
bench ; that his one principle was that of the Vicar
of Bray. He was a member of every Government
since 1807, with the exception of those years in
which Sir Robert Peel, and subsequently Lord
Derby, held the reins. He began life as a Pittite ;
gradually he developed into a Canningite ; when the
Whigs carne into power he renewed his youth ; when
they had fallen into dizrepute he expanded into a
Conservative-Liberal; afterwards he stood forward
as the Tory chief of a Radical Cabinet ; and he
zlosed his wonderful career at the head of a Minis-
try with the motto of " Rest and be thankful." In
all these changes there may be traced a consistency
of purpose, which, when the clue to it is perceived,
becomes entitled to our highest respect; and this
clue is furnished in the fact that, whatever changes
come over the domestic or colonial policy of Eng-
land, her foreign policy is unalterable. That policy
is, indeed, more or less modified by the circum-
stances of the time, by the amount of our resources,
by the temper of our allies, by the spirit of the
nation ; but in principle it is always the same.
Our domestic reforms are for the most part carried
in the face of a formidable Opposition ; but our
foreign policy is supported by overwhelming majo-
rities, and by a national enthusiasm which nothing
can resist. We have never a dispute about the prin-
ciple; it is a tradition based on the universal senti-
ment of patriotism, and handed from generation to
generation—from Cabinet to Cabinet. The Minister
of such a policy may through all changes adhere to
rho Piv-aauly-berietlir he can: nothing need remove
him from it but his personal relations with its other
occupants; and he who, like Lord Palmerston, can
preserve his seat there through the vicissitudes of
half a century, is indeed a great man as well as a
great statesman.
Henry John Temple was the third Viscount Pal-
merston, and was born at Broadlands, near Romsey,
on the 20th October, 1784. Although an Irish Peer,
his descent is traced to Saxon earls anterior to the
Conquest. In the arms of his family may be seen
the eagle displayed of that Leofric, Earl of Mercia,
who is remarkable chiefly for his treatment of his
wife, the Lady Godiva. Lord Palmerston, however,
bears a nearer resemblance to another and less my-
thological member of his family, of whom his father
was the heir male— Sir William Temple, the friend
of William 111., the patron of Dean Swift, the author
of that triple alliance which bound England, Sweden, j
and the States-General to prevent France from en-
tering the Netherlands, and, singularly enough, a
statesman who, while he remained in public life, was
always on the winning side, and had the credit of
all the popular acts of the Government after the
Restoration. M. Capefigue, in noting this resem-
blance, has been pleased to observe that the chief
point of similarity between the Minister of William
111. and the Minister of Queen Victoria lies in the
utter hatred which both had to everything French,
and thinks that on one occasion, as he was dining
with Lord Palmerston, he made a terrible homethrust
when he recalled the unpleasant fact that Sir William
Temple, in bequeathing his property to his grand-
daughters, stipulated that they should not marry
Frenchmen. It gave M. Capefigue considerable
satisfaction that Lord Palmerston could only laugh
at the remark ; it never entered into his head that
the statement is quite unfounded, there being no
mention of such a condition in the will of Sir W.
Temple. Not from Sir Wm. Temple, however—it
was from Sir John Temple, younger brother of the
diplomatist, and the same of whom Archbishop Shel-
don said, "He has the curse of the Gospel, for all
men speak well of him," that Lord Palmerston was
descended. The first viscount of the name was the
grandson of Sir John Temple, and was created a
peer in 1722. Little more has to be said of him than
this,—that his wife was regarded as a perfect model
of conjugal affection, her will being quoted with
admiration in the Annual Register. The second
viscount, the father of our great statesman, was
grandson of the first, and, like his grandmother, has
been regarded as a pattern of conjugal tenderness.
The epitaph which he wrote on the death of his first
wife is said to be the most pathetic ever penned ;
and written at a time when our poetry had reached
its lowest ebb, when all was artifice and platitude,
phrase and frippery, it must be admitted that the
lines have a genuine tenderness which it is almost
itnpossible to find in other compositions of the period.
To his father, indeed, Lord Palmerston owes much
of that taste for literature which furnished many a
happy illustration in his speeches in Parliament, be-
sides enabling him in his younger days to join with
Croker and Peel in assailing the Whigs with literary
satire. Of his father's lively humour the late Lord
Palmerston himself gave au amusing illustration in
one of those anecdotes with which he, of all men,
knew best how to parry the questions of political
opponents or the entreaties of troublesome deputa-
tions. He said that it was his father's habit, in
placing wine before his guests, to say, " Here is
claret, gentlemen ; here is sherry ; but I cannot an-
swer for them ; I can'only give you the word of my
wine merchant for then. Here is port, however, for
which I can give my own word,—it is very good
—I made it myself." If be was a bad judge of
wine, he was considered a good judge of pictures
He collected in Broadlands a gallery of paintings
which, at the beginning of the century, had a high
repute, and Sir Joshua Reynolds, in bequeathing to
his friends the works of bis own easel unsold at the
time of his death, gave to the Earl of Upper Ossory
the first choice and to Lord Palmerston the second.
He enjoyed the gift of his artistic friend ten years,
and, dying in 1802, left by his second wife, who did
not long survive him, two sons and two daughters.
Of these sons, Henry John Temple, the elder, is the

the Duke of Portland contrived to keep a Cabinet
together for more than a couple of years, were we
not too well acquainted with the truth of Oxen-
stiern's commonplace regarding the wisdom of rulers.
It was in this singular Ministry, whose great achieve-
ment was the Waleheren disaster, that Lord Palmer-
ston first entered upon office. He entered on the
office which his father had long enjoyed, as a Lord
of the Admiralty ; and when, on the quarrel of