The Sun.
London, England, 1854-05-01 00:00:00

THE LATE MARQUIS OF ANGLESEY.

The death of the Marquis of Anglesey is an event
which, in the course of nature, might have been
looked for long before it really occurred, but it is
one which cannot be received otherwise than with
general regret, now that the blow has fallen at last.
He was born on the 17th of May, 1768, and died
on the morning of Saturday last, the 29th of April,
1854. Few men have enjoyed so long a term of
existence. Nor was this long life obscured by any
period of struggle—of subservience to the will of
others—of poverty. He had not, indeed, the
wealth of the Marquis of Westminster, nor the po-
litical influence of the Duke of Bedford, but he
was so fortunately placed that he could well dis-
pense with them, and remain honoured among all
most worthy of honour. The possession of a greater
or smaller fortune would have mattered little to him.
The first would not have added,' nor would the
second have detracted one jot from (the considera-
tion in which he was held. Providence is just to
all his creatures ; to some, money is given ; to
others, money's worth ; to few, both. Lord Angle-
sey had for his share rather the value than the
token, and remained to the last, although no
wealthy man, one of the most honoured members
of English society. Passing on to other and more
considerable matters, it can scarcely be denied that
his civil abilities were such as distinguished hits
among several successive generations of patrician
legislators. To the qualifications or position of a
statesman we believe that he never throughout h*
long career made any pretension. The field of battle
was a more appropriate scene for his exertions, and
for the display of his peculiar energies. He was
. .

-.1.141‘,..6, 1.36.111 I, • .•
sword first atVi•eil t o sunshine, never
more fearless or more chivalrous officer support th•
honour of his country than the brave old man to
whose memory we are now endeavouring to offer a

•
tribute of respect.
It is not, however, merely as a successful soldier
that Lord Anglesey will recur to the imagination
of the present race of Englishmen. He was one of
the few links between the present and the past. It
requires almost as violent a mental jerk for a man
who is now in the prime of life to realize to himself
the society of the Prince Regent, as it would be to
form a just appreciation of that period of French
history in which Louis XV. gave himself up to the
sway of Madame de Pompadour. If we want to
know anything of the period in which Edmund
Burke perorated to empty benches, and wrote
for immortality—when Sheridan burnished up
witticisms, and forgot to pay his debts—we
must painfully fag our way through histories
and contemporary memoirs, and collections of
letters, and gossip. Even then, it is probable that
a reader will only dress up the impressions of his
own time in the outward costume of another,

without mud to their essexce and reality. That
is all we could hope to do with the period when
George, Prince of Wales, first broke away from
his pedagogues, and. burst upon the town. Lord
Anglesey was a youth then—the contemporary of
that very dissolute Prince whom we buried. at
Windsor a quarter of a century ago—a jaded vo-
luptuary, exhausted with well-nigh seventy years
of luxury and self-indulgence. Let those who are
not in the habit of recurring to dates reflect that
George 111. came to the throne in the year 1760—
rejoicing, as he said—poor man !—in the name of
Briton ; that George, Prince of Wales, was born
in 1762, and the Marquis of Anglesey in 1768.
He was thus a year older than Napoleon Bona-
parte, and Napoleon died on the sth of May, 1821
—that is to say, 33 years ago—at the age of 52.
A mere juxtaposition of such dates should be
more eloquent to those who have followed the
records of history, or mixed in English society
during the present century, than any com-
ments of ours. To most of us the Diaries of Lord
Byron offer much agreeable information as to the
condition of London society when he was a young
man, just returned from the Levant. He tells us
of the dandies and exquisites of that time, and to
us they are historical figures. Now, these men•
were to Lord Anglesey mere boys. Ho had rounded
Cape Forty before they devised their waistcoats,
or established their impertinent canons of bad taste.
He had been a dandy when they were learning to
walk, or, more probable still, lay puling in the arms
of their nurses. He had become a man, and put away
childish things. He had won reputation with the
Duke of York in Flanders. He had married his
first wife ; children had been born to him ; and his
marriage had been dissolved. He had courted death
at the cannon's mouth—at the lance'spoint—byhthhe
sabre's edge, in order to shake off an existenc!w
mic
he thought insupportable, and.never, surely, did.
.all
Uon this point
give greater proofs. of sincerity.
of his history we will not enlarge, for certainly the
moment is ill chosen for reflecting upon failings
and weaknesses which occurred half a century back,
and were redeemed by half a century of devotion.
For ourselves, we confess
,we take pleasure in the
recollection of the old mans stately form as he was
to be seen amongst us, the very model—as it is ex-
pressed by the hac„kneHyeedwpahrs ansoet—oncclyof an officerhis. Ho
t
and a gentleman.
belonged a
race of nobles who have passed
to
away from among us ; ho was the last of the race,
and we shall know them no more. Your modern
English peer. is a sharp land agent or convey-
ancer, or a jocular, hair-splitting' law lord,. or,
if he be of a younger generation, he is a painful
devourer of blue-books—a man ready to talk
for three hours upon the condition of Central
Asia, or the statistics of dandelions in the
county of Salop ; but a nobleman he is not
in the sense in a hich Lord Anglesey was one.
Society may possibly have gained by the change—
we simplify notify the fact that a genus is extinct
of which Lord Anglesey was a brilliant example.
He was a man pre-eminently fearless and brave, but
ever courteous and of high-bred manner. It is
very true that nature had given him great advan-
tages of form and bearing, and the consciousness
of his own rank and position might have helped
him somewhat in the same direction ; but, inde-
pendently of all this, there was about him the
dignity of a kind heart, and of a man who
respects others because he respects himself.
There is not much more to be said. We lament
over the untimely fate of a young born child,
because, had its life been spared, the little creature
which lies before us so waxen and inanimate might
have done so much upon the stage of life, and won
for itself honour and a great name. In the pre-
sent case we fold ourselves' expressing a B°lT°w

which we most unfeignedly feel for the loss of a
man who had attained a greater age than we, his
survivors, can hope to reach. All who ever came
into contact with Lord Anglesey must share in the
regret ; but there is something more in the feeling
than considerations purely personal. In parting
with Lord Anglesey we part with an historical
period ; we have clone with George 111., and the
Prince of Wales, and the war of the Titans,
and George IV. A student of Alison would
have gone back to his library with a greater sense
of the realities of that great time from seeing
Lord Anglesey canter by in the public streets.
That was one of the men who had fought
out the great struggle. There may be other
survivors, but Lord Anglesey had this in com-
mon with the Great Duke,—that he was ever
before us. We saw him continually and every-
where. In the parks, in the streets, in assi.m-
blies and parties, or stretching down Long. Reach
in the Pearl, with his great mainsail set,
Lord Anglesey was ever about among his country-
men. More than this, he was always ready with
a kind act for those whom he could oblige, and with
a courteous denial for those who had asked from
him that which it was not in his power to give. If
he did not act the highest part in the world's his-
tory, all he did he did well, and that throughout
well-nigh fourscore years and ten. During a por-
tion of this period he occupied important employ-
ments, civil and military, and during all of it he
remained broadly in the world's eye. That world
is not ungrateful, for wherever the news of his
death is told all will be sorry that "old Lord An-
glesey is gone at last," and. have a kind word and
a kind thought for his memory. With him the old
race of nobles is well-nigh burnt out ; so of the
Paladins of the last war. Lord Beresford, Lord
Londonderry, and Lord Anglesey have not been
slow to -rejoin their great general, even in the grave.
—Times.