The Sun.
London, England, 1848-09-25 00:00:00

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LONDON, MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 1848.

A melancholy catastrophe has just cast dismay
among the scattered Members of Parliament. We allude
of course to that occurrence which has been already
recounted in our columns, the details of which occupied
such a conspicuous position in our impression of
Saturday evening. The news has, by this time, tra-
versed the United Kingdom, and is now spreading
rapidly over the Continent. Long before these
printed characters can meet the eye of the reader he
will have known the particulars of the mournful in-
cident to which it bears reference ; he will have
known that on Thursday last, the 21st of September,
the dead body of WILLIAM GEORGE FR EDERICK
CAVENDISIT, commonly called Lord GEORGE
BENTINCK, the second son of the fourth
Duke of PORTLAND, was discovered near a
gate in Kennel Water Meadow, a meadow situ-
ated at a very little distance from his paternal
residence, Welbeck Abbey. To describe such a
calamity as this without uttering any remark what-
ever upon the noble personage who is deceased, would
be foreign to our disposition, the more so inasmuch
as we have never refrained, during his lifetime, from
reprobating his extravagances as a politician, or his
acerbity as an orator. We have spoken again and
again upon the blunders of his Parliamentary career,
we have criticised more than once the indecorous
rage of his personalities, we have laughed at
his follies, scouted his fallacies, and exposed
his misrepresentations. But the shadow of the
grave has suddenly gloomed over his head. The
young and ambitious Leader of the Opposition has
been stricken down by the hand of Death in the
very flower and ripeness of his manhood. His voice is
silent, his eyes are closed, and, after life's fitful fever,
"he sleeps well." It is a beautiful thought of CAR-
LYLE that " the dead are always holy." It is a thought
which has occurred to all of us before, but which
TnoatA.s CARLYLE was the first to summon from the
depths of his psychological philsophy and to present
to us visibly in written language—one of those
"jewels five words long" which TENN YSON has described
as "sparkling for ever on the stretch'd forefinger of
all Time." It is the thought which makes us tread
lightly in the death-chamber, and impels us, no
matter what may have been our animosities, our
quarrels., or our alienation, to speak gently and
even reverentially of the departed. There is no in-
consistency in all this ; for the cold breath of the
Destroying Angel blows away all those mists of
prejudice and clouds of passion which have hitherto
risen up from the dusty struggles of the world. The
presence of Death, like the Gorgon-face
of MEDUSA, transfixes our passions and petri-
fies our prejudices. Our judgment in the very
midst of its distortions, is, if one may so speak, trans-
figured into serenity. We are rapt upwards into a
higher atmosphere—we are no longer contemporaries,
we are posterity.
It is with this consistent reverence that we would
bid farewell to the departed, and breath a few sylla-
bles upon the
memory of Lord GEORGE BENTINCK.
We do so withet.
we acknowledge as much
at once—we do so with emotion, bscause there is in
every circumstance of his
imse a sadness, an abrupt-
ness, and a desolation,
such
as surprises even the
most unsympathising heart into mpathy. But we
lane sympathy for B EIVTINCK SOfr he was gallant !
He was gallant with the gallantarny oecthhe old Crusaders.
The voice of Chivalry found
and though he betrayed much a the °na extravagance hi bmof;
nienezmloyrteenx--
the knight-errant, that very extravagance
aggeration of daring, illustrated theg
dencies of his nature, and proved that
tendencies were in an eminent degree chivalr those
He was the knight-errant of Protection. Ab7ns.
cloned by all her ancient champions, derided,
insulted, spat upon, the Spirit of Protection found in
Lord G. BENTINCK a defender stout of heart, strong
of will, daring in enthusiasm, unconquerable in per-
severance. It was a strange thing—one of those
things which will he recorded among the chief mar-
vels in the history of the House of Commons—to see
a man who for twenty years had taken his seat al-

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