Glasgow Courier. — 1863-12-17 (Glasgow, Strathclyde, Scotland)

DEATH OF THE EARL OF'ELGIN.  Our readers are no doubt prepared for the melancholyintelligence which arrived from India on Friday, that. the Earl of Elgin died there on the 20th November. The latest advices previously received reached only to the 14th ult., and at that date the Governor-General was fast sinking, and his recovery was seen to be hopeless, although, as it now appears, he lingered for a week longer. James Bruce, Earl of Elgin and Kincardine, G C. 8., &c., was born in 1811, and was educated at his father's seat in Fifeshire, and afterwards at Eton and Oxford. He graduated with high honours at Christ Church, Oxford, in 1833, and was subsequently elected a Fellow at Merton College. At the general election in August 1837 his Lordship (then the Hon. James Bruce) stood for the county of Fife on Conservative principles, in opposition to the then sitting member, Captain (afterwards Admiral) Erskine Wemyss, and polled a very respectable minority. Afterwards, in 1855, he was appointed Lord Lieutenant of Fifeshire, which office he held at the time of his death. In 1841 he married the only daughter of Mr. Cumming-Bruce of Kinnaird. M.P., and in the same year was elected to represent Southampton in Parliament; but in November following, by the death of his father, he succeeded to the family honours. In 1842 he was nominated to the Governorship of Jamaica, which he filled with great ability until 1846, when he was appointed, Governor-General of Canada. His administration, practically sanctioned by six successive Secretaries of State for the Colonies, was extremely popular, especially by his encouragement of the agriculture, commerce, or export manufacture of the province, as well as by the dignified neutrality which he maintained amidst the extremes of Canadian politics. Upon his return to England in 1855, his Lordship was entertained at a grand public banquet, at which men of all shades of polities were present. Lady Elgin having died in 1843, in 1846 his Lordship married Lady Mary-Louisa Lanibton, daughter of the Earl of Durham. He was sent as Plenipotentiary to China on a special mission in 1857, to settle the disputed points which had arisen out of Sir John BoWring's administration and the Chinese authorities. He held the office of Postmaster-Ger.eral under Lord Pahnerston in 1859-60, but in the latter year was again sent as Plenipotentiary to China, where, by a happy union of firmness and moderation, he succeeded in enforcing a treaty with the Emperor, by which China has been practically thrown open to European commerce; while, through his instrumentality, a similar treaty has been concluded with Japan. In 1861 he was appointed to succeed Lord Canning as Governor-General of India. The nature of the complaint by which this eniment diplomatist and statesman has been thus prematurely cut down is not certainly known. He is believed to have been suffering from heart disease ; and the London correspondent of the Manchester Guardian, in a letter published on Friday, says:—" Nobody 1 have asked among my Anglo-Indian acquaintances can tell me what could have taken Lord Elgin up a mountain pass 13,000 feet high, unless it were to visit a Moravian settlement perched somewhere about that height behind Simla. Lord Elgin had always a horror of extreme heat, and took the utmost precautions against it, little dreaming his life would be assailed by the opposite influence - a highly rarified and cold atmosphere. It is said not to be uncommon for Anglo-Indians, suddenly transferred from the relaxing atmosphere of the low country to the bracing air of the hills, to suffer at first from sudden quickening of the circulation; and even Sir Charles Trevelyan, a man of iron constitution, when he first visited the Neilgherries (at a height of 8000 feet only) was alarmed by the heightened rate of his heart-beat, and began, for the first time, to fancy something wrong in that organ."  A man named Holding was tried at Stafford on Wednesday for the murder of his two children. lie WAS acquitted on the ground of insanity, but he will, of course, be confined during her Majesty's pleasure. It was said that the poor fellow was passionately fond of his children, and his remark was, after he had killed them, that "they had gone to heaven before him."  The forcible possession taken of the Mid-Sussex and Midhurst Junction Railway by the Sheriff of Sussex a few days ago has been surrendered, and a satisfactoiy arrangement come to with the legal representatives of the Bishop of Oxford. The seizure, it appears, arose from some legal laches in not having answered a bill in Chancery respecting some land required by the company, the arrangements in respect of which have sine been effected.