STATESMEN. No. 242.

MR. ROBERT RICHARDSON-GARDNER, M.P.

FIFTY years ago in Cardiff there was born to a couple who exercised a small but useful industry in salt and fresh water, a son, who, though not the eldest, was soon discovered to be the most rising of the family. For to delicate natural taste, innate refinement, and high ambitions, he added an appearance and bearing which from early youth caused him to be reputed the gentleman of the family. He saw life through an insurance-broker's office in the city of London, then became a barrister, and first began to distinguish himself when, yet but thirty-two years of age, his martial bearing attracted the notice of the Hampshire Volunteers, who induced him to become their captain and leader. Not long after this he married the only daughter of the wealthy brewer and blind man's friend, Mr. Gardner, whose name he thenceforth assumed, and has since borne as an addition to his own and a supplement to some others by which he has been known to his intimates on playful occasions. The soft delights of matrimony did not, however, interfere with his stern resolve to win martial renown, and he pursued his military career with so much distinction that to those who have known him in these latter days he is celebrated as Colonel Richardson-Gardner, F.S.A. To other fields also did his country call him. In 1866 he contested Windsor for the first, and in 1868 for the second time, without success. But, like all great captains, he had learnt in defeat how to achieve victory. In 1868, having meantime built many houses in the borough and procured voting tenants for them, and having shown himself a friend of the people by a liberal distribution of coals and pork pies, he was at last returned. It might have been supposed that one who so carries upon him the impress of Nature and Art's nobility, who had fed and housed the poor, and was known for a guardian of the supremacy of the Crown, would have been accepted, if not with enthusiasm, at least without detraction. But it was not so. His success only provoked the voice of envy; and so great indeed was the malice of his enemies, that even Baron Bramwell, who tried the petition, was betrayed into saying from the Bench that the Colonel had told a shuffling story, and acted as no just man and no gentleman would act. These carping criticisms notwithstanding, he was declared to be duly elected for the Royal borough, for which he has since sat with the best wishes of his tenants and the Mayor and Corporation. He is not a talking member of the House of Commons; but he gladdens it by his silent presence with fairly decent regularity, and gives an unwavering, unquestioning, and most creditable support to the Conservative cause, and all Conservative acts, deeds, and opinions.