THE DEATH OF MR GLEIG.
Last month this Magazine lost one of the stoutest and stanchest of its friends. Men now getting old were unborn when he began to write in it, and his contributions lie thick in its pages up to the present year. During that long period, in which many a writer both began and ended his career in 'Blackwood,' Mr Gleig remained one to whom its successive editors looked as a personal friend, and, when counsel was needed, a trusty counsellor.
His father was the Right Reverend George Gleig, Bishop of Brechin, and primus of the Scottish Episcopal Church, who was ordained a priest one hundred and fifteen years ago, and consecrated a bishop eighty years ago. When he died in 1840, aged eighty-seven, he had long been eminent as a scholar and theologian, and his 'Papers on Morals and Metaphysics' were held in high esteem. He transmitted to his son, in increased measure, both his bodily and mental energy.
That son was born in 1796, and at fifteen was entered at Balliol College, Oxford. Robust, active, full of spirit and vitality, he was one of the youth of that time who felt most keenly the influence of the martial atmosphere which then pervaded the world. The prodigious career of Napoleon had filled the minds of the rising generation in England with ideas of war, not in its squalid aspect of ruin and devastation, as seen by the populations of invaded territories, but lit by a blaze of glory. And while that insatiate conqueror was led by his evil star into the stupendous campaign of Moscow, draining for it the manhood of Europe, which he squandered in the snows of Russia, our own general had by such steps as the Douro and Salamanca risen in the confidence of his countrymen, till his decisive victory at Vittoria destroyed the hopes of the French generals in Spain, and showed him as the commander who could be trusted to stem the devastating course of their master. Men of these clays cannot realise the steady and ardent enthusiasm which was felt by the young men of the time for Wellington, the champion of liberty against the great military tyranny which sought to overshadow the world. Gleig's abilities would have assured his success at Oxford; but no peaceful triumph was then so alluring to youths of his stamp as the prospect of serving under the English commander, and in 1813 he joined the army of Wellington in Spain as a subaltern in the 85th Regiment. Twelve years later, when the world had sunk into a period of long and deep repose, he wrote, in a country parsonage, the record of his own experiences of war under the great Duke. The book, under the title of 'The Subaltern,' first appeared in this Magazine in 1825, and obtained immediate and great celebrity; and one who reads it now will see that it was an excellent picture of war from the point of view of the subordinate actor, and, as such, remained perhaps unrivalled till Erckmann-Chatrian produced their remarkable studies of the wars of the Republic and the Empire.
Gleig's experience of actual conflict began very soon after he landed in Spain with the assault and capture of St Sebastian. A few days afterwards he beheld, for the first time, riding near him, the commander who continued to be for him, throughout his life, almost an
