which he experienced at a narrative of sufferings endured by Welsh settlers in Patagonia, as well as by other emigrants to Canada, led to his foundation of the emigration inquiry office, still a useful government institution. A glance at the index to Hansard for this session shows the number and variety of the questions connected with his department which engaged his attention. The strain proved excessive, and a stubborn contest for East Denbighshire with his former opponent, Sir W. W. Wynn, which Osborne Morgan won by the narrow majority of only twenty-six (7 July 1886), led to a severe illness, from which he never quite recovered. But his apparently inexhaustible energy showed itself throughout the sessions of 1887–92. During three months of 1888, and the sessions of 1889–92, and in the parliament of 1892–5 he was alternately chairman of the standing committees on law and trade.
In July 1892 he again won East Denbighshire, this time by the substantial majority of 765 against his former opponent. But he felt his health unequal to the resumption of office, and accepted Gladstone's offer of a baronetcy. Nevertheless, his activity in the house continued, especially on all matters affecting Wales, and he was unanimously chosen leader of the Welsh party. He died on 25 Aug. 1897, and was buried in the churchyard of Llantysilio near Llangollen. His last public appearance, a week before his death, was at an eistedfodd at Chirk, at which he delivered a speech on the effects of music upon character.
Osborne Morgan was, physically as well as mentally, a Celt. He had a Celt's ardent and imaginative disposition. His Newdigate prize, his passion for Tennyson's verse, and his temperament combined to fasten upon him at Oxford the name of 'the poet.' His ambition to develop Welsh education was part of a larger ambition of endowing Wales with the qualifications to stand by the side of 'the predominant partner' as a nationality with a character and aims of its own. His Celtic sympathies threw him, at the outset of his career in parliament, into the cause of Irish disestablishment, and at its close into that of Irish home rule. Yet he had been 'brought up to look with equal horror on democracy and dissent.' The change came with Oxford, and through the group of liberal thinkers whom he there made his friends.
Like many of Kennedy's pupils, Osborne Morgan wrote elegant Greek verse, as is attested by two compositions published in the 'Sabrinæ Corolla,' 1890, pp. 76, 363. He retained to the last his fondness for his school, of which he became a governor, and for classical literature, and in the year of his death (1897) published, with a dedication to Gladstone, a translation into English hexameter verse, perhaps a reminiscence of dough's influence, of the 'Eclogues of Virgil,' which was very favourably received. He contributed various articles on current topics to the 'Contemporary,' 'Fortnightly,' and 'Nineteenth Century' Reviews. He was an excellent raconteur and brilliant conversationalist. He married in 1856 Emily, daughter of Leopold Reiss of Eccles, Lancashire, who survives him. He left no issue.
A portrait is in the possession of his widow, painted by Edgar Hanley and exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1882. Two engraved portraits were published by Morris & Co. in 1869 and 1897 respectively.
[Historical Register of the University of Oxford, 1888; Foster's Alumni Oxonienses, 1715-1886; Lincoln's Inn Admissions, 1896; Hansard's Parliamentary Debates; Daily News and Manchester Guardian, 27 Aug. 1897; Professor Lewis Campbell 'On some Liberal Movements of the last Half Century' in the Fortnightly Review for March 1900; private information.]
MORLEY, WILLIAM HOOK (1815–1860), orientalist and lawyer, born in 1815, second son of George Morley of the Inner Temple, distinguished himself in 1838 by discovering a missing manuscript of Rashīdudīn Jām‘ia Tawārīkh (see Elliot's History of India, iii. 10, and R.A.S.J. for 1839, vi. orig. ser.) He entered the Middle Temple on 12 Jan. 1838, was called to the bar in 1840 and in 1846, and in 1849–50 published a valuable digest of cases decided in the Supreme Courts of India (London, 2 vols. 8vo; new ser. vol. i. only, 1852). He was a trustee of the Royal Asiatic Society, and during the last year of his life also librarian; he published a ‘Catalogue of the Historical Manuscripts in the Arabic and Persian Languages’ in the possession of the society (London, 1854, 8vo). In 1856 he published a splendid folio, being a description of a planispheric astrolabe constructed for Shāh Sultan Husain Safavī. He also edited in 1848, for the Society for publishing Oriental texts, Mir Khwand's ‘History of the Atabeks of Syria and Persia,’ with a description of Atabek coins by William Sandys Vaux [q. v.]
His latter days were clouded by domestic distress, owing to the death of his wife. He died at 35 Brompton Square, London, on 21 May 1860.
