of a dandy regiment, and kept a prudent position in the rear. Fitzclarence had the impertinence to charge and break the enemy's line; for which he was broken himself, and sent to India." There he prepared himself by hard and honest work, for honourable mention in some future supplement to Walpole's Royal and Noble Authors. His Journey Overland from India has been pronounced "a masterpiece in its way"; and Miss Landon spoke of it as "one of the most interesting and able works of the time." This was prepared for the press by William Jerdan, and probably owes much of its finish and condensation to his practised hand. The Earl of Munster was also a contributor to the United Service Journal.
His studies in Oriental strategy, and the interest which he took in all matters connected with the East, led him to exert himself in the formation of the Royal Asiatic Society, of which he was one of the original members; he became in due course a member of Council; and was raised to the Presidency in 1841.
In 1842, he was unfortunately attacked by a cerebral disorder, and destroyed himself in a fit of insanity, on March 20th of that year, in the forty-ninth year of his age. At the time of this melancholy occurrence he was preparing for the press an Account of the Free Bands of Military Adventurers in the Middle Ages, and Memoirs of the Turkish Empire; an idea of the merits of which may be gained from his observations on "The Employment of Mahomedan Mercenaries in the Christian Armies," published at Paris, in February, 1827, in the 56th cahier of the Journal Asiatique.
I conclude with the distich, light-heartedly penned, with no foreboding of the future, by the exhibitor of the "Gallery,"—
"To one who can right well pen, sword, or gun stir—
Colonel Fitz-Clarence, Earl of song-famed Munster."[1]
XV.— LORD JOHN RUSSELL.
Maginn, who hated a Whig more bitterly, if possible, than a water- drinker, is rather severe on "little Johnny Russell," who with curling locks and fur-collared coat, may be imagined as reclining on a Ministerial bench, and meditating over the important and interesting contents of a Blue Book. Still, amid the absurd injustice of the illustrative remarks, we cannot but admit, that in citing the couplet : —
"When once he begins, he never will flinch,
But repeats the same note the whole day like a finch,—
and in attributing to the nascent statesman as his leading characteristics, "pride, pertinacity and frigidity, with a taste for attempting departments of literature foreign to his nature," the literary caricaturist accurately laid his finger on the most conspicuous failings of the present subject of the crayon of Maclise.
Professor Von Raumer, who visited England in 1835, was disappointed with the appearance of Lord John. "From the engravings of him," says
- ↑ "Monomia, sweet dwelling of song." See Fraser's Magazine, June, 1831, p. 556.
