Images de page
PDF
ePub

ness, favourably contrasting with the dreariness that the English soldiery are content to leave round their temporary abode.

The next year, 1855, he became commander of the forces in Ireland, and ex officio governor of the Royal Hospital at Kilmainham, so termed from having been a house of the Knights Hospitaliers, and since made by the Great Duke of Ormond into an Irish Chelsea. The institution was neglected, and had fallen into the irregular and torpid state to which all old foundations are liable, but under Lord Seaton it received a thorough revivification, an active and benevolent sub-governor was appointed, abuses were cleared away, matters were put on a new footing, and the pensioners lived under that mixture of discipline and kindness most congenial to the old soldier. The Royal Hospital forms a quadrangle, two sides of which are inhabited by the pensioners, their rooms arranged in long corridors, and the other two consist of the chapel and the governor's house. Every Sunday, after morning service, Lord Seaton might be seen inspecting the serving out of the day's ration to the old men, all arrayed in uniforms reminding one of prints of Corporal Trim, all moving like clockwork, as they marched in, saluted, ranged themselves in one line and their tins in another, each as straight as an arrow, received their portion, saluted, and marched out, their honest hearts warmed by the kindly looks and words of the governor, and his family.

As little can anyone who saw him forget that grand figure, the noble stature, erect and unbent by years, the fine head, covered by short, crisp curls of perfectly white hair, the bright limpid blue eyes, that seemed to have the capacity of looking into and at everything at once, with the alert steadiness peculiar to soldiers and sailors, the complexion, which to the last had the soft purity and fairness of skin of a child, and the peculiarly gentle mouth. The forehead was very high, with the same peculiar compression of the temples as in the Duke of Wellington, and which caused Lord Seaton to be often mistaken for him, in spite of being a much taller and larger framed man, with nothing of the aquiline mould, but with perfectly straight features, and a long, mobile upper lip. Hearing, teeth, alertness of bearing, elasticity of step, readiness of attention, and wonderful and minute accuracy of memory, all remained as perfect as in a young man, and those who have seen him riding at the head of his staff at Chobham, Dublin, or at the Curragh, have seen one of the finest remnants of the men who broke the pride of Napoleon.

On the Curragh of Kildare the experiment of Chobham was again carried out with equal success, and rendered camps an institution. It would be both invidious and aside from our

purpose to enter into questions whether to be thoroughly beneficial, and not irksome and demoralizing, they do not require the same masterly management, and the same considerateness that was to be found in their chief promoter. All that we would here say was that the Curragh was at that time a most useful place of instruction, both to the regular troops and to the Irish militia, who were also brought under training there, while the society of the place was rendered enjoyable to the officers and their wives by the kindly courtesy of the ladies of Lord Seaton's family.

One of these is no longer with us, and we therefore venture to say a few words of her doings during this stay in Ireland. When Lord Seaton arrived at Dublin, early in 1855, the embarkation of troops for the East had left a wretched multitude of wives and children unprovided for at every garrison town, and especially at Dublin. Immediately his second daughter, the Honourable Cordelia Colborne began to organise means of enabling them to support themselves. Employment had to be procured, ladies to be stirred into assisting, means to be raised, and with but 207. in hand, what was called the Crimean Shop was set on foot; with what infinite labour only those can guess who know the incapacity of the ordinary soldier's wife. Work had to be begged, devised, invented, and when procured to be overlooked and made fit to be seen, quarrels had to be composed, religious suspicions lulled, impostures examined, gossip prevented, sometimes by reading aloud to the assembled workers, but only such books as did not arouse the suspicion of the Roman Catholics, since an alarm of this kind would have led to their instant secession, starving though they were. The distrust of the priests was so entirely disarmed that they always gave cordial assistance in all cases of needful inquiry into the characters or the assertions of the motley object of her care.

For months the work was carried on with private orders, and only a few pounds in the treasury; but after a time orders from Government for soldier's shirts were obtained, and at last through Miss Ellen Barlee's exertions in London and the good judgment of Mr. Sidney Herbert, the principle was established that army clothing ought to be made-up by soldier's wives, and Miss Colborne's difficulties were so far lessened that she was sure of work, and had only to make her workers perform it up to the stern mark of the authorities, no easy task when the most destitute were uniformly the least able to use a needle.

The transport of the troops to India threw fresh loads of the wretched on her hands, but without exhausting her energies, and for these five years she might almost have been called the providence of the soldier's wives and widows of Dublin; while

she also diligently taught a Sunday School in the great hall of the hospital, for the children of the pensioners. The affection of the poor women and the old men was most unexpectedly shown by their presentation to her of a silver inkstand, subscribed for in the smallest imaginable sums, of course without the knowledge of any of the family. And in 1860, when the period of Lord Seaton's command had ceased, and the original Crimean Shop had become a permanent and prosperous establishment, as a branch of army-clothing work, the ladies who formed the superintending committee insisted on changing the name to the Seaton Needle-work Association, in memory of its commence

ment.

Soon after his return to England, Lord Seaton received the appointment of Field-Marshal, and he was also within the next year given the colonelcy of the rifles, on the death of the Prince Consort, and also of the 2d Life Guards. Thus had he risen to the highest grade in the army, without purchase of a single step, solely by personal merit, and by distinguished service. For the next two years his health remained unbroken, and he threw his usual energy into improvements on his estate, as well as in the quantity of business that his colonelcies brought upon him. The power of finding interest and occupation, and absence of all tedium or weariness in one who had led so varied a life were as remarkable as the undimmed eye, erect form, and the memory such as is hardly equalled in youth. Even when in January, 1862, a severe attack of illness had come on, which lasted many months, and caused intervals of acute suffering, his cheerful patience, interest in all around, and command of all his faculties, remained perfect, and he seemed partially recovering when in the summer of that same year, 1862, his beloved daughter Cordelia was taken from him by a sharp, sudden attack of illness. The bereavement was exceedingly bitter, for she had been his companion and helper, and though ever devoted to works of charity among the poor, she was still more precious among the charities of home, and her ready sympathies, her depth of thought and extent of reading, and diligent self-cultivation, rendered her such a companion that the loss could only be softened by the sense that the separation could be but brief.

The shock made no material difference in his condition, and there was no air of the feebleness of old age about him, no bending, no decay, but the same affectionateness, the same serenity and sweetness, the same quiet depth of dutiful trust and undemonstrative devotion that had been his through life, and thus he continued, his strength of constitution having somewhat rallied, until the spring of 1863, when an attack of bronchitis

came on, and he died at Torquay on the 17th of April, 1863, in his eighty-fifth year, having as we believe left a deep impress of himself wherever he went, both as a soldier and as a man.

To a character of manly gentleness and most unusual humility and modesty, he added the truly brave man's fearlessness of responsibility and great resolution, with all the fire and enthusiasm that make the soldier, together with the inspiration that forms the general; perfect coolness in trying circumstances, and authority that never failed to be felt even when scarcely exerted. We have seen what manner of soldiers were made by that guiding hand. Would that we could more completely depict one so great and so good!

286

ART. II. Catalogue of the Second Special Exhibition of National Portraits, commencing with the reign of William and Mary, and ending with the year 1800. On loan to the South Kensington Museum. London: Strangeways and Walden. May 1, 1867.

[ocr errors]

THE interest and mental pleasure awakened in the minds of those who go to see a portrait gallery differ in many points from the feelings experienced by the visitors to any other collection of pictures. The crowds who flock to our own National Gallery, to the Louvre, or to the yet brighter attractions of Florence and Rome, are urged thither by many and varied impulses. The man who takes a genuine pleasure in the noble art of painting, the real amateur, is jostled by the mob of those who come only to see and to be seen-worse even, come merely that they may say they have been there. But the connoisseur and the ignorant alike may find pleasure in such a collection as that held this year at South Kensington. Noble works of art are to be found among it; but the man, if there be such a man, who can contemplate a portrait by Sir Joshua, and a sign-post daub with equal satisfaction or equal indifference, may still find great interest within these walls. And let no one think slightingly of the collection as an exhibition of art, because it is merely a portrait gallery. A portrait may be, sometimes is, a noble example of the work of consummate ability. Portrait painting,' it has been well said, 'may be to the painter what the practical 'knowledge of the world is to the poet, provided he considers 'it as a school by which he is to acquire the means of perfection in his art, and not as the object of that perfection.' How vast the difference between the memorial of a man, when the resemblance is preserved to us by the hand of genius, or mimicked by incapacity, may be seen by comparing the William Hunter of Chamberlin, and the William Hunter of Reynolds, both within this collection. The first is a picture which every one would, but for the name of the person represented, pass by without a glance: the second bears the stamp of real power. Great names, indeed, as well as great works abound on the walls; the portraits of the well-known, the noble, the lovely, as well as well-known and noble and lovely pictures. 'If perfect music unto perfect words' be, and who can deny it, the highest form of poetry, the portraits of the fairest and the highest, depicted by those who could appreciate all that was elegant and excellent, must be among the highest forms of painting. And the deeper,

[ocr errors]
« PrécédentContinuer »