return to your several homes, and take with you my warmest thanks for this early manifestation of your good disposition towards me, and my best wishes for your prosperity and happiness. God bless you all." His Lordship concluded under evident emotions, honourable to his heart, and amidst the applause and blessings of the multitude. The people afterwards insisted on drawing his carriage through the streets of Ashbyde-la-Zouch; which they did, amidst the often and enthusiastically repeated cry of "Long live the Plantagenet! the Hastings! Long live the race of King Edward!" At Belton (where His Lordship visited the tomb of his fathers), at Melbourne, at Castle-Donnington, and at Loughborough, his reception was equally flattering; and at Leicester the Mayor and Corporation waited on His Lordship with their congratulations, and remained with him a considerable time.

In his subsequent endeavours, however, to recover for the Earl the estates which had formerly supported the title, Mr. Bell did not meet with the success which had attended his efforts to establish the claim to the title itself. The difficulty was increased by the circumstance of the Marquis of Hastings having sold many of those estates. The Earl being, therefore, still dependent on his profession, in March, 1821, obtained the rank of Commander, and was appointed to command the Chanticleer, in which he proceeded to the Mediterranean. During his absence, on December 13. he was appointed Governor of Dominica, and he was sworn into that post at a Privy Council held at Carlton-house, March 28. following. He held the government several years; but then, in consequence of misunderstandings with other authorities in the island, resigned, and returned home. On the 24th of May, 1824, his Lordship was promoted to the rank of PostCaptain and on the 14th of August following, was appointed to command the Valorous, in which he again proceeded to the West Indies. From repeated illness, (arising from the climate, which, as before stated, had been fatal to his two elder brothers,) His Lordship was compelled to relinquish the com

mand, and went to New York, from whence he arrived as passenger in a merchant-ship in May, 1828.

His Lordship's death took place on the 9th of December, 1828, at Green-Park, Youghall, the residence of his son-inlaw, Captain Henry Parker, R. N. He was in the fiftieth year of his age.

By his first lady, who has been already mentioned, the Earl had issue, 1. Lady Frances-Theophila-Anna, born in 1805, and married in 1822, to Henry Parker, Esq., Commander, R. N.; 2. Lady Selina-Arabella-Lucy; 3. The Right Honourable Francis-Theophilus-Henry, now Earl of Huntingdon, born in 1808; 4. Lady Arabella-Georgina; 5. John-Armstrong, who died an infant; 6. the Honourable GeorgeFowler; 7. Lady Louisa; 8. the Honourable Edward-Plantagenet-Robin-Hood; 9. . . . .. ; and 10. a son born March 26. 1820, five days after whose birth the mother died, on Hampstead-heath, near London.

The Earl married, secondly, September 28. 1820, ElizaMary, eldest daughter of Joseph Bettesworth, Esq., of the Isle of Wight, and widow of Alexander Thistlethwayte, Esq.

Mr. Bell described Lord Huntingdon as qualified for public business by "strong natural sense, and solid judgment, combined with habits of attention. His character," he adds, "is formed on the strictest principles of honour, and the warmest feelings of humanity; and as, in his early profession, he was always brave and generous, so in every domestic relation is he exemplary, unostentatiously religious, and nobly hospitable, the most affectionate of fathers and husbands, a social and elegant companion, a humane master, and a steady friend.”

With the exception of a few paragraphs from "The Gentleman's Magazine," the foregoing memoir has been derived from "The Huntingdon Peerage," by the late Mr. Henry Nugent Bell.

337

No. XXVI.

MAJOR ALEXANDER GORDON LAING.

In addition to our feelings of deep regret for the death of this enterprising traveller, it is painful to reflect, that all attempts hitherto made to penetrate central Africa, visit Timbuctoo, and transmit to Europe some authentic information respecting that celebrated city, have been invariably defeated by some fatal disaster.* Listening to the clanking of the chains which bind Africa in European fetters, we need not, indeed, wonder that her swarthy inhabitants should view all strangers with jealousy, and suspect every foreigner who intrudes into their dominions of some sinister design; and more particularly that they should detest white men, and hear the name of Christian with abhorrence.

Major Laing was the eldest son of Mr. William Laing, A. M., and was born at Edinburgh the 27th of December, 1794. His father, one of the most popular classical teachers of his day, having for many years had an academy in the New Town of Edinburgh, young Laing received nearly the whole of his education under the paternal roof; indeed, all that valuable portion of his learning which went to prepare him for the university he received directly from his father.

Under such guardianship, and possessing, as he did, a quick intuitive perception, together with an ardent desire for the acquirement of classical knowledge, it might naturally be expected that he would make rapid progress in his academical studies, and accordingly, at the early age of thirteen, he entered the Alma Mater of his native city. Here those rays of * Except, perhaps, in the case of M. Caillé.

learning, which had been concentrating in the tyro, began to beam forth from the youthful alumnus, and that in so marked a manner, that the late respected professor of humanity, Mr. Christison, perceiving his taste for literature, frequently took occasion to point to this youth, in the public class, as one whose example it would be for the benefit of all his fellowstudents to imitate, though few might aspire to rival him.

With the view to habituate him to communicate that knowledge to others which he so eagerly acquired himself, Master Laing went, in his fifteenth year, to fill, for a time, the situation of assistant to Mr. Bruce, an eminent teacher in Newcastle-upon-Tyne; whence he returned to Edinburgh six months after, and entered upon a similar duty under his father, for which it will be seen he was in no small degree qualified, having been trained to tuition in a manner from his infancy.

At this period the habits and prospects of the embryo traveller had apparently assumed a settled and determinate form. Not that he had as yet taken any decisive or irretrievable step from which he might not recede without incurring the charge of fickleness-not that he was bound to pursue that precise path to which he had hitherto looked forward; but nothing appeared to be farther from his intention than the active, bustling, and adventurous life of a soldier, or the still more hazardous and arduous employment of a professional traveller in the unexplored regions of inhospitable Africa, amid the hordes of its selfish, treacherous, and uncivilised natives. Placed as he then was with the prospect, upon his father's retirement (an event which occurred a few years afterwards), of succeeding to his establishment and profession, which, though no doubt abundantly laborious, was calculated to yield a comfortable and respectable maintenance, he had thus every inducement to follow it out; or, with his predilection for study, if he did relinquish that pursuit, he was more likely to become a candidate for fame in the peaceful paths of science, than in the field where glory grows. The forlorn hope of African discovery was not then, perhaps, even dreamed of, much less contemplated.

Circumstances, however, occurred, which unsettled all his preconceived plans, and aroused in him that spirit of enterprise and adventure which characterised his after-life. It was his fate to emerge into the world at a time when the profession of arms was every where blended with that of the civilian; at a time when it was considered that every man in Britain was in duty bound to bear a sword or a firelock, and to know how to use it; and it may be safely said, that nowhere was that feeling more generally acted upon, or that duty better understood, than in Edinburgh, the birth-place of Alexander Gordon Laing. During that rage of martial fever, which few men and fewer youths escaped, Master Laing, having attained his seventeenth year, was, like most of his acquaintance, not invulnerable to its attack; he was, in 1810, appointed an Ensign in the Prince of Wales' Edinburgh Volunteers a corps which certainly had nothing fascinating about it, though it afforded the occasional opportunity of sporting a military uniform, and of displaying a stand of colours. This regiment was originally armed with pikes; and although it was afterwards provided with muskets, the men continued to be vulgarly, and rather ironically, denominated the pikemen.

It is well known that this introduction of Major Laing to martial life is not an isolated or solitary case: thousands who have since fought and bled in their country's cause, com menced their career as volunteers; for not only was the British army provided with officers, but the ranks of the regulars were in like manner supplied from that fruitful source. Captivated with the slight foretaste of military service which the volunteer system afforded him, the object of this memoir"would be a soldier," and would be nothing else: he could no longer submit to the restraints, or go through the monotonous routine, of school discipline; he, in fact, now regarded teaching with the most sovereign contempt, and finally gave it up at the termination of the second year, the latter of which was doubtless spent in a struggle between duty and inclination,