May 28, I860.] OBITUARY.— STEPHENSON— STAUNTON. 141 



said to have regarded him with a sort of worship, and the 

 number of men belonging to the Stephenson school who have 

 taken high rank in their peculiar walk shows how successful he 

 was in his system of training, and how strong was the force of his 

 example. The feelings of his friends and associates were not less 

 warm. He has passed away, if not very full of years, yet very full 

 of honours. 



Sir George Thomas Staunton, Bart., d.c.l., was the only child of 

 the late Sir George Leonard Staunton, who is well known to the 

 public as having accompanied Lord Macartney as Secretary of the 

 first embassy to China, in the year 1792, and as the author of the 

 account of the Embassy which was published afterwards. He is 

 not less well known to those who are acquainted with the history 

 of British India as having, when Lord Macartney was Governor of 

 Madras, concluded the peace with Tippoo Sultan in the year 1782. 



Sir George was bom in May 1781, and died, after a succession of 

 paralytic seizures, in the summer of the last year. He succeeded 

 his father in the baronetcy in the year 1801. After his father's 

 death he was the last male representative of a very ancient English 

 family, the branch of it from which he was descended having been 

 established as landed proprietors in the county of Galway since 

 the middle of the 1 7th century. 



In the year 1792 he accompanied his father to China, under the 

 nominal designation of page to the Ambassador. For some time 

 before the embassy embarked, and during the voyage to China, he 

 had the opportunity of studying the Chinese language under two 

 native Chinese missionaries from the Propaganda College at Naples ; 

 and he soon mad© such proficiency in acquiring a knowledge of it, 

 as to be able to speak it with tolerable fluency, and to copy papers 

 written in the Chinese character. In this manner he became a 

 veiy useful appendage to the embassy. When the embassy was 

 presented at the Chinese Court, the Emperor inquired for the little 

 boy who could speak Chinese, conversed with him for some time, 

 and good-naturedly presented him with an embroidered yellow silk 

 purse for holding areka-nuts from his own girdle. 

 r On leaving China, Sir George L. Staunton engaged a Chinese 

 servant to accompany him to England, in order that his son, by 

 constantly communicating with him in Chinese, might keep up and 

 extend his knowledge of the language. 



In the year 1799, having received the appointment of Writer in 

 the factory of the East India Company at Canton, young Staunton 



VOL. IV. M 



