47 



CHARACTER OF SIR THOMAS PICTON. 



In private life Sir Thomas Picton was kind and 

 generous, warm in his friendships, but strong in his 

 enmities. He had a strict sense of honour, which 

 would not admit of the slightest misconstruction or 

 prevarication ; it was to him one straight line, from 

 which he never swerved, even in thought. The ar- 

 tificical forms of society were in many instances too 

 nearly allied to deception to meet his approbation ; 

 and this made his manners too unstudied and natural 

 to be polite in the modern acceptation of the term. 

 In him, there was no sacrifice of opinion, or tacit 

 acquiescence for the sake of obtaining favor. He 

 was generous almost to a fault, and his purse was 

 open to all who came with a tale of distress. A 

 gentleman who knew Sir Thomas Picton intimately, 

 and who does not hesitate in acknowledging that he 

 was himself an object of his munificence, observes, 

 that " he was the most generons of men ; the 

 warmth of his heart or the extent of his liberality 

 knew no bounds ;'' but this only appeared to those 

 beneath him, together with the poor and miserable 

 — to these he was ever kind and considerate ; while 

 in rank and presumption he was unbending and un- 

 compromising. But perhaps the extraordinary 

 degree of feeling possessed by Sir Thomas Picton, 

 cannot be better illustrated than by the following 

 anecdote, which came under my own observation. 



I was one day riding with him on horseback a 

 short distance out of town, when an Irish beggar- 

 woman, with a child in her arms, came by the side 

 of his horse, and commenced asking alms in the 

 usual dolorous tone of this class of mendicants. 

 Our horses were walkmg, and we were deeply en- 

 gaged in conversation. I happened to know this 

 woman's face, and had always strongly suspected 

 that she was an impostor ; so, seeing the general 

 fix his eyes upon her with some degree of attention, 

 I imagined that he was about to relieve her^ and 



