21 



ABERDEEN, EARL OF. 



ABERNETHY, JOHN. 



Ijorse, he concealed his situation from those about him till lonp after 

 the action was over, when he fainted through weakness and loss of 

 blood. The injuries which he had received, and which he thus nobly 

 bore in silence, were past the skill of surgery : he was immediately 

 conveyed to the ship of the Admiral, Lord Keith, and there lingered 

 till the 28th, when he expired. His body was interred iu the burial- 

 ground of the Commandery of the Grand Master, under the walls of 

 the Castle of St. Elmo, near the town of La Valetta, in Malta. A 

 monument has since been erected to his memory, by order of the 

 House of Commons, in St. Paul's Cathedral. Sir Ralph Abercromby, 

 whose private character was as excellent as his public merits were 

 great, left four sons. Hig widow was created Baroness Abercromby, 

 with remainder to her issue male by her late husband. A pension 

 of 2000?. a year was also settled upon Lady Abercromby and the three 

 succeeding inheritors of the title, of whom the present baron is 

 the last. 



"ABERDEEN, GEORGE HAMILTON GORDON, EARL OF, was 

 born January 28, 1784, and succeeded to the title on the death of 

 his grandfather in 1802 : he was created Viscount Gordon in the 

 peerage of the United Kingdom in 1814, and it is by this title that he 

 sita in the House of Lords. After completing his education, the Earl 

 of Aberdeen spent some time in travelling. Both in Greece and Italy 

 he paid considerable attention to the study of the remains of anti- 

 quity ; and he was one of the original members of the Athenian 

 Club. These circumstances gave the point, such as it was, to Lord 

 Byron'a notice, in his ' Hours of Idleness,' of " the travell'd thane 

 Athenian Aberdeen." The result of the earl's antiquarian pursuits 

 was given to the world in an ' Introduction ' to Wilkins's transla- 

 tion of Vitruvius's 'Civil Architecture,' 1812; and this 'Introduction' 

 having been revised and extended, his lordship published as a distinct 

 work in 1822 under the title of 'An Inquiry into the Principles of 

 Beauty in Grecian Architecture.' In 1813 the earl was sent to Vienna 

 on a special mission, and he was instrumental in obtaining the adhe- 

 sion of Austria to the alliance against France, the preliminary treaty 

 for which he signed as the representative of England, at Tbplitz, in 

 October of that year. As the English Ambassador-Extraordinary to 

 the Emperor Francis I., he shared in the negociations which preceded 

 and followed the return of Napoleon to France from Elba. Subse- 

 quently to Ms retirement from the embassy, the Earl of Aberdeen 

 was known in politics as a steady adherent of the tory party, and on 

 the formation of the Duke of Wellington's first administration in 

 January, 1828, the earl accepted the office of Secretary of State for 

 Foreign Affairs, which he held till the resignation of the ministry in 

 November, 1830. His first act in office was to express his disapproval 

 of the policy which led to the destruction of the Turkish fleet at 

 Navarino; and the passage in the king's speech (January 29, 1828), 

 which termed that an " untoward event," and expressed the deter- 

 mination of the government to uphold the independence of Turkey, 

 has been generally attributed to him. In this his first term of office 

 it fell to the lot of the earl to assist in establishing the independence 

 of Greece, and to acknowledge the " constitutional monarchy " of 

 France as the result of the revolution of 1830 : and the prompt and 

 frank recognition of both of these measures did much to secure the 

 good-will of those countries. In the short-lived administration of Sir 

 Robert Peel (November 1834 to April 1835) the Earl of Aberdeen 

 held the office of Colonial Secretary. When Sir Robert Peel was 

 restored to office, September 1841, the Earl of Aberdeen again re- 

 ceived the appointment of Foreign Secretary, and continued to hold it 

 until the defeat of the ministry in July 1846. His administration of 

 foreign affairs may be said generally to have been marked by a 

 cautious pacific policy, but at the same time there i> no other evidence 

 than the heated language of political opponents to show that he was 

 ever neglectful of the honour and dignity of the country. In the 

 dispute with the United State? on the Oregon question he took a firm 

 yet conciliatory position, and the credit of the satisfactory settle- 

 ment, of what at one time threatened to be a serious difficulty, is due 

 to him. At a very early period, as is shown by his despatch to Lord 

 Heytesbury, the English ambassador at St. Petersburg, dated Oct. 81, 

 1829, the Earl of Aberdeen had suspected if he had not clearly pene- 

 trated the designs of the Emperor Nicholas upon Turkey; and it 

 was probably with a view more effectually to counteract those designs, 

 that he laboured, during his possession of office, to strengthen as 

 much as possible the alliance with Austria. From his long connection 

 with Sir Robert Peel, the Earl of Aberdeen had come to be regarded 

 not merely aa the exponent of that statesman's views on foreign 

 policy, but as, next to the Duke of Wellington, his chief supporter and 

 representative in the House of Lords; and on the death of Sir 

 Robert, the earl was selected as the president of the great public 

 meeting of hi friends and admirers held at Willis's Rooms, July 23, 

 1850. From this time the Earl of Aberdeen may be regarded as 

 virtually the head of what was known as the Peel party ; and on the 

 defeat of the Derby ministry, in December 1852, he was entrusted 

 with the formation of the new administration. This he effected by 

 inducing a number of the leaders of the whigs to unite with his own 

 followers, thus forming a coalition ministry which lasted rather more 

 th;m two vears, and is likely to remain long a theme of aa much con- 

 troversy as other coalition ministries, whose acts and policy have so often 

 exercised the pens and tongues of political writers and debaters. As 



at every other period of his political life, the earl was as prime 

 minister earnestly bent on the maintenauce of peace ; yet, despite of 

 his best efforts, " the country drifted into war," and a war, the mag- 

 nitude of which few probably better appreciated than himself. But 

 Lord Aberdeen, even after war was officially declared, clung to an 

 early restoration of peace, and rested for that purpose on his favourite 

 expedient of the Austrian alliance, more than was probably wise or 

 justifiable at any rate more than the public liked to see ; and this, 

 with the general feeling that the war was not being prosecuted with 

 the vigour which its importance and the character of the country 

 demanded, deprived the Aberdeen ministry of all support, except 

 from their immediate followers ; so that when the earl resolved to 

 treat Mr. Roebuck's motion (January 29, 1855) for an inquiry into the 

 state of the army before Sebastopol, as a vote of want of confidence, 

 and Lord John Ruasell seceded from the Cabinet, the motion was 

 carried by a majority greater probably than ever before defeated the 

 most unpopular ministry. The earl at once resigned, and has not 

 during the remainder of 1855 taken any prominent part in public 

 affairs. The war overturned all the earl'a calculations, and arrested 

 moat of those measures of social and political improvement, which he 

 had taken an early opportunity of announcing aa the basis of his 

 system of policy. Yet his administration will be remembered as 

 having effected an important change in the government of India ; 

 largely and beneficially modified the exclusive system of Oxford 

 University ; carried several measures tending to improve the con- 

 dition of the people; extended still further the principles of free 

 trade; and laid the foundation of a better system of admission to, 

 and improved management of the civil service of the country. 



The Earl of Aberdeen has never been eminent as an orator. His 

 influence in the House of Lords has been due to his high personal 

 character, administrative ability, and social position. AVith foreign 

 potentates, with whom he has been brought into contact aa a minister, 

 he has always been a favourite. Since the publication of his work on 

 Grecian architecture, the Earl of Aberdeen haa not publicly evinced 

 any partiality for literature or its practitioners; and his government in 

 rather badly distinguished by his having appropriated to decayed 

 members of aristocratic families the larger portion of the fund pre- 

 vioualy set apart for the reward of persons eminent in literature aud 

 science. His lordship, however, holds various honorary offices usually 

 bestowed on the patrons of intellectual pursuits : he is Chancellor of 

 King's College, Aberdeen, President of the British Institution, aud a 

 governor of Harrow School and the Charterhouse ; and for some years 

 he was President of the Society of Antiquaries. 



ABERNETHY, JOHN, a distinguished surgeon, born in the year 

 1763-4, either at the town of Abernethy in Scotland, or at that of 

 Deny in Ireland, for each claims the honour of having been the place 

 of his birth. He died at Enfield, after a protracted illness, on the 

 18th of April, 1881, in the sixty-seventh year of his age. In early 

 youth he removed from the place of his birth, and resided with his 

 parents in London, in which city his father was a merchant. He 

 received the elements of grammatical and classical instruction at a 

 day-school in Lothbury, and also attended school at Wolverhamptou. 

 At the usual age he was apprenticed to Sir Charles Blick, surgeon to 

 St. Bartholomew's Hospital, under whom, find especially in the wards of 

 that hospital, he had ample opportunities of acquiring a thorough 

 knowledge of his profession, of which he availed himself with dili- 

 gence. Competent judges, who observed at this early period the 

 qualities of his mind and his habits of study, predicted that he would 

 one day acquire fame, if not fortune. Though he appeared before the 

 public early aa an author, and though his very first works stamped 

 him as a man of genius, endowed with a philosophical aud original 

 mind, yet he did not rise into reputation nor acquire practice with 

 rapidity. In 1786 he succeeded Mr. Pott as assistant-surgeon to St. 

 Bartholomew's Hospital, and shortly afterwards took the place of 

 that gentleman as lecturer on anatomy and surgery. For a consider- 

 able time he had but few pupils, and he was at first by no means a 

 good lecturer, his delivery being attended with a more than ordinary 

 degree of hesitation. On the death of Sir Charles Blick, hia former 

 master, he was elected surgeon in hia room ; and subsequently 

 St. Bartholomew's Hospital obtained under him a reputation which it 

 had never before acquired. Ou the 9th of January, 1800, Abernethy 

 married Miss Ann ThrelfalL 



Abernetby was a pupil of John Hunter, and the earnestness and 

 delight with which, at an early age, he received the lessons of this 

 his great master, were indications of the soundness of his own judg- 

 ment. It was from this profound and original thinker, who exercised 

 an extraordinary influence over the understanding, tastes, aud pur- 

 suits of his young pupil, that Abernethy derived that ardent love of 

 physiology, by the application of which to surgery he was destined to 

 convert a rude art into a beautiful science. He made himself 

 thoroughly acquainted with anatomy, but it was that he mi^ht bo 

 admitted into the then new world of physiology ; he studied structure, 

 but it was that he might understand function ; and the moment he 

 had obtained a clear insight into these two sciences, he saw the appli- 

 cations of which they were capable to the treatment of disease. 

 From that moment he looked with contempt on the empiricism then 

 almost universal iu surgery; he ridiculed its jargon ; he exposed the 

 narrowness of its principles, if it be at all allowable to designate by 



