TORONTO OP OLD : 243 



S admirably preserved. (When seen on horseback at parades or reviews soldiers always 

 averred that he greatly resembled "the Duke." Dr. Henry, in " Trifles from my Portfolio " 

 1(ii. 111.) thus wrote of him in 1833 : "When we first dined at Government House, we were struck 

 by the strong resemblance he bore to the Duke of WeUington ; and there is also," Dr. Henry 

 continues, "a great similarity in mind and disposition, as well as in the lineaments of the face. 

 In one particular they harmonize perfectly — namely, great simplicity of character, and an utter 

 dislike to shew any ostentation.") On the four sides of its granite pedestal are to be read the 

 following inscriptions : in front : John Colbornb, Baron Seaton. Born mdcclxxviii. Died 

 MDcccLXiii. On the right side: Canada. Ionian Islands. On the left side: Peninsula. 

 Waterloo. On the remaining side : In memory or the distinguished career and stain- 

 less CHARACTER OF FlELD MARSHAL LORD SeATON, G.O.B., G.C.M.G., G.C.H. ThIS MONUMENT 



IS ERECTED BY HIS FRIENDS AND COMRADES. — Accompanying the family of Sir Jolin Colbome 

 to their place in the Church at York was to be seen every Sunday, for sometime, a shy- 

 mannered, black-eyed, Italian-featured Mr. Jeune, tutor to the Governor's sons. Tliis was 

 aftenvards the eminent Dr. Jeune, Master of Pembroke College at Oxford, a great promoter of 

 reform m that University, and Bishop of Lincoln. Sir John himself was a man of scholarly 

 tastes ; a great student of history, and a practical modern European linguist. — Through a 

 casual circumstance, it is said that fuU praise was not publicly given, at the time, to the 

 regiment commanded by Sir John Colbome, the 52nd, for the peculiar service rendered by it at 

 the battle of Waterloo. By the independent direction of their leader, the 52nd made a sudden 

 flank movement at the crisis of the fight and initiated the final discomfiture of which the Guards 

 get the sole praise. At the close of the day, when the Duke of Wellington was rapidly con- 

 structing his despatch. Colonel Colbome 'was inquired for by him, and could not, for the 

 moment, be found. The information, evidently desired, was thus not to be had ; and the 

 document was completed and sent off without a special mention of the 52nd's deed of " derring- 

 do." — During the life-time of the great Duke there was much reticence among the military 

 authorities in regard to the Battle of Waterloo, from the fact that the Duke himself did not 

 encourage discussion on the subject. All was well that had ended well, appeared to have been 

 his doctrine. He once checked an incipient dispute in regard to the great event of the 18th 

 of June between two friends, in his presence by the command, half-jocose, half-earnest : 

 "You leave the Battle of Waterloo alone !" He gave £60 for a private letter written by himself 

 to a friend on the eve of the battle, and was heard to say, as he threw the document into the 

 fire, " What a fool I was, when I wrote that ! " Since the death of the Duke, an officer of the 

 52nd, subsequently in Holy Orders, has devoted a volume to the history of "the' 52nd, or Lord 

 Beaton's Regiment ; " in which its movements on the field of Waterloo are fully detailed. And 

 'Colonel Chesney in his " Waterloo Lectures ; a Study of the Campaign of 1815 " has set the 

 ■great battle in a new light, and has demolished several English and French traditions in relation 

 'to it, bringing out into great prominence the services rendered by Blucher and the Prussians. 

 The Duke's personal sensitiveness to criticism was shewn on another occasion : when Colonel 

 Gurwood suddenly died, he, through the police, took possession of the Colonel's papers, and 

 especially of a Manuscript of Table Talk and other ana, designed for publication, and which, 

 had it not been on the instant ruthlessly destroyed, would have been as interesting probably 

 ■as Boswell's. — On Lord Seaton's departure from Canada, he was successively Lord High Com- 

 missioner of the Ionian Islands, and Commander-in-Chief in Ireland. He then retired to his 

 ■own estate in the west of England, where he had a beautiful seat, in the midst of the calm, 

 rural, inland scenery of Devonshire, not far from Plympton, and on the slope descending 

 -southward from the summits of Dartmoor. The name of the house is Beechwood, from the 

 numerous clean, bold, magnificent beech trees that adorn its grounds, and give character to the 

 neighbourhood generally. In the adjoining village of Sparkwell he erected a handsome school- 

 house and church : and here his remains were deposited on his decease at Torquay in 1863. 

 Mrs. Jameson's words in her " Winter Studies and Summer Rambles," express briefly but 

 truly, the report which all that remember him, would give, of this distinguished and eve:- 

 memorable Governor of Canada. "Sir John Colbome," she says incidentally, in the Introdm - 

 tion to the work just named, " whose mind appeared to me cast in the antique mould of 

 chivalrous honour ; and whom I never heard mentioned in either Province but with respect 

 and veneration." Dr. Henry in "Trifles from my Portfolio," once before referred to, uses 



