68 Major-General Sir H. C, Rawliiison — Ohituary Notice. [April, 



The Philological Secretary read an obituary notice of the death 

 of Major-General Sir H. C. Rawlinson, Bart., G-. C. B., &c. 



Tiie Council regret that it has fallen to them to report the death of 

 Major-General Sir H. C. Rawlinson, Bart., G.C.B., F.R.S., D.C.L., 

 Oxon., LL.D., Cantab, and Edin., K.L.S., and an Honorary Member of 

 this Societ}' since the year 1853. 



Henry Creswicke Rawlinson was born at Chadlington, Oxfordshire, 

 in 1810, and was educated at Ealing School. In 1827, when only seven- 

 teen years of age, he landed in India, and was attached to the Bombay 

 Army till 1833. He was then deputed on political dut}^ to Persia, 

 where he was actively employed till the rupture of diplomatic relations 

 with that country in 1839. On his return to India he was appointed 

 British Agent at Kandahar, which he successfully held from 1840 to 1842, 

 during the disasters of the Kabul war. 



In 1844, he returned to political duties in Persia, where in the year 

 1851 he rose to the rank of Consul-General, from which post he retired 

 in 1855, only to be made, on his return to England, a Crown Director 

 of the East India Company. In 1856, he retired from Indian Service 

 with the title of K.C.B., and, after a short period spent in the Council 

 of India, he was sent in 1859, as Envoy and Minister Plenipotentiary, to 

 Teheran, where he remained till 1868. In that year he returned to 

 England and was again appointed a Life Member of the Secretary of 

 State's Council. In 1891, he was created a Baronet " in recognition of 

 his distinguished services to the State, stretching over a long period of 

 years." 



In addition to the above-named English honours, Sir Henry 

 Rawlinson was a " Chevalier of the Order of Merit " of Prussia, an 

 *' Associe etranger " of the French Institute, and a Foreign Honorary 

 Member of the Vienna Imperial Academy of Sciences. He was also a 

 Knight of the First Class of the Persian Order of the Lion and the Sun. 



To Members of this Society his claims to literary recognition are 

 well known. As a political writer his authority on the Eastern ques- 

 tion has long been established by the series of articles commencing with 

 a paper on that subject in the Quarterly Bevieio for 1849, and culmina- 

 ting in his England and Russia in the East, which appeared in 1876, 

 and is still looked upon as a work of first class importance. The 

 seventeen years spent in Persia and Turkish Arabia were, however, 

 not devoted to politics alone. As a linguist Henry Rawlinson stood in 

 the first rank of the brilliant band of discoverers of the middle of this 

 century. His numerous papers, commencing in the year 1846, on the 

 antiquities of the East, and more especially on the cuneitorm inscrip- 



