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notice of his kinsman Lord Byron, who in the English Bards and 
Scotch Reviewers introduced his name with the well known line — 
“ The travelled Thane, Athenian Aberdeen.”* 
The public official career of Lord Aberdeen; his frequent occu- 
pation of high place in the administration of his country’s affairs ; 
his close intimacy with the most distinguished foreign public char- 
acters of his time, especially his friendship with Guizot and Prince 
Metternich ; his modification of opinion on many points of national 
policy, and of the high Tory principles with which he commenced life, 
which ultimately led to his heading a coalition ministry composed 
of politicians of all shades of opinion ; his correspondence with Dr 
Chalmers on Scottish ecclesiastical matters, and his endeavours to 
prevent that which was not prevented taking place, viz. the disrup- 
tion in the Scottish Established Church ; his constant and unde- 
viating advocacy of the policy of non-interference on the part of the 
British Government in continental relations, and his aversioiTto enter- 
ing into war with Russia, and the temporary unpopularity which 
from that cause he incurred with his own countrymen - these are all 
now matters of history, and belong to history, and we leave them to 
the historian.f As a late Fellow*of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, 
we look more to the man and the scholar than to the politician. To 
whatever part of Lord Aberdeen’s career we direct our attention we 
find everything that claims our respect and approval. As a landed 
proprietor his whole career was marked by energy, by skill, and great 
liberality. I am assured that on no property in Scotland were 
greater changes manifest under the direction of the proprietor than 
on his ; and all changes were improvements. Old persons, I am 
assured, in the neighbourhood of Haddo House, speak of once barren 
moors becoming cultivated farms — once sterile tracts of country 
becoming clothed with beautiful and valuable timber. A friend 
who was on a visit to him shortly before his death, exclaimed, after 
* In 1813 he returned to the Continent, and was our ambassador to the Aus- 
trian Court ; there he was long engaged in cementing the alliance formed against 
the power of Napoleon. He was present at many great battles, — Lutzen, Dres- 
den, Leipsic — Moreau died in his tent at Dresden; and it was his impressions 
received from these dreadful battles that gave Lord Aberdeen that great horror 
he entertained for war through life. 
t A kind friend informs me that the best account of Lord Aberdeen’s public 
life is a memoir by Comte de Jaumais, in the “Revue de deux Mondes.” But I 
have not had time or opportunity for consulting it. 
