'A thorough Englishman at heart, he was none the less a fervent philo-Turk in politics and convictions, and latterly devoted his talents and his life to the defence of the integrity of the Ottoman Empire. As ready with his pen as with his sword, he was a clear, trenchant, vigorous writer, and could talk on paper as fluently and as cogently about ironclads and torpedoes as about the wrongs of the natives of Lazistan, the necessity of upholding the integrity of the Turkish Empire, and of circumventing the dark and crooked wiles of Russian diplomacy. Altogether Augustus Charles Hobart was a remarkable man—bluff, bold, dashing, and somewhat dogged. There was in his composition something of the mediæval "condottiere," and a good deal more of that Dugald Dalgetty whom Scott drew. Gustavus Adolphus would have made much of Hobart; the great Czarina, Catherine II., would have appointed him Commander-in-Chief of her fleet, and covered him with honours, even as she did her Scotch Admiral Gleig, and that other yet more famous sea-dog, king of corsairs, Paul Jones. It would be unjust to sneer at Hobart as a mercenary. His was no more a hired sword than were the blades of Schomberg and Berwick, of Maurice de Saxe and Eugene of Savoy. When there was fighting to be done Hobart liked to be in it—that is all. Of the fearless, dashing, adventurous Englishman, ready to go anywhere and do anything, Hobart was a brilliantly representative type. Originally endowed with a most vigorous physique, his constitution became sapped at last by long years of hardship and fatigue incident to the vicissitudes of a daring, adventurous career. He left Constantinople on leave of absence some months ago to recruit his shattered health, and spent several weeks at the Riviera. But it would seem that he experienced little relief from the delicious climate of the South of France, and it was on his homeward journey to Constantinople that this brave and upright British worthy breathed his last. The immediate cause of his death was, it is stated, an affection of the heart, a term covering a vast extent of unexplored ground. It would be nearer the truth to say that the frame of Augustus Charles Hobart was literally worn out by travel and exposure and hard work of every kind which had been his lot, with but brief intervals of repose, ever since the day, in the year 1836, when as a boy of thirteen he joined the Navy as a midshipman.'
It will be gratifying to Englishmen to know that their distinguished countryman received at his burial all the honours due to his high station and noble qualities. Such a concourse of people of all ranks and nations had never been seen at any public ceremony on the Bosphorus as that which, on July 24, accompanied the remains of Hobart Pasha to their last resting place in the English cemetery at Scutari, not far from the spot where a tall granite obelisk records the brave deeds and glorious death of those heroes who perished in the Crimean War.
FOOTNOTE
[1] It must be understood that both men and boats were disguised so as to resemble the ordinary fishing coasters about those parts.
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