In 1796, Sir John Shore had introduced to him no less famous a personage than the future illustrious hero of Waterloo. On that occasion he remarked, that if Colonel Wellesley ever had an opportunity of distinguishing himself, he would do it greatly. It appears that Sir John was successful in such prophetic efforts; for he is related to have expressed a similar prediction in reference to Sir Robert Peel, when that eminent politician was entering upon his eventful and mutable career.
In 1797, Shore had the honor of an Irish peerage bestowed upon him; and next year relinquished his office, and sailed for England, when he was succeeded by the Marquis of Wellesley. The peaceful policy he had pursued then went out of fashion; it was condemned by his successors; and he took little concern in Indian affairs, though nominally a member of the Board of Control, and a privy-councilor of Indian appeals.
Long after returning to his native land for the third time, after a long, arduous, and successful career, when gliding quietly down the stream of life, Lord Teignmouth was nominated President of the British and Foreign Bible Society on its formation, a dignity, the duties of which he was well fitted to discharge. He was a man of the utmost philanthropy; and the spread of divine truth and light among nations and people sitting in darkness was an enterprise into which he was calculated to enter with an ardor assuredly not exhibited in his worldly pursuits, nor displayed in his poetic effusions.
The remainder of Lord Teignmouth’s private life was that of a refined and well-educated English gentleman. He appeared to his neighbors an amiable, estimable, and religious man, who could hardly have cared much for the pomp and power to which his usefulness had conducted him. He died in peace and honor, in 1833, leaving a name which is associated with industry, excellence, integrity, and humanity; not with high genius, indeed, but with all those qualities of heart and soul which give a man comfort and happiness during the days of his earthly pilgrimage, and impart consolation to his spirit in the hour when the lamp of life is flickering and about to expire.
[DEAN MILNER.]
In the middle of the last century, hard by a church dedicated to St. Mary—on a spot at that time considered somewhat rural in appearance, but since absorbed by the even then very populous town of Leeds—stood an humble, unornamented cottage, the outer door of which was studded with nails, like that of an ancient peel or a modern prison-house; and there a Yorkshire weaver, of the name of Milner, lived in comparative poverty. He is stated to have been characterized by sagacity, industry, and self-denial, but nevertheless had not proved particularly successful in the trade he followed; having besides, like many persons of a higher rank, suffered severely from the effects of the rebellion of 1745. Though not blessed with much intellectual culture, he had, as is common with his class, a full appreciation of the manifold advantages of a sound education; and vowed that he would not shrink from personal sacrifices that his children might at all events enjoy that invaluable possession. He was already the father of two boys, one of whom afterward attained worthy celebrity, when, on the 11th of January, 1750, Isaac Milner, the third of the family, first saw the light.
So many of those famous personages whose illustrious footprints have been traced in the foregoing pages, with a view to the encouragement of youths aspiring to excellence, could boast of gentle lineage and hereditary associations, that it is impossible not to experience something like a sensation of relief, and to feel the charm of variety, in turning to the career of a man without any such pretensions—not incited by the ambition of adding to a name that had been feared or respected in another day, and whose position in early life was not rendered easy by wealth, or “shone upon from the past.” Cradled under the roof of a cottage, apprenticed during seven years as a factory boy, and clutched from the loom by fraternal partiality, to be employed as usher in a provincial school, he raised himself by intellectual vigor and perseverance to places of honor and importance; and he was extolled among his great, learned, and reverend contemporaries, in his various characters of academic, historian, divine, and philosopher.