Recent Deaths.
The Brussels Herald announces that the aged naturalist, Savigny, has lately died in Paris. Little has been heard of him for some time in the scientific world. He was for thirty years a member of the Academy of Sciences, and was among the savants who accompanied Bonaparte to Egypt.
We noticed in the last International, the decease of Professor Pattison and Dr. Kearney Rodgers, two of the most eminent physicians and surgeons of New-York. Their deaths were succeeded in a few days by those of Dr. J. E. De Kay (a brother of the late Commodore De Kay), and Dr. Manley. Dr. De Kay was eminent as a naturalist and as an author. He wrote a brace of volumes about Turkey, many years ago, which were published by the Harpers, and two of the quarto volumes of the Natural History of the State of New-York, published by the Government. He was intimate with Cooper, Irving, Halleck, Paulding, Dr. Francis, and all the old set of litterateurs in the city. Dr. Manley (father of the distinguished authoress, Mrs. Emma C. Embury), was known at the beginning of this century, for certain political relations, for his connection with Thomas Paine in the last days of that famous infidel, and ever since as a conspicuous physician and high-toned gentleman—foremost especially in all proceedings which had the special stamp of New-York upon them, but not at all inclined to second any movement originating in New England. He had lately accompanied his accomplished and distinguished daughter to Paris, for the benefit of her health, which has suffered for three or four years.
Ernest, King of Hanover, died at his palace at Herrenhausen, on the 11th of November. The deceased prince—the fifth and last surviving son of George the Third, was born at Kew, on the 5th of June, 1771. In 1786, he accompanied his brothers, the Dukes of Sussex and Cambridge, to the University of Gottingen. In 1790, he entered the army, and served in the 9th Hanoverian Light Dragoons from that period until 1793, when he obtained the command of the Regiment. During the following year he took an active part in the war which raged on the continent, and in a rencontre near Toumay lost an eye, and was wounded in the arm. In 1799, he was created Duke of Cumberland, Earl of Armagh, and Duke of Teviotdale, with a Parliamentary grant of £12,000 per annum. In the latter part of 1807, he joined the Prussian army, engaged in the struggle against the encroaching power of Napoleon. On the defeat of the French by the allied forces, he proceeded to Hanover, and took possession of that kingdom on behalf of the English crown. In 1810, when the Regency question formed the subject of much public excitement, he entered into its discussion, and vehemently opposed the government on every point, as he opposed the claims of the Roman Catholics, the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts, and the Reform Bill. He uniformly supported in Parliament the opinions which guided the Pitt, Perceval, and Liverpool Administrations; while he was a warm patron of the Brunswick Clubs, and also held the office of Grand Master of the Orangemen of Ireland. In reference to his transactions with this body, many reports were circulated, imputing to him political designs and objects of personal ambition connected with the succession to the crown. On the night of the 31st of May, 1810, an extraordinary attempt was made on his life. While asleep, he was attacked by a man armed with a sabre, who inflicted several wounds on his head. He sprang out of bed to give an alarm, but was followed in the dark by his assailant, and cut across the thighs. On assistance arriving, Sellis, an Italian valet, who—it is alleged—had thus attacked the Duke, was found locked in his own room with his throat cut; and spots of blood were found on the floor of the passage leading to the apartment which Sellis occupied. The next day a coroner's inquest was held, and returned a verdict of felo de se. The Duke of Cumberland soon recovered from his wounds, but this event gave rise to much suspicion. In May, 1815, he was married to the third daughter of the late reigning Duke of Mecklenburgh-Strelitz, a lady who had been married twice previously, first to Prince Frederick Louis Charles of Prussia; and secondly, to Prince Frederick William of Solms-Braunfels The issue of this union was a prince, born at Berlin (where the Duke resided from 1818 to 1828), May 27, 1817—the present King of Hanover, known in England as Prince George of Cumberland. The Duke continued to reside in England from 1828 until the death of William IV., by which the Salique Law alienated the Crown of Hanover from that of Great Britain—bestowing it on the Duke at the same time. At the time of the suicide of Sellis, a statement was circulated to the effect that the Duke had murdered his valet; that, in order to conceal this crime, he had invented the story of a suicide, preceded by an attempt at assassination, and that the wounds which the Duke received were inflicted by himself. These accusations were negatived by evidence produced at the inquest; still the force of that evidence, and even the lapse of three-and-twenty years, did not prevent a revival of the imputation, and the Duke in 1833 thought it necessary to institute a prosecution in the Court of King's Bench, where the defendants were found guilty. On that occasion he himself was examined as a witness, and exhibited to the whole court, the marks of the wounds which he had received in the head, from the inspection of which it was inferred that they could never have been inflicted by his own hand. His titles were: Prince Ernest Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, and Teviotdale in Great Britain, and Earl of Armagh in Ireland, and King of Hanover. He was a Knight of the Garter, a Knight of St. Patrick, G.C.B.; and G.C.H. He was also a Knight of the Prussian orders of the Black and Red Eagle, a Field-Marshal in the British army, Chancellor and Visitor of the University of Dublin, a Commissioner of the Royal Military College and Asylum, a Fellow of the Royal Society and of the Society of Arts.
George Frederick, his only son, and only surviving child, succeeds to the throne of Hanover, but his blindness has suggested the precaution of swearing in twelve councillors, who, to attend in rotation, two at a time, will witness and verify all state documents to be signed by the king. "The new king," says the Morning Post, "entirely lacks the Parliamentary experience by which his father so largely profited; and we greatly fear that his education in the strictest school of English High Churchmanship is more calculated to insure his blameless life in a private station, than to fit him for the arduous career of a king in the nineteenth century."
The Times sketches the character of the deceased in dark colors, declaring that he "never concerned himself to disguise his sentiments, to restrain his passions, or to conciliate the affections of those who might possibly have been one day his subjects. Relying on the victory which had been apparently declared for absolutism, inflexible in his persuasions, and unbending in his demeanor, the Duke treated popular opinion with a ferocity of contempt which could scarcely be surpassed at St. Petersburgh or Warsaw. In his pleasures he asserted the license of an Orleans or a Stuart, and although in this respect he wanted not for patterns, yet rumor persisted in attaching to his excesses a certain criminal blackness below the standard dye of aristocratic debauchery. It is but reasonable to presume, that a man so universally obnoxious should have suffered, to some extent, from that calumny which the best find it difficult to repel, and practical evidence was furnished in certain public suits, that the probabilities against him fell short of legal proof. The impartial historian, however, will be likely to decide, that there was little in the known character of Prince Ernest to exempt him from sure suspicions touching what remained concealed."
The Chevalier Lavy, Member of the Council of Mines in Sardinia and of the Academy of Sciences in Turin, and described as being one of the most learned of Italian numismatists, died early in November. He had created at great cost a Museum of Medals, which he presented to his country, and which bears his name.
The Hon. Augusta Mary Byron, better known as the Hon. Augusta Leigh, died near the end of October, at her apartments in St. James's Palace, in the sixty-eighth year of her age. She was the half-sister of the author of Childe Harold. Her mother was Amelia Darcy, Baroness Conyers, the divorced Duchess of Leeds, whose future happiness was thought to be foretold in some homely rhymes which Dr. Johnson loved to repeat: