"When the Duke of Leeds shall married be
To a fine young lady of high quality,
How happy will that gentlewoman be
In his Grace of Leeds' good company.
She shall have all that's fine and fair,
And the best of silk and satin shall wear;
And ride in a coach to take the air,
And have a horse in St. James's-square."
The poet was not, in this instance, a prophet; for the young lady proved any thing but happy in his Grace of Leeds's good company. She was divorced in 1779, and married immediately to Captain John Byron, by whom she had one child, the subject of the present notice. She survived the birth a year, dying 26th January, 1784. Her son by her former marriage became the sixth Duke of Leeds. On the 17th August, 1807, the Hon. Augusta Byron was married at St. George's, Hanover-square, to her cousin, Lieut.-Colonel George Leigh, of the 10th, or Prince of Wales's Light Dragoons, son of General Charles Leigh, by Frances, daughter of Admiral Lord Byron and aunt of Augusta. By this marriage Augusta had several children, some of whom survive her. She had been a widow for some time. Lord Byron is known to have entertained for his sister a higher and sincerer affection than for any other person. His best friends in his worst moments fell under the vindictive stroke of his pen, or the bitter denunciation of his tongue. His sister escaped at all times. "No one," he writes, "except Augusta, cares for me. Augusta wants me to make it up to Carlisle: I have refused every body else, but can't deny her any thing." One of the first presentation copies of Childe Harold was sent to his sister with this inscription:—"To Augusta, my dearest sister, and my best friend, who has ever loved me much better than I deserved, this volume is presented by her father's son, and her most affectionate brother." This attachment he has himself chosen to account for, but wholly without reason. "My sister is in town," he writes, "which is a great comfort; for, never having been much together, we are naturally more attached to each other." One of the last evenings of Byron's English life was spent with his sister, and to her his heart turned when, in the midst of his domestic afflictions, it sought for refuge in song. Those tender, beautiful verses, "Though the day of my destiny's over," were his parting tribute to her, and were followed by a poem in the Spenserian stanza, of equal beauty, beginning—
"My sister, my sweet sister! If a name
Dearer and purer were, it should be thine."
His will evinces in another way his affection for his sister. Nor was Augusta forgetful of her brother. She remembered him with that tender warmth of affection which women only feel, and publicly evinced her regard for him, by the monument which she erected over his remains in the little church of Hucknall. She bore, it may be added, no personal resemblance to her illustrious kinsman.
Lieutenant-General Count Jean Gabriel Marchant, grand Cross of the Legion of Honor, Chevalier of St. Louis, &c., &c., was born at Solbene, in the department of the Isere, in 1764, and in 1789 became an advocate at Grenoble. In 1791, he entered the army as commander of a company in the fourth battalion of his district, and in the long and illustrious period of the wars of the empire he served with eminent distinction. He was made a colonel on the 14th June, 1797, general of brigade in 1804, and general of division on the 31st December, 1805, after a series of brilliant services under Marshal Ney. He was in the battles of Jena, Magdeburg, Friedland, &c., and after the latter received the title of Count, and a dotation of 80,000f. He won new honors in Russia and Spain, but after the overthrow of his master, so commended himself to Louis XVIII., as to be confirmed by him in the command of the 7th military division. After abandoning Grenoble to Napoleon, he was tried by a council of war for unfaithfulness to the royal authority, but acquitted, and from 1816 he lived principally in retirement at his chateau of St. Ismier, near Grenoble, where he died the 12th of November, in the 86th year of his age.
Matthias Attwood, long well known in Parliament, died at his house, in Dulwich-park, on the 11th of November. He was in his seventy-second year, and had for some time been in feeble health, which induced him to retire from Parliament at the last general election, but he still occasionally attended to business in London till within a short period of his decease. Mr. Attwood entered Parliament in 1819, and from that time till 1847, continued to have a seat in the House of Commons. Mr. Attwood was one of the bankers of London, of the firm of Spooners and Atwood, and the founder of several successful joint-stock companies.
Cardinal d'Astrs, Archbishop of Toulouse, died near the end of September, at an advanced age. He was, it is said, the person who caused the bull of excommunication, pronounced by Pius VII. against Napoleon, in 1809, to be posted up on the walls of Paris. The bull was issued in consequence of the seizure by Napoleon of the States of the Pope, and their annexation to the French empire. The act of excommunication was followed by the arrest of Pius VII. through the instrumentality of General Radet.