The Earl of Donoughmore died on the 12th of September, at Palmerstown House, county of Dublin, in the sixty-fourth year of his age. He was lord-lieutenant of the county of Tipperary, and had a seat in the House of Lords as a British peer with the title of Viscount Hutchinson, of Knocklofty, but will be better remembered in history as the gallant Colonel Hutchinson, who was one of the parties implicated in the celebrated escape of Lavalette, in the year 1815, shortly after the restoration of the Bourbons. He is succeeded in his extensive estates in the south of Ireland by Viscount Suirdale, his lordship's son by his first wife, the daughter of the Lord Mountjoy, who lost his life in the royal service during the Irish rebellion of 1798.
William Nicol, F.R.S.E., died in Edinburgh on the 2nd of September, in his eighty-third year. Mr. Nicol commenced his career as assistant to the late Dr. Moyes, the eminent blind lecturer on natural philosophy. Dr. Moyes, at his death, bequeathed his apparatus to Mr. Nicol, who then lectured on the same subject. His contributions to the Edinburgh Philosophical Journal were various and valuable; the more important being his description of his successful repetition of Döbereiner's celebrated experiment of igniting spongy platina by a stream of cold hydrogen gas; and his method of preparing fossil woods for microscopic investigation, which led to his discovery of the structural difference between the arucarian and coniferous woods, by far the most important in fossil botany. But the most valuable contribution to physical science, with which his name will ever be associated, was his invention of the single image prism of calcareous spar, known to the scientific world as Nicol's prism.
The Rev. G. G. Freeman, the well-known English missionary, died on the 8th of September at the baths of Homburg, in Germany, of an attack of rheumatic fever. Mr. Freeman had only a little while before returned home from a visit to the mission stations in South Africa, and his latest important labor was the writing of a volume, in which the social, spiritual, and political condition of South Africa was depicted. Mr. Freeman was fifty-seven years of age. He was born in London, educated at Hoxton Academy, and after many years of successful devotion to his profession in England, he proceeded in 1827 to Madagascar, under the direction of the London Missionary Society, and for nine years labored there with eminent energy and success. The share he had in translating the Scriptures, in preparing school-books, and in superintending the mission schools, cannot be recited in this brief sketch, but was such as greatly facilitated the progress of the Christian religion, till, in 1835, the queen proscribed Christianity, and virtually expelled the missionaries from the island. Mr. Freeman then went to the Cape of Good Hope, where he became much interested in South African missions, but the ill health of his wife compelled his return to England, where he arrived about the end of 1836. New duties and labors now awaited him; he had to confer with the directors, and to visit the constituents of the London Missionary Society in all parts of the kingdom. The want of an Institution for the education of the daughters of missionaries having been strongly felt, he took a leading part in the establishment of a school for that purpose in the village of Walthamstow, where he had become connected with the congregational church. In 1841, the loss of health having obliged the Rev. William Ellis to relinquish his official connection with the London Missionary Society, he was appointed foreign secretary, and appeared at the annual meeting of that year in that capacity, and shared with Dr. Tidman the labor of reading the report. How faithfully he fulfilled the duties of that office at home, and at what risk of health and life he sought, in a late voyage to the Mauritius, and journey throughout Southern Africa, to inform himself and the Society of the true state of affairs, both in Madagascar and Caffraria, his publications will show.
James Richardson, the enterprising African traveller, died on the 4th of March last, at a small village called Ungurutua, six days distant from Kouka, the capital of Bornou. Early in January, he and the companions of his mission, Drs. Barth and Overweg, arrived at the immense plain of Damergou, when, after remaining a few days, they separated, Dr. Barth proceeding to Kanu, Dr. Overweg to Guber, and Mr. Richardson taking the direct route to Kouka, by Zinde. There it would seem his strength began to give way, and before he had arrived twelve days' distance from Kouka, he became seriously ill, suffering much from the oppressive heat of the sun. Having reached a large town called Kangarras, he halted three days, and feeling himself refreshed he renewed his journey. After two days, during which his weakness greatly increased, he arrived at the Waddy Mallaha. Leaving this place on the 3d of March, he reached in two hours the village of Ungurutua, when he became so weak that he was unable to proceed. In the evening he took a little food and tried to sleep—but became very restless, and left his tent supported by his servant. He then took some tea and threw himself again on his bed, but did not sleep. His attendants having made some coffee, he asked for a cup, but had no strength to hold it. He repeated several times, "I have no strength;" and after having pronounced the name of his wife, sighed deeply, and expired without a struggle about two hours after midnight. Early in the morning, the body wrapped in linen, and covered with a carpet, was borne to a grave four feet deep, under the shade of a large tree, close to the village, followed by all the principal Sheichs and people of the district.
Those who have read—and very few persons of middle age in this country have not read—the interesting and somewhat apocryphal narrative of Captain Riley's shipwreck on the coast of Africa and long experience of suffering as a slave among the Arabs, will remember the amiable British Consul of Mogadore, in Barbary, Mr. William Willshire. While Capt. Riley, Mr. Robbins, and others of the crew of the "Commerce" (which was the name of the American ship that was wrecked), were in the midst of the great desert, in utter helplessness, Mr. Willshire heard of some of them, and came to their relief with money and provisions, and paid, himself, the price of their ransom, redeeming them from an otherwise perpetual captivity. He took the afflicted and worn-out Americans to his own house at Mogadore, made them, after long suffering and privation, enjoy the luxuries of a bed and the comforts of a home, his wife and daughters uniting with him to alleviate their sufferings, and he afterwards supplied them with the necessary money and provided them the means of a return to their own country. Riley, in the latter part of his life, settled in Ohio, where the name of Willshire has been given to the town in which he lived, and we believe our government made some demonstration of the general feeling of gratefulness with which the American people regarded Mr. Willshire's noble conduct in this case. Mr. Willshire was a model for consuls, and was kept constantly in service by his government. Several years ago he was appointed to Adrianople, where he died suddenly, at an advanced age, on the 4th of August.
The Paris papers announce the death at the age of seventy-six, of M. J. R. Dubois,—director successively of the Gaîté, the Porte-Saint-Martin, and the Opéra, under the Restoration,—and author of a great variety of pieces played in the different theatres of Paris thirty or forty years ago.
Gustav Carlin, the author of several historical essays, and a novel founded on Mexican legends, died in Berlin on the 15th of September, aged sixty-nine. He resided several years in New-York, we believe as a political correspondent of some German newspaper.