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EORGE EARL OF MACARTNEY was the only remaining son of George Macartney, and the only male descendant of his great-grandfather George Macartney who, removing into Ireland in the year 1649, settled near Belfast in the county of Antrim, where he acquired a large estate. This ancestor of the Earl was a captain of horse, surveyor general of the province of Ulster and, in the year 1678, served the office of high sheriff of the county of Antrim. At the Re, volution in 1688 he, at the head of his troop, proclaimed king William and queen Mary at Belfast, for which he was soon after obliged to fly into England, and was attainted in king James's parliament, held at Dublin in 1689; but being restored, on the settlement of Ireland, he returned to Belfast, where he soon after died. By his will, bearing date April 22, 1691, after making ample provision for his younger children, he constituted his wife executrix and guardian of his sons Chichester and George, from the latter of

which was descended the late earl of Macartney.

George Macartney, the subject of the present memoir, was born the 14th May, 1737, at the family mansion of Lissanoure. As the juvenile years of most individuals in the same class of society are passed pretty nearly in the same manner, and afford but little that can be considered as worthy of record, unless where some peculiarity in the plan of their education shall appear to have given a peculiar bias to future opinions and conduct, it may be sufficient to observe, with regard to young Macartney, that at an early period of life he was placed under the tuition of a clergyman, whose library, consisting chiefly of works in theology, was but scantily supplied with books of such a description as are usually most captivating to youthful minds, It seems however that he had a curious collection of tracts on heraldry, genealogy, and chronology, subjects that are but little calculated to engage the attention of a boy; but Macartney's

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fondness for books led him imperceptibly, from want of others, to the study of such as were to be had; and to the early exercise of his memory on those subjects, he used to attribute in a great degree, the peculiar retentive faculty for which through every part of his future life he was distinguished. At the age of thirteen he was admitted a fellow commoner of Trinity College, in the University of Dublin, and proceeded master of arts there in 1759. From Dublin he came to London, and was entered of the society of the Middle Temple, where he formed an intimacy with Mr. Burke, Mr. Dodwell, Mr. Bacon, and many other characters then rising into eminence; but, having no intention to study the law with a view to practice in that profession, he remained there but a short period before he had completed his arrangements for making the tour of Europe, on which he was resolved to pass a few years of his early life, in order to collect, by his own observations and the reports of others on the spot, whatever information was to be procured as to the physical strength and the resources of the several states of that continent, and the character and politics of their respective courts. This knowledge, added to that of the principles of the British constitution, he considered as the essential preparatives for the career of a public life which he already had in view, and which it was his intention to commence by endeavouring to procure a seat in the British House of Commons. In the course of his travels he made the acquaintance of several young noblemen of distinguished families and, among others, of Mr. Stephen Fox (the eldest son of the first, and father of the present Lord Holland) whom he had an opportunity of serving in a man

ner so essential to himself and his connections, that he was ever afterwards honored with the esteem and confidence of the old Lord and Lady Holland, and with the friendship of all the younger part of the family.

"The romantic country of Switzerland, and the unhappy and contented lot of its inhabitants at that time, were so congenial with the feelings of Mr. Macartney, who to his other accomplishments added a taste for poetry and music, that he determined to remain there for some time. At Geneva he was introduced to the acquaintance of the philosopher of Ferney, who invited him to his house, in which he passed several days greatly delighted with the society of this extraordinary man, with whom on his return to Europe he is supposed to have kept up a correspondence; this indeed appears from a letter of Captain Robert Jephson to Sir George Macartney, in the year 1775, requesting him to send a copy of his tragedy of Braganza to M. Voltaire, "whom," he observes," you have "cultivated more than any of our "countrymen since his retirement;" and he further adds, "I cannot so

entirely suppress the partiality of "an author as not to wish you may "add a word or two of undue influ

ence to your old acquaintance of "Ferney, to recommend the play to "his perusal."

"On his return to England he became an inmate of the Holland family, by whom he was introduced to the acquaintance of Lord Sandwich, then secretary of state for the northern department; and an arrangement was speedily concluded by these two friends to bring him into parliament for the borough of Midhurst, afterwards represented by Mr. Charles Fox. About this time the affairs of Russia had assumed a