Viscount Ossington (Mr. John Evelyn Denison) has not sur- vived
much more than a year his elevation from the Speaker's Chair to the House of Lords. He died yesterday week, at the age of seventy-three. He had been a Junior Lord of the Admiralty for a short time under Mr. Canning's Administration, and since then a steady business Member of Parliament, till his eleva- tion to the Speaker's Chair in 1857. He was not so popular a Speaker as his predecessor, Lord Eversley, not from any defect of his own, but from having altogether less vitality to spare, leas influence to give out. But he did his work well and kindly, always taking pleasure in encouraging privately Members of modesty and promise. He was one of a prosperous family. He had a brother a bishop (of Salisbury) who died in 1354; another brother, the well-known Archdeacon {of Taunton), still living ; a brother a Colonial Governor (last of Madras), who died two years ago, besides two brothers eminent members of the Bar. Heis probably one of the many examples of men who are killed not by work, but by giving it up. It seems paradoxical enough to assert that the most fatiguing of all human occupations,--sitting in a chair for six months in the year, and four or'five nights a week, often during eight or nine hours at a stretch, with but one interval of a quarter of an hour, listening to speeches for the most part dull, and without any prospect for the sitter of animated action,—should be a stimulus to the nervous powers. The occupation of a tree in the open air seems lively by comparison. Yet most likely it was the want of this nervous .stimulus which killed the late Speaker.
Previous page
