Perthshire in bygone days

54 PEBTHSHIRE IN BYGONE DAYS.
at Westbourne ; and one day, immediately after the acces-
sion of William the Fourth, the King said to him, " I do
not dine with anybody in London, you know ; but you do
not live in London, and I shall come and dine with you."
Sir George Murray was amongst the first who was asked
to dine with the King at Westbourne House. The party,
besides the King, consisted of the Duke of Wellington, the
Luke of Gordon, Lord Eosslyn, Lord Cathcart, Lord
Edward Somerset, Lord Pitzroy Somerset (afterwards Lord
Kaglan), Lord Melville, Lord Combermere, Sir Eobert
Peel, Sir George Murray, Sir Willoughby Gordon, Sir
Herbert Taylor, Sir Henry Hardinge, Colonel Macdonald,
Major-General Macdonald, and the Aides-de-camp.
Although these circumstances are far on in my narrative,
I mention them here because Sir George Murray's connection
with the class of men with whom hehadbeenso long in active
co-operation was now merging from that of the soldier into
the senator, and to show that if he gained their esteem in
the first position, he certainly did not lose it in the second.
At the close of the great Napoleonic war he was in his
forty-fourth year. His previous career had been too active
and stirring to admit of immediate cessation, and he threw
himself with unreserved ardour into the politics of the
time, forming his creed on the time-honoured legends of
his family, and his own convictions. The Drummonds,
the Grahams, and the Murrays had represented Perthshire
during twenty-one successive Parliaments ; and as Mr.
Drummond of Machany, as he was then called, had suc-
ceeded Sir Thomas Graham, and was then sitting member,
he naturally concluded that a Murray should come in next ;
and so it turned out. Mr. Drummond — the late Lord
Strathallan — retired in 1820, and Sir George Murray was
unanimously voted his successor. This enviable position
he held till the passing of the great Eeform Bill in 1832 ;
and there exist many records that he performed his duties
to the entire satisfaction of his constituents.
Exploits in the field, or votes in the Senate do not pro-
perly come within the scope of these essays, but the
personal recollections I may have of the subjects of them,
if not associated with something that had gone before,
would lack both form and motive. At this distant day,
when few men remember the war in the Peninsula, but
when many remember the prominent incidents of the sixty-
five subsequent years, especially the general election of