Page:Lord Amherst and the British Advance Eastwards to Burma.djvu/20

their eldest son, the subject of this memoir, was born in 1773 at Bath, one of his godfathers being Lord Chatham, who was an intimate friend of the family. Two years after the birth of her daughter, Mrs. Amherst passed away from the love of her kindred. All this while the old Governor-General (Jeffery) was living at Riverhead. General William Amherst had his home at St. John's in the Isle of Wight, where, till his death in 1781, the children lived. The place was then sold, and they went to live at Montreal with their uncle and aunt, who treated them as their own children. The lad went to school at Westminster, and passed thence to Christ Church, Oxford, where he took the degree of M.A. in 1797. In his University days he devoted the long vacations to walking and riding tours, nourishing that taste for scenery and nature of which we shall see so many charming traits in his later life. On leaving Oxford in 1793 he started, after the custom of the time, on a grand continental tour, studying the languages on his way. His capacity as a linguist was shown when, a generation later, an Italian bishop, who found himself in India, spoke of the pleasure he derived from the pure pronunciation with which the Governor-General spoke his native tongue. It was at Rome that in the year 1794 he first met the Earl and Countess of Plymouth, and made great friends of both. After she became a widow he married her in 1800. The marriage, as a perusal of her diary would alone suffice to show, was an exceedingly happy one. She was one of the