THE DEATH OF LORD LURGAN

With sincere, but unavailing, regret, we have to record the death of one of the most estimable noblemen of the North of Ireland. One of the first victims, among the higher classes, to the awful calamity which now threatens the entire population of this country, has been the benevolent nobleman whose name heads this announcement. Lord Lurgan, whose illness our readers have been made aware of from its commencement, thirteen days ago, expired, at Brownlow House, Lurgan, at a quarter-past one on Friday morning, the 30th April, in the fifty third year of his age. The fatal malady, typhus fever, which, with in so short a period, hurried this exemplary nobleman - this excellent landlord -to his premature grave, was contracted, as is supposed, at the Lurgan Union Workhouse, where his zealous attention to the wants of the destitute and the sick exposed him to the contagion which has been long prevalent in that establishment. Lord Lurgan's demise has excited a very deep and painful sympathy among all classes of the community. Among the landlords, he was distinguished for his liberality and his efforts to promote the happiness and comfort of his tenantry; as a member of society, his manners were kind, affectionate and attractive; and, as a promoter of the various charitable institutions, in the town from which he derived his title, and in Belfast, few have more deservedly earned the gratitude and respect of the community. As soon as the melancholy event became known, the shops were shut in Lurgan, and no evidence was wanting of the extreme sorrow felt for his loss by the inhabitants, and by the whole of the surrounding population, to whom he was endeared by many public and private associations.

Lord Lurgan was born on the 17th of April, 1795; he was the second son of the Hon. Charles Brownlow, and succeeded his uncle, the Right Hon. William Brownlow, in the Lurgan estates, worth nearly twenty thousand a year. His lordship was married on the 1st June, 1822, to his cousin, Mary Bligh, second daughter of the Earl of Darnley, and by her, who died the year after her marriage, he had issue one daughter, He was again married, in 1828, to June, fourth daughter of Roderick MacNeill, Esq., of Barra, lnvernesshire, Scotland, by whom he had three children-two sons and a daughter. He is succeeded in his title and estates by the eldest of this latter union, the Hon. Charles Brownlow, who was born in April, 1831, and is now in his 17th year-a young man of the best promise, and likely to emulate the virtues of his deceased parent.

Lord Lurgan, in early life, was of ultra Conservative principles, but afterwards became partial to liberal opinions; and in 1826, he, when the Hon. Charles Brownlow, with the Hon. Henry Caulfield, contested his native county, Armagh, against James Y. Burges, Esq., and Colonel Verner, and succeeded. He was raised, in May, 1839, to the peerage, under the title of Baron Lurgan, Lord Lurgan, in the county of Armagh.

To the principles to which he had become a convert, he consistently adhered during his career in parliament, but was never an advocate of the more sweeping measures which the adherents of the liberal party proposed to carry out. Not only in his place in the House of Commons and House of Lords, but as Deputy Lieutenant of Armagh, and Justice of the Peace for Antrim, Down, and Armagh, he paid more than ordinary attention to his public duties, gained the confidence of all, and the respect and esteem of his political opponents. He contributed to the charities of all religious denominations with an equally open hand. Among the institutions in which he was more particularly interested, was the Ulster Institution for the Deaf and Dumb and the Blind.

By the death of this nobleman, many of the principal families in the counties of Down and Armagh - the Closes, the Halls, the Fordes are placed in mourning; but the truest tribute to his public and private worth must be looked for in the universal sorrow which has pervaded all classes of society and religion in Lurgan since the melancholy event became known.

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