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Gentleman's Magazine 1849 part 1 p.95
that capacity, forty years, under twelve or thirteen different naval administrations, Whig and Tory, including that of the Lord High Admiral, his royal highness the Duke of Clarence; having reason to believe that I have given satisfaction to all and every one of these naval administrations; and I am happy in the reflection that I have experienced kindness and attention from all."
He was created a Baronet during the short administration of Sir Robert Peel in 1835.
At length, in 1845, Sir John Barrow retired from public life, in consideration of his advanced years, although he was still in vigourous possession of all the mental and bodily powers required for the due discharge of the functions of his office. In the course of the succeeding three years his vital energies became gradually somewhat weaker, but he seemed on the whole so hearty, and so fully in the enjoyment of his faculties, that his friends and relatives entertained no apprehension that his end was so near.
As an author, Sir John Barrow was exceedingly industrious and very successful. The general aim of his writings has been to convey information, to promote and advance the arts and sciences, and to stimulate research and inquiry; and he has the great and rare privilege to live to see the most beneficial effects produced by his honest and faithful endeavours. In enumerating his works, he modestly "disclaims all pretensions to the literary character," and says he gave them "only as a statement of facts; at the same time they have been more productive of profit than he could have expected." They may thus be summed up:
Articles in the Quarterly Review, on almost every subject (excepting political), mostly asked for by Mr. Gifford, 195; in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, requested by Professor Napier, ten of twelve; by particular desire of the same, a "Review of the Life of Admiral Lord St. Vincent," in the Edinburgh Review; the Life of Lord Macartney, in 2 vols. 4to.; Travels in South Africa, 2 vols, 4to.; Travels in China, 1 vol. 4to.; Voyage to Cochin China, 1 vol. 4to.; The Life of Lord Anson, 1 vol. 8vo.; The Life of Lord Howe, 1 vol. 8vo.; in the "Family Library" the Life of Peter the Great, and the Mutiny of the Bounty; Chronological History of Arctic Voyages, 1 vol. 8vo.; Voyages of Discovery and Research within the Arctic Regions, 1 vol. 8vo.
Sir John Barrow was the constant and successful advocate at the Admiralty of those voyages of discovery which have enlarged the bounds of science and conferred so much honour to the British name and nation. Appreciating those services, the officers who had been employed on the various Arctic expeditions presented to him, in March 1845, a magnificent candelabrum, with a suitable inscription on the pedestal.
Sir John Barrow married at the Cape of Good Hope in Aug. 1798, Maria, daughter of Peter John Treutter, esq. member of the court of justice in that colony, and had issue four sons and two daughters. The eldest son, now Sir George Barrow, is a senior clerk in the Colonial Office; the second, John Barrow, esq. is at the head of a very important department, the charge of the records in the Admiralty, and the author of Travels, &c. His third son, Commander Willliam Barrow, R.N. died at the Cape of Good Hope in Feb. 1838, after having served for three years on the East India station in command of H.M. sloop Rose. The youngest, Mr. Peter Barrow, is British Vice-Consul at Caen. His daughters are Johanna, who has recently become a widow by the death of Lieut.-Colonel Robert Batty, and Mary-Jane who is unmarried.
The body of Sir John Barrow was interred in the Camden-Town cemetery, belonging to the parish of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields. The mourners were, the three sons, and Mr. Robert Barrow Batty (a scholar of the London University,) grandson of the deceased; the Right Hon. John Wilson Croker, Sir George Staunton, Bart. M.P. and Sir Benjamin Brodie, Bart.
Sir George Barrow, the present Baronet, married in 1832, Rosamund, daughter of William Pennell, esq. formerly Consul-general of the Brazils, and sister to the wife of the Right Hon. Wilson Croker.
We cannot close this brief memoir of Sir John Barrow more appropriately than by the following pleasing extract from the account of his decease in the Ulverston Advertiser, a provincial journal, published in his native district in Lancashire: "Sir John never forgot the spot that gave him birth. By his will the annual subscription which he had been in the habit of contributing for a long series of years to the support of the school in which he was educated, is to be continued, and his cottage at Dragley-beck given over in perpetuity to trustees, that the rent may be appropriated to the education of the poor at the same school. His memory will long survive, and his example be held up for imitation by all who derive their birth or education from the same locality. The name of Sir John Barrow is a household word amongst us; although he who bore it is departed, his memory still lingers lovingly about our hearths, and will con-
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