ABERDEEN, 4TH EARL OF (GEORGE HAM ILTON GORDON), British statesman and premier: b. Edinburgh, 28Jan. 1784; succeeded to title in 1801; d. London, 14 Dec. 1860. He was educated at Harrow and St. John's College, Cambridge. Shortly after returning from a Continental and Grecian tour, full of classical enthusiasm, he established the Athenian So ciety; whence Byron's sneer " First in the oat•fed phalanx shall be sem The traveled thane, Athenian Aberdeen." He severely criticized Gell in the Edinburgh Review and wrote an introduction to Wilkins' translation of Vitruvius, published separately in 1822 as Inquiry into the Principles of Beauty in Athenian Architecture.' In 1806 he entered Parliament as a Scottish representa tive peer, and was twice re-elected. In 1813 be was sent to Austria to bring it into the coalition against Napoleon, and in 1814 was a signatory of the Treaty of Prague; he won credit in diplomacy, and the same year was made Viscount Gordon in the British peerage. During 1815-28 he devoted himself to his estates. In 1828 he became chan cellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, and a few months later foreign secretary in Wellington's Cabinet, and had the satisfaction of seeing Greek independence recognized. He warmly supported repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts, and Catholic Emancipation. Peel had him in both his Cabinets, 1834-35 as colonial secre tary, 1841-46 as foreign secretary. In 1846,
during the struggle which rent the Established Church of Scotland in twain, he brought in a compromise bill which was denounced by both halves; and after the Disruption in 1843 again attempted conciliatory measures without result. On Peel's death in 1850 he became the leader of the free-trade Conservatives. The Derby administration being unable to stand, Lord Aberdeen in 1853 formed a coalition ministry. In it were such men as Russell, Palmerston and Gladstone. For a time it was very popular; unluckily the Crimean War supervened. Aberdeen's tardiness of action and reluctance to enter on hostilities, the result of a constitu tional aversion to war, irritated the country, which was in one of its periodical anti-Russian frenzies, and bent on fighting. Moreover, the early portion of the war was shockingly mis managed, as those of commercial countries al ways are; and on the appointment of a commit tee of inquiry, the ministry, which had uni formly resisted the motion, resigned, and Palmerston's succeeded it. This closed Aber deen's public life. His dislike to °spirited* foreign policies and interference with other countries, and his sympathy with the Holy Alliance, gave him the name of an enemy to liberty; but the above detail shows its injustice. Consult Gordon of Aberdeen' (London 1893).