Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 5.djvu/244

304 king, finally removed to Berlin, and buried there with all the honours which nation and a great monarch could pay to splendid talent and great moral worth.

If any thing were wanting to complete the illustrious character of this great man, it is to be found in the circumstance of his death having been nearly as much lamented by the Austrians, then the enemies of Prussia, as by the Prussians themselves. His humanity was ever on the alert to protect even those against whom he fought from any unnecessary violence, and the Austrians had, in a thousand instances, been indebted to this ennobling trait in a character admirably calculated in all its parts to gain the esteem and admiration of mankind. Marshal Keith died in the sixty-third year of his age. He was never married, but to whatever chance this was owing, it does not appear to have proceeded from any want of susceptibility, for, while in Paris in 1718, on being first urged by some of his friends to offer his services to the court of Spain, which he was then informed meditated some designs on Sicily, he says, " But I was then too much in love to think of quitting Paris, and, although my friends forced me to take some steps towards it, yet I managed it so slowly, that I set out only in the end of that year; and had not my mistress and I quarreled, and that other affairs came to concern me more than the conquest of Sicily did, it's probable I had lost many years of my time to very little purpose so much was I taken up with my passion." Of the final result of this attachment we are not informed ; but it does not appear that he ever formed another.

Some years after his death, a monument was erected in the church- yard or Hochkirchen to the memory of the marshal, by his relative Sir Robert Murray Keith, It bore the following inscription, composed by the celebrated Metastasio :

The earl Marischal, elder brother of marshal Keith, also deserves some notice in the present work, as an enlightened and distinguished man. Attainted for his share in the insurrection of 1715, his fate continued for some time identified with that of his younger brother; till, in 1750, he was appointed by Frederick II. of Prussia as ambassador extraordinary to the court of France. He afterwards served the same sovereign as- ambassador to the court of Spain, and in this capacity had an opportunity of reconciling himself to his native court. Having discovered the secret of the family compact, by which the different princes of the house of Bourbon had bound themselves to assist each other, he communicated that important intelligence through Mr Pitt, to the British government, to whom it was of the highest importance. The consequence was