The Romance of a Pro-Consul | Page 6

had a
letter from Froude, intimating how glad he would be to put my name
forward for that high distinction, the Oxford honorary degree. This
gave me a grand chance to rally him, since I was already in possession
of the honours of Oxford and Cambridge. Those of the former I
received after my first administration of New Zealand, those of the
latter when I was re- called from South Africa. At Oxford, the students,
with riotous zest, sang the "King of the Cannibal Isles," which, more or
less, I had been. Froude had forgotten all that, but he agreed that no
man could hope to have such a treat twice in a lifetime.'
It would have been curious if Sir George, a maker of British
Parliaments, had not found his way to their cradle at Westminster. He
had himself been a candidate for membership, but the House of
Commons was only to know him as a visitor. 'Why,' he said, 'I met
Adderley, now in the Lords, who once wanted to impeach me. Perhaps
I deserved to be impeached--I don't remember!--but anyhow we had a
very agreeable chat about old days.' Sir George, as a Privy Councillor,
had been escorted to the steps of the throne in the House of Lords.
There he met again the Marquis of Salisbury, who, as Lord Robert
Cecil, had stood up for him, years and years before, in the Commons,
even to the extent of criticising the English of Bulwer Lytton's
despatches. When he went to Australasia, to fortify his health and study
the New World, he was the guest, for a period, of Sir George in New
Zealand.
'Some of his friends,' said the latter, 'were great friends of mine; for
example, Beresford Hope, who founded the "Saturday Review," and
Cook, who edited it. Lord Robert was tall and slight, and, when he
came to New Zealand, not at all strong. While he was with me, he saw
a good deal of the manner in which a Colony was conducted, and of the
relationships between it and the Mother Country. He would read the

despatches that I wrote and received, and generally made a study which
may have proved useful to him in his subsequent career.
'As I recollect Lord Robert Cecil in New Zealand, he was not more
fond of exercise than Lord Salisbury appears to be to-day, always being
studious. He did not care to take long walks, but once I persuaded him,
with another young Englishman, to go and see the beautiful Wairarapa
Valley. They walked there and back, and on the last evening, while
returning, were caught in a terrific rain-storm. They sought the shelter
of some rocks, contrived to make a fire, and over it dried their shirts.'
Nothing afforded Sir George more genial occupation than a talk about
books or politics, the latter always on the lofty ground to which,
somehow, he could at once lift them. He had a knack of taking a
question and shaking it on to your lap. You had it, as you never quite
had it before, and to your fascinated ear the version seemed the only
possible one. The secret was that Sir George laid hold of the kernel of a
subject, and worked outwards--an expositor, not a controversialist.
When evening waned he would turn to Epictetus, and then to a
well-thumbed New Testament. It was the hour of meditation.
'I have studied the New Testament in various languages,' he said, 'thus
getting more insight of it than I could have got through a single
language. Never, during my early exploring work, was I without my
New Testament to comfort and sustain me. The Sermon on the Mount
is the great charter of mankind, its teachings the highest wisdom for all
times and all climes. It and other pieces, which I might select, are of
exceeding beauty and full of guidance and counsel. They inculcate in
the human heart a love of one's fellows, irrespective of colour.'
He read that teaching into the happier London which greeted him, after
an absence of more than twenty-five years. At last, the museums and
art galleries were really open to the people, who thronged them,
drinking in knowledge. He noted the children playing in the parks, and
they were better dressed, the parks themselves better kept. You can
judge a nation by the state of its children's boots, and these had fewer
holes. The poor London had, and ever would have, but she was not the
callous mother of other years. She felt for those who were down.

Sir George would ride by 'bus, except, indeed, when in pursuit of some
volume for that beloved library at Auckland. Then, nothing would
satisfy his eagerness but hot foot and back with the trophy, scanning its
pages