NOTES

^r%. 1

\RY

B!*?*

liife'iiiiCT

f LU

-Is-!?*

L

30 TO 34, NEW OXFORD STRfiTieT.
(341, FROM PTGiT ROAD, S.W

BRANCH OFFICES,-!

4a,qUEEN VICTORIA ST, E.C.

SUBSCRIPTION,.*^
One GuineaPer Annum and upwards

NOTES FROM A DIARY

Notes from a Diar
Kept chiefly in Southern India
1881-1886

BY THE RIGHT HON.
SIR MOUNTSTUART E. GRANT DUFF
G.cs.l.

" On ne doit jamais ecrire que de ce qu'on aime.
L'oubli et le silence sont la punition qu'on inflige k ce
qu'on a trouve laid ou commun dans la promenade a travers
la vie." — Renan

IN TWO VOLS.— VOL. I

LONDON
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET
1899

TO
ALL THE INDIAN FRIENDS
WHO ASSISTED ME
IN MY PUBLIC DUTIES
OR MADE MY LEISURE HOURS AGREEABLE
AND
TO ALL THE CORRESPONDENTS
WHO KEPT UP MY RELATIONS
WITH THE WORLD I LEFT BEHIND
ON THE 5TH OCTOBER 1881
I INSCRIBE THESE PAGES

PREFACE
In two volumes which appeared in 1897, and in
two others which followed them, at a year's
interval, I published large portions of my Diary
kept between the first day of the half-century
now approaching its close, and the 5th of
October 1881, when I left England for India.
From these four volumes I excluded nearly
everything that related to the more serious
interests of my life, such as the business of the
House of Commons, and the political opinions I
had formed during many journeys, undertaken
with a view to study persons and circumstances
on the European continent. I had said all I
cared to say about these matters, in my place in
Parliament, on many platforms, in several books,
as well as in a great variety of pamphlets and

viii NOTES FROM A DIARY
signed articles, I thought myself justified ac
cordingly in directing my endeavours chiefly to
amuse the lighter hours of readers, whose tastes,
in the employment of those hours, were not
unlike my own.
The two volumes which I now offer to the
indulgence of those who care to follow me into
new scenes, cover the period which elapsed
between my departure from this country and my
laying down the Government of Madras in
December 1886.
So far as I can, I have excluded business,
politics, and the graver interests of a Governor
from these pages also ; but there is this difference
between the life to which I had been accustomed
in the House of Commons, and the life I led in
India. The Head of an Indian Government
knows nothing of the Recesses which diversify
the Parliamentary year and prevent its monotony
becoming intolerable. The day hardly ever
dawns for him which is not largely occupied
with public affairs of one kind or another.

PREFACE ix
That being so, it is hardly possible absolutely
to exclude business from these pages ; but I
have done my very best to effect that object. I
am the more able to do this, because in 1884 and
1 8 8 6 I published in India two " Minutes " Anglice
State-papers in the nature of Bluebooks, which,
taken together, set forth pretty fully my views
upon the things which most occupied my mind
in my capacity of Governor of Madras, and sent
copies of them to all my friends in this country
whom I thought likely to be interested in Indian
Administration. For some reasons I should like to have
reprinted these as part of this work ; but as
they would have nearly or altogether doubled
its size, have been very dreary reading for
persons not interested in Indian affairs, and have
thus scared away the very readers to whom the
four volumes, of which these are a continuation,
were specially addressed, that course was out of
the question. I have placed, however, in an
Appendix, an address which I delivered at

X NOTES FROM A DIARY
Madras as Chancellor of its University, in
which I said a good deal upon subjects lying
within the province of an Academic authority
rather than of a Governor.
Outside my Immediate duties, my two greatest
pleasures in the East were the letters of my
friends in Europe or elsewhere, and the vegeta
tion surrounding me, which made almost every
walk ride and drive extremely agreeable. Of the
first of these pleasures, my readers will be able
to judge from the numerous extracts with which
the kindness of a great many people has allowed
me to enrich these pages. I have been obliged,
however, for obvious reasons, to leave unused
all, or nearly all, letters which dealt with politics
and kept me exceedingly well-informed about
what was going on, at least up to the eve ot
the great earthquake which shattered the party
with which I had so long acted.
Of the pleasure I derived from the vegetation
of the country, I cannot so easily convey an Idea.
Yet to leave it out entirely would give so false

PREFACE xi
an impression that, although I shall strike out
references to it by the hundred, I must perforce
leave a certain number, which can, however,
easily be skipped by those who have no interest
In plants. Such of my readers as care for good
stories will, I think, find a reasonable number
of them, though not so many as I may have to
offer at some future period, when I may be
dealing with my life after I had returned to
Europe, and found myself once more, to borrow
a phrase from Dr. Parr, in plena luce Londinensi.
I trust the two volumes will leave on the
mind the Impression that the life of an Indian
Governor may be a very agreeable one, and It
must be remembered that the official portion of
it, hardly noticed In these pages, the solidus dies,
extending from after breakfast till the sun is low
enough for the evening ride, is often full of
interest. People in this country think that
Indian business is dull because its nomenclature
is puzzling and its geography unfamiliar. It is,
nevertheless, far from being dull to those who

xii NOTES FROM A DIARY i
have to transact it in direct contact with the facts.
Some matters, no doubt, which come within the
ken of a Governor are tiresome enough, more
especially the "personal questions"; but the
large questions of policy, of which there is
good store, and many items of mere current
business are frequently very interesting indeed.
When a man has for nearly a quartfer
of a century led the life of a Member of Par
liament, ever critical when out of office, ever
on the defensive when in office, it is highly
agreeable to be able to say practically the last
word upon almost everything he cares to form
an opinion about. To look at public affairs
from the point of view of the local British
Providence for between thirty and forty millions
of men, after having looked long at them from
the point of view of a member of a huge popular
Assembly, teaches one a great deal about human
history. He must be strangely constituted who
does not become wiser by the double experience.

.88)

October
9. The Bay of Biscay was merciful, and when I
came on deck, yesterday morning, we were some
eight degrees west of Greenwich, running along the
coast of Algarve. A soft breeze blew from the shore,
bringing with it the odour of aromatic plants. I
fancied I could distinguish that of the cistus. Soon
we passed St. Vincent and the signalling station of
Sagres, which carried my thoughts to Prince Henry
the Navigator. All day Browning's lines kept run
ning in my head : —
" Nobly, nobly, to the north-west, Cape St. Vincent died
away.
Sunset ran one glorious blood -red, reeking into Cadiz
Bay,
VOL. I B

2 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1881
Bluish o'er the burning water, full in front Trafalgar
lay.
In the dimmest north-east distance, dawned Gibraltar
grand and grey."
They did not, however, fit the facts of the day
on which we traversed the 180 miles between Cape
St. Vincent and Gibraltar.
The sun went down grandly in the Atlantic, but
we were far away from Cadiz, and Trafalgar showed
only as a misty line, till night fell, and we passed
between its light and that of Cape Spartel, at the
north-west corner of Morocco.
Our passage of the Straits could not, however, have
been more poetical, for the moonlight was superb, the
red light of Tarifa shone from the left, the African
Hills rose darkly on the right, and the Lion fortress
seemed all the grander, because its solemnity was
heightened by the sparkling town at its base. I was
glad to have this picture as a pendant to another day
of my life, noted earlier in this Diary (1872), when I
sailed out from Therapia with poor Ralph Earle, in
his Caique, till we met the long wave of the Black
Sea. And now I am once more on the Mediterranean.

i8gi THE MEDITERRANEAN 3
There comes back to me the enthusiasm of my
German fellow-traveller, when we first saw, between
Avignon and Marseilles in December 1850, that
" Weltberiihmtes Meer," and I re-read the lines in
Childe Harold :—
" The midland ocean breaks on him and me,
And from the Alban Mount we now behold
Our friend of youth, that ocean, which when we
Beheld it last by Calpe's rock unfold
Those waves, we followed on till the dark Euxine rolled
Upon the blue Symplegades."
On the 1 0th, we had fine views of the Sierra
Nevada ; but a very unpleasant swell came on in the
evening, and we kept too far from the Algerian coast,
on the nth, to distinguish any familiar objects. On
the 1 2th, the weather was agreeable. Soon after day
break we passed Galita, and ran, for many hours, along
the barren and sandy shores of Tunis, passing the
Cani Rocks on the north and Biserta on the south.
Then came Cape Farina and the Bay of Carthage ^
with the Isles of Piana and Zembra, next Cape Bon,
^ At this point there was captured a little greenfinch, which had
come on board quite exhausted. He was brought to my wife and
christened HannibaL Our vessel was the Rome.

+ NOTES FROM A DIARY i8gi
and, at sunset, Pantellaria, which reminded me of a
conversation with Renan, already noted in these pages.
Yesterday, the 13th, was spent at Malta, where we
were most kindly received by Sir Arthur Borton the
Governor and his family.
The architectural and artistic merits of the historic
church of St. John are not great. Nothing in it
interested me so much as two relics preserved in the
armoury, — the Bull of Paschal II. founding the Order,
and the Charter of Charles V. assigning Malta to it.
" Never," he said, " was anything so well lost as
Rhodes." I walked over much of the town, getting a general
notion of the harbours and their defences, accompanied
by Colonel Crichton, who was our fellow-passenger
from Gravesend. With him and the Governor, whose
Military Secretary he is, I beat over a number of
subjects connected with the politics of the island,
which had occupied a good deal of my attention at the
Colonial OfEce. A drive to the gardens of St.
Antonio, full of the trees and shrubs of the Campagne
des Fleurs, and famous for their blood oranges, gave
me some notion of the island, hideous with stone
barns and stone enclosures. St. Paul's Bay, which we

i88i LEAVE MALTA 5
must have passed, as we came in, was too far off to be
conveniently visited. Hardly any rain had fallen for
months, and everything was parched.
We slept on board, and about breakfast time this
morning, 14th October, ran out of harbour. I stood
long at the stern, trying to make out the outlines of
the group — Gozo, Comino, Cominotto, Malta, — and
so good-bye to Europe !
1 7. We reached Port Said, this forenoon, after a
perfectly calm voyage, from Malta. On our last
night but one in the Mediterranean, Jupiter rose so
brightly that he was reported to the officer of the
watch as a ship's light ahead. He cast, when he had
risen, a well-marked line of light across the glassy
sea. As we were strolling through the odious little
town, Mr. Wallis our Consul, who, with Joyce Bey
the Harbour-master, came off to receive me, mentioned
that some German girls, who were playing in the far
from reputable caf6s, came from a group of villages
between Prague and Toeplitz, travelled under the
charge of a matron, and were most respectable, well-
conducted people.
20. At last we are in the Gulf of Suez, after long

6 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1881
detention in the canal. On the 17th, we slept
amongst the flamingoes of Lake Menzaleh ; on the
i8th, in Lake Timsah ; and last night, in the
Northern Bitter Lake. Captain Roberts, the Penin
sular and Oriental Agent, told me to-day that he had
ridden, some fifteen years ago, across the very place,
in the Northern Bitter Lake, where this 5000-ton
ship was at the moment lying. Alike on Monday,
Tuesday, and yesterday, we had the Egyptian after
glow to perfection, as we used to have it in 1873,
upon the Nile.
A son of Dean Merivale, the Historian of the
Roman Empire, who is travelling in the Verona., which
is here in harbour, came to see me this afternoon.
He mentioned that his father had once held a Hailey-
bury appointment. He gave it up, and it was trans
ferred to John Lawrence, so that he is able to boast,
with some justice, that he saved India !
28. The Red Sea was hotter and rougher than it
was when I traversed it in November 1874, and had
lost besides for me the charm of novelty.^ The Rome,
however, did in 96 hours what the Malwa took 132
to do, and by one o'clock, on the 25th, we were at
^ See Notes of an Indian Journey : London, 1876.

¦ 88i THE INDIAN OCEAN 7
Aden. General Loch, the Commandant, came off to
receive me, and we spent some hours at his house.
The Bishop of Bombay, Dr. Milne, who was
staying with the Lochs, spoke, by the way, of St.
Augustine's, Kilburn, as the "finest modern church
in England." I said that I must really imitate that
Lord Chesterfield, who, having heard the greatest
praise of St. Stephen's, Walbrook, from a Cardinal,
drove thither on his return from Rome, before he went
to Chesterfield House.
We are, as I write, about half-way from Aden to
Bombay. Mr. Michie, an Englishman, e.\ccptionally well
acquainted with China, mentioned to me, the night
before last, that Hart calculated that about fifty millions
of human beings had been destroyed in the Taeping
rebellion, and that, from the number of large cities,
which he himself had seen so utterly ruined, that you
could shoot pheasants on their site, he did not think
the estimate an exaggerated one.^
We kept the Arabian shore longer in view than I
^ After my return to England I asked Sir Tliomas Wade wliethcr
he thought this an exaggerated estimate, " I think it is a very moderate
estimate,'' was his reply.

8 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1881
did in the Malwa, and had not lost sight of it, before
we were off the range marked in the map as the Seger
Mountains. 29. The north-east monsoon is blowing, but not
too strongly. I leant over the bows, and thought of
the words of Sir William Jones : —
"When I was at sea last August (that is, in August
1783), on my voyage to this country (India), which I had
long and ardently desired to visit, I found one evening,
on inspecting the observations of the day, that India lay
before us, Persia on our left, whilst a breeze from Arabia
blew nearly on our stern. A situation so pleasing in itself,
and to me so new, could not fail to awaken a train of
reflections in a mind which had early been accustomed to
contemplate, with delight, the eventful histories and agree
able fictions of this Eastern World. It gave me inex
pressible pleasure to find myself in the midst of so noble
an amphitheatre, almost encircled by the vast regions of
Asia, which has ever been esteemed the nurse of sciences,
the inventress of delightful and useful arts, the scene of
glorious actions, fertile in the productions of human genius,
and infinitely diversified in the forms of religion and
government, in the laws, manners, customs, and languages,
as well as in the features and complexions of men."
30. Mr. W. Hunter 1 told me that he had once
I Now Sir W. W. Hunter, K.C.S.I.

1 88 1 BOMBAY 9
travelled to India in a Messagcries steamer, with a
number of young French priests, who, full of the
history of Xavier, were going out to live and die in
the East. On board the same ship was the Spanish
Archbishop of Manila, an ecclesiastic of the Blougram
type, who spent his time mainly in his deck-cabin
reading Balzac. When the devotions of the young
men were a little too loud, the Archbishop's chaplain,
who was worthy of him, and described them to Mr.
Hunter as "peasants dipped in ink," used to say,
" Softly, softly, my brothers, do not interrupt Mon-
seigneur's meditations ! "
He further called my attention to the extremely
unjust odium which has attached itself to the name of
Juggernath, "a most respectable divinity, who can
produce a good character of three hundred years."
Another of his subjects was Goa in its first or
military, its second or ecclesiastical, and its third or
commercial stage.
31. We landed this morning in Bombay — at the
Apollo Bunder (where I said farewell, as I supposed
for ever, to India in 1875 i) — with batteries saluting,
ships manning yards, and all the usual ceremonies.
^ See Notes of an Indian Journey : London, 1876.

10 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1881
At Parell, where I am now writing, we are
most hospitably entertained by Sir James Fergusson,
with whom I sat long in the House of Commons,
and who was sent out by the late Government just
before it fell in April 1880.
Here we have divided into two detachments — the
larger one going forward to Madras, my wife and I,
with Victoria, and some of our staff remaining at
Parell. November
5. I re-saw at Bombay with the Governor some of
the things I saw in 1874, and visited, for the first
time, his villa at Malabar Point.
On the 1st, there was a large dinner at Parell,
followed by an evening party — the gardens charm
ingly illuminated ; and on the 2nd, we went, in some
four or five hours, to Gunesh Khind, near the battle
field of Kirkee, where there was a not less brilliant
festival. The Sirdars of the Deccan gathered in some
force to meet the son of the historian of the Mahrattas.
On the 3rd, I visited the botanical gardens at
Dapoorie with Mr. Wodrow, whom I had seen in
1875, and in the afternoon we drove round the native

i88i RAICHORE ii
town, dining with Sir John Ross, who commands the
Poona Division. At the station we were met by the
railway carriages, which belong to me as Governor of
Madras. We breakfasted yesterday, 4th November, at
Shahabad, whence to Raichore we were accompanied
by a son of Sir R. Temple's, who is Political Assistant
to the Resident at Hyderabad, and told me a good deal
about the tangled politics of the Nizam's dominions.
At Raichore, on the Madras frontier, we were met
by Major Kenney Herbert, Military Secretary to Mr.
Hudleston, who has been Acting Governor since
Adam's death, Colonel Shaw - Stewart, and others.
At Adoni we were engarlanded with jasmine by a
native deputation from that town. From Goondakul
to Tadpatri we were accompanied by Mr. Huntly
Gordon, the Collector of Bellary.
When I awoke this morning we had passed
Arkonam. It had rained heavily through the
night, and the country looked delightfully green,
as we ran along amongst rice -fields, set with the
wild date and the palmyra,^ to Perambore, where
^ The palm which very probably suggested the common fan — Bcrassm
jiabelliformis.

12 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1881
there was a short halt for dressing. That operation
over, we again moved forward to the Central Station
at Madras, in which most of the leading officials, with
their families, were assembled to meet us. Thence
we drove to the Secretariat and ascended to the
Council Chamber, where I presented the Royal
Warrant and took my seat as Governor " under the
usual salute from the ramparts of Fort Saint George."
The colleagues with whom I thus became associated
were the Honourable W. Hudleston and the Honour
able D. F. Carmichael.
Before leaving the Council Chamber, I notified
my having taken charge of the Government of the
Presidency to the Secretary of State, the Governor of
the French Settlements in India, the Maharajah of
Travancore, the Rajah of Cochin, and the Rajah of
Puducotta. I likewise formally appointed the members
of my personal staff.'
^ Captain Ambrose Awdry, Royal Engineers, Executive Engineer,
2nd Grade, Madras Public Works Department, Private Secretary.
Major Almeric George Spencer, "The Essex' Regiment," Military
Secretary. Lieutenant Cecil Charles Cavendish, "The Highland Light
Infantry," Aide- de- Camp. Lieutenant Arthur Henry Louis Bagot,
"Prince Albert's Light Infantry " (Somersetshire Regiment), Aide-de-
Camp. Lieutenant William E. Evans -Gordon, of the Madras Staff
Corps, Extra Aide-de-Camp. Surgeon-Major John Mackenzie, M.D.,

i88i MADRAS 13
We then drove to Government House and took
possession. It would be out of the question to include in this
Diary any account of my official work here. There
will be ample materials, of a different kind, available
for any one who cares to interest himself about it.
I shall accordingly record only the same sort of things
which I recorded in Europe, inserting here and there,
perhaps, a speech or an official paper, but very sparingly.
6. Drove along the beach with Captain Cavendish,
in the golden evening, and, passing through great
plantations of cocoa - nut, reached the Cathedral,
where we attended service.
7. Examined the harbour, accompanied by all the
officials chiefly concerned with the works.
Brandis, sent down by arrangement between the
Viceroy and myself about our Forest affairs, came to
talk them over.
I first came across Dietrich Brandis,' whom I here
met, under circumstances so different, when we were
living on the Rhine in 1865. His brother, John

Army Medical Department, Surgeon. Sirdar Bahadoor Oosman Khan,
Subadar-Major, Seconded, of the Body Guard, Native Aide-de-Camp.
' Sir Dietrich Brandis, K.C.I. E.

,4 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1881
Brandis, whom, at that time, I knew better, was
Private Secretary to the Queen of Prussia, now the
Empress Augusta, and died early. His father was the
well-known Professor at Bonn, and the same who,
once speaking to me of Pusey, said very wittily, " He
is Ehrenkatholik."' Held a levee — 348 people.
9. My first Council.
10. In the afternoon my wife held a reception —
some 400 people.
12. A cyclone is raging. Down to the pier with
the Master Attendant, where the sea was running
frightfully high. Our poor harbour is terribly
damaged, the Titan cranes swept away, and some
lives lost.
19. Received the leading Muhammadans and made,
in reply to their address, my first speech in Madras.
From the morning of 7th November, when I
began my work, till two days after Christmas, we
remained in Madras, except on 22nd November,
when we drove to Guindy, the country house of
the Governor, to give a ball, and slept there.
My day commenced about six, and ended soon
' See this Diary for 1865.

A GOVERNOR'S DAY

15

after ten, — the time going mainly in these seven
things —
(i) in dealing with official papers, very much,
mutatis mutandis, like those to which I had
become so accustomed at the India Office
and the Colonial Office ;
(2) in giving business interviews ;
(3) in getting to know and form a personal
estimate of most of the people, through
whom the Government is worked at the
centre of affairs, as well as of some few
Collectors and others from the interior ;
(4) in visiting, mostly in the early morning, a
large number of public institutions ;
(5) in holding Council ;
(6) in giving a long series of dinners and a few
other entertainments ;
(7) in making a variety of speeches.
For exercise I walked a good deal, and rode a little.
When circumstances permitted I botanised, before the
sun had got hot, in the Park of Government House,
in the Agri-Horticultural Gardens or elsewhere, and,
ere long, had added pretty largely to the list of

i6 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1881
tropical plants, which had passed for me out of the
unknown into the known.
23. I had to-day a letter from the Ex-Guikwar,
who is a political prisoner here, in which the follow
ing passage occurred : — " If a man, harassed by the
heat of the sun, goes under a mango tree, though it
is immovable, it gives him shade to sit under, and by
blowing a gentle breeze and by giving him its fruits
to eat, brings relief to his mind.
" While, as for yourself, you are a kalp ' tree, and,
therefore, I am confident that you will grant my
petition, and give me the pleasure of a visit."
25. My wife and I went this afternoon to the
Convent of the Presentation, where we were received
by the Vicar-General, Dr. Colgan, and the Sisters, all
of whom are Irish.
27. Sir Frederick Roberts, who has been appointed
Commander-in-Chief of the Madras Army, landed
this afternoon, and came to stay with us, along with
Lady Roberts and his family. In their suite are
Colonel Pretyman and Captain Chamberlain, a nephew
of Sir Neville's.
29. With Sir F. Roberts to the fort before break-
1 A mythological tree, the giver of all good gifts and fulfiUer of wishes.

i88i THE HELIOGRAPH ,7
fast, inspecting batteries, barracks, and so forth. I
never before was in a powder magazine, materially
not morally speaking, and the precautions which
soldiers take in entering one were new to me, — the
removal of spurs, the laying aside of swords, the list
slippers, and so forth.
Amongst others, we met Major Keyser. Colonel
Pretyman said to me, "The last time I met that
officer was at Candahar. It was he who saw twenty-
six miles off the flash of our Heliograph, as we were
marching down from Cabul. ' Who are you .? ' he
signalled. We replied, and asked the news. In
a quarter of an hour we had all the information we
required about the place and the garrison."
30. We gave a Ball in the Banqueting Hall,
which, when lighted, is really a very magnificent
and most festive chamber.
December
6. I spent an hour at the Observatory, seeing, for
the first time, the Rings of Saturn. I saw, too,
Neptune, which, even through a powerful telescope,
looked very small. It is, however, one hundred and
six times bigger than our earth.
yoL. I c

i8 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1881
7. Dr. Colgan brought Monseigneur Laouenan,
the Vicar Apostolic of Pondichiry, to breakfast. In
the course of conversation, I asked him where he had
studied, and his answer led to some talk about Renan.
" C'etait mon condisciple," he remarked. " Did you
go with him," I asked, " to Saint Nicolas du Char-
donnet ? " " No," he said, " I was with him when
Dupanloup made his tour to look for promising
'sujets,' and like him was asked to go to Paris ; but
I had not then determined to adopt the ecclesiastical
life, and declined. I re-met Renan, however, again
at Saint Sulpice, and was with him there till he
changed his views."
It was only by the last mail that I received from
Renan the seventh and last volume of his Origines
du Chrlstianisme. He sent me each as it came out,
and I suppose I was the only Englishman who saw
the proofs of the first volume.
I do not know that I have any where noted a
curious story which was told when it was creat
ing such a scandal. It was said that the clergy of
Genoa, desirous of deprecating the wrath of heaven
on account of its publication, had decreed a triduo.
The peasants flocked in from all the country round

i88i S. RENAN

19

for, said they, "is it not the triduo di S. Renan F"
The mistake was not altogether unnatural ; there
really was a S. Renan, who is the same personage
who figures in the name of Sir Walter Scott's novel,
St. Ronan's Well.
But to return to my guest, we talked a little more,
and it turned out not only that he had been the tutor of
Mademoiselle Gravier, Ollivier's second wife, but that
he had seen her when he was in Europe to attend the
Vatican Council, the very day after the fall of the
Ollivier Ministry, when she said, " Ah, Monseigneur,
if we had only taken your advice last year ! " his
advice having been that Ollivier, having had the great
success of the Plebiscite, should sHp for a time out of
the Government, — advice good, no doubt, but, like
many other pieces of good advice, impossible to follow.
These curious links with one's past, turning up in
this conversation at the end of the world, interested
me very much.
8. Mr. Steavenson, the Honorary Secretary of the
Agri-Horticultural Society, told me, this morning, that
an ayah might be heard addressing her charge as
"My Raja," "My green parrot," "My Tecoma stans,"
using, of course, the Tamil name ; so great has been

20 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1881
the impression which that tree of the new world, now
common all over India, has made on the popular mind.
20. My wife, complaining of the various noises of
an Indian morning, and referring to the Xantholaema,'
said, " Then there is that bird ; I am sure the soul of
Alexander the Coppersmith has passed into him, and I
am much afraid the Lord will not reward him according
to his works ! "
We gave at night the usual State Ball in honour of
the Qiieen's birthday. It is celebrated twice in
Madras, in May on the hills — in December on the
plains. 25. We kept up the good custom of having a
Christmas tree, but our Christmas tree, instead of
being the pine of the North, was the Murraya exotica
sent in from Guindy.
27. After despatching the English mail, we trans
ferred ourselves to Guindy, thus closing the first
scene of our life at Madras.
31. A sharp earthquake. Like the one we experi
enced at Castellamare in 1875 it followed violent and
long-continued rains.
^ This gorgeously coloured bird, which is very common, makes an
ncessant din like a coppersmith at his work,

i882
January
Shortly before 5 o'clock on the afternoon of the
4th, I started from Guindy for a short excursion, accom
panied by Captain Awdry and Captain Bagot. As
we passed Mr. Orr's shop, he showed us a very large
rough diamond, which was lately found in the Bellary
District, and which he is sending to England. ^
These Tours of Inspection, as they are called, have a
public character. My colleagues, accordingly, and the
leading personages of Madras came to the station to see
me off, and our party was reinforced, as we proceeded,
by many officials.
After my return to Guindy, on the 21st, I recorded
a long minute, noticing therein the chief matters of
public interest that presented themselves during a
^ Since cut successfully, and holding a good position amongst diamonds
under the name of the Gor-do-norr.

22 NOTES FROM A DIARY 18S2
journey which carried us across the Nilgiris and down
the Ouchterlony Valley into the gold district of the
Wynaad, whence, passing by Devala and Vytheri, we
descended the Tambracheri Ghaut, and crossed Malabar
to Calicut. From Calicut, we diverged to the
Nilambur Teak plantations, and then returned to
Madras via Beypore.
Faithful to my plan of saying little of my public life
in this Diary, I do not insert either the minute or any
of the speeches (ten I think) which I delivered on
tour. I subjoin, however, a few particulars which did not
find a natural place in an official document.
The starlight on the night of the 9th at Neduvatam
was enchanting. Hardly less remarkable was the view
over the great forests from Neduvatam. In the early
morning of the nth, these were covered by a stratum
of clouds, some hundred feet deep, the upper surface of
which looked like a vast field of hummocky ice.
A dynamite salute, which was fired out of bamboos,
in my honour, at Devala, was a new experience, and so
was a ride, at Penorah, upon a pony which had made
the march from Cabul to Candahar, to say nothing of
the mangosteen which I ate at Burliar, or the jungle

i882 LAPORTEA CRENULATA 23
fowl and the sambhar which I tasted in the Ouchterlony
Valley. I had likewise various botanical walks with Mr.
Jamieson at Ootacamund, with Dr. Bidie at Nedu
vatam, with Mr. Morgan on the high mountain shola
above Penorah ; and I added a good many to my
rapidly-increasing list of Indian plants.
Near Vytheri, I was introduced to the terrible
Laportea crenulata, which was brought me from a
jungle about a mile off by Mr. Morgan, and which is
thus described by Colonel Beddome : —
" This dreadfully stinging tree or large shrub is only
too common in most of our Western Coast moist forests
up to 5000 feet, and it also inhabits Ceylon, Bengal, and
Java ; it is introduced here chiefly to caution Forest Officers
against it with reference to its stinging properties. I quote
the following from Lindley's Vegetable Kingdom: —
" 'Leschenault de la Tour thus describes the effect of
gathering Urtica crenulata in the Botanic Garden at
Calcutta : " One of the leaves slightly touched the first
three fingers of my left hand ; at the time I only perceived
a slight pricking, to which I paid no attention. This was
at seven in the morning. The pain continued to increase ;
in an hour it had become intolerable ; it seemed as if some
one was rubbing my fingers with a hot iron. Nevertheless,

24- NOTES FROM A DIARY 1882
there was no remarkable appearance, — neither swelling,
nor pustule, nor inflammation. The pain rapidly spread
along the arm, as far as the armpit. I was then seized
with frequent sneezing and with a copious running at the
nose, as if I had caught a violent cold in the head. About
noon I experienced a painful contraction of the back of
the jaws, which made me fear an attack of tetanus. I
then went to bed, hoping that repose would alleviate my
suffering, but it did not abate ; on the contrary, it continued
nearly the whole of the following night, but I lost the
contraction of the jaws about seven in the evening. The
next morning the pain began to leave me, and I fell asleep.
I continued to suffer for two days ; and the pain returned
in full force when I put my hand into water. I did not
finally lose it for nine days." A similar circumstance
occurred, with precisely the same symptoms, to a workman
in the Calcutta Garden. This man described the sensation,
when water was applied to the stung part, to be as if
boiling oil was poured over him.'
" In cutting boundary lines, exploring forests, botanising,
etc., I have been very often stung by this plant both on
the hands and face, but never found the effects so violent
as described by Leschenault ; they are, however, bad
enough, the pain being felt more or less for several days,
and always being intensified by the application of water.
With natives the sting often brings on fever, and the plant
is known to coffee-planters as the Fever Nettle and the Devil
Nettle. In Ceylon it is called Maoosa."

i882 THE WALLIAR TIGER 25
Of animals I saw few ; but amongst them was a
charming company of black monkeys at the top of the
Tambracheri Ghaut.
I was much amused with a story ^ which was told me
at Walliar, and which I sent home to Arthur Russell,
for the Breakfast Club. The authorities of the
Madras Railway received one day the following tele
gram from that remote station, which is some three
hundred miles from the capital : — " Tiger jumping
about upon the platform. Staff much alarmed.
Please arrange ! "
Nothing could exceed the friendliness of our
numerous hosts in the Wynaad and elsewhere. Great
luncheons were only too numerous for one who, like
myself, was obliged to be a mere spectator.
Returned to Guindy I fell back into the same life
which I had been leading since I took charge of the
Government, except that having pretty well got
through my " institutions," I had the hours between
sunrise and breakfast more to myself. Mr. Hollings-
worth, the Government House Apothecary, an excellent
botanist, was, as for the week or two before I started,
much with me in the early mornings.
^ Since often repeated in various forms.

26 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1882
24. The Madras Racecourse is close to the gates
of Guindy, and it is the custom for the Governor to
give a prize. The race for mine took place to-day,
and was won by a horse called Palmerston.
We had a ball at night, and the gardens were
lighted up. Captain Awdry said to me when I was
at Parell, on the evening of the ist November last,
"We can do better at Guindy." And it is true,
the place is admirably fitted for fetes.
31. The Maharajah of Travancore, the ablest
as well as the most important of South Indian Princes,
came to see me this afternoon. February
I. I returned the Maharajah's visit. He was lodged
in a house opposite the Cathedral, and the chimes
played "Jerusalem the Golden" all the time I was
there. As he was dressed from head to foot in cloth of
gold, the hymn had a certain ludicrous appropriateness.
2. Baxter arrives, with a son, daughter-in-law, and
daughter. We had asked some of the principal
Europeans of Madras to meet them and the Maharajah
at dinner. Many natives joined the party in the

i882 W. E. BAXTER 27
3.  told me that, apropos of my patronage of

the races, he had said to his wife, who is apt to take
things literally, " Well, who would have believed that
Grant Duff would have become a racing man ! "
"Who, indeed," she replied, "and at his age too!"
4. With Baxter to see the Artillery sports at the
Mount. The driving was very admirable. Baxter
said, " If any one a year ago had prophesied that you
and I would be here together, on 4th February
1882, should we not have been surprised .? "
5. The Baxters left us. Their visit — the first we
have had from any of our English friends — has been,
of course, a great event.
10. I presided to-day, for the first time, in the
Legislative, as distinguished from the Executive,
Council, and we passed, inter alia, the Salt Bill, which
has formed a subject of discussion here and at the
India Office for many months.
13. Mr. Purdon Clarke, of South Kensington,
sent out to buy Indian manufactures, and introduced
by the Lord President, leaves Guindy after a week's
visit. He has travelled much in Persia as well as in
this country, and is a mine of information about
Asiatic Arts. I have learnt a great deal from him.

28 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1882
14. Runga Charlu, Prime Minister of Mysore,
came to see me. I thought the advice he told me he
had given to his young master very judicious, "Be
cautious," he said, " how you announce prematurely
your views about public affairs. Wait till you see
what turn things take. If they go wrong, it is always
so easy to hang one of us ! "
March
2. I have been spending most of my mornings, of
late, in the gardens, marking the principal trees and
shrubs with metal labels. The temperature, till it gets
towards 8 o'clock, is still delightful.
To enumerate even the most conspicuous plants
of the gardens would be out of the question ; but,
amongst those which give me most pleasure, at present
in flower, are Beawnontia yerdoniana, yacquemontia
violacea, Thunhergia grandijlora, Thunbergia Harrisii,
Combretum densiflorum, Guettarda speciosa. To name
these, however, is almost a reflection upon others
which are equally delightful. The grand Beaumontia,
however, well deserves the foremost place. It appears
on the breakfast table every morning, and has done so
for weeks.

i882 COIMKATORE AND SALEM

29

On the 3rd I left Guindy with Captain Awdry,
Major Spencer, and Captain Cavendish for Coimbatore,
from which I ran up to see my wife, and make various
arrangements at Ootacamund, visiting Sim's Park with
Dr. Brandis and Mr. Jamieson on my way back to
the plains. On the evening of the 13th I reached
Salem, returning to Madras on the morning of the
1 6th. I recorded a short minute on the public aspects of
my tour after I got back to Guindy. In the course
of it I delivered three speeches, — one at Coimbatore,
one at Perur, and one at Salem.
News of the birth of another daughter reached me
as I was presiding in Council at Fort Saint George, a
few hours after I had returned to Madras.
18. Inspected the Volunteers and delivered a speech
from the back of Antar, my white Arab.
23. Presided in Convocation as Chancellor of the
University, and admitted the candidates to their
degrees. 31. A good many venomous snakes were killed at
Guindy this spring, most of them while we were
removing an old aloe hedge, which was uncomfortably
near the house. The list given to me contained two

30 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1882
cobras, five Russell's vipers {Dahoia elegans), one Krait
[Bungarus Ca;ruleus), one Trimeresurus said to be
Monticola, and no less than eight carawalas {Hypnale
nepa). April
3. I see by the A.D.C.'s books that, since our
arrival at Madras, we have had 674 guests at dinner,
not including people staying in the house, nor our own
party, nor people who dined with me while I was on
tour. 4. I left Madras yesterday, at 4 o'clock, by a special
train, taking with me my colleagues and various
officials, in addition to those of my staff, who had
been with me at Guindy. Travelling through the
night we reached Mettupalaiyam about six and Ootaca
mund soon after eleven.
7. The European Mail brings a letter from Arthur
Russell, in which, speaking of the Jumbo craze, he
says, "The British public has had a fit of moral
elephantiasis." 8. Ride Antar with Major Spencer to the top of
Dodabetta, 8760 feet above the level of the sea, and
walk down, The view is panoramic and very noble.

i882 SIR F. ROBERTS

31

The wild strawberry grows in great abundance on the
summit. One of the common pelargoniums of our
English gardens has been planted there, and looks
quite at home.
10. Dr. Brandis, the Inspector-General of Forests,
dines with us. He told me that he well remembered
Niebuhr in 1830, and the terrible effect produced upon
his mind by the news of the Three Days in Paris.
Brandis also mentioned that, when he was a boy, he
and one of his brothers, who was rather younger,
wandered all over Attica botanising in perfect security.
They were molested by no creature except the large
dogs. So well had the Bavarians got the country in
hand. 14. My first Council at Ootacamund. Sir F.
Roberts, who has not been with us since before
Christmas, was present. He is my near neighbour,
living at Snowdon, just on the other side of the shola
or wooded ravine, which runs down to Government
House. The European Mail arrives.  writes that
when Lord Houghton's death at Athens was rumoured.
Sir F. Doyle said, " His exit is the result of too many
entrees."

32 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1882
Mrs. Godfrey Clerk told me to-day at dinner that
when she was in London last year, some one said in
her presence, " It is strange that Bradlaugh, although
he speaks well, should never be able to manage the
letter /;." Sir F. Halliday, who was sitting by,
remarked, " The reason is obvious ; we know that —
' 'T was whispered in Heaven,
'T was muttered in He-ll.'
and Bradlaugh will have nothing to say to either."
21. Sir F. Roberts shows us before Council the
new uniforms which he is about to propose to us for
the Madras Army.
The European Mail arrives. My sister^ writes
from Weimar, giving a very interesting account of
the performance of Faust at the theatre there, on the
fiftieth anniversary of Goethe's death. She sends me
also a poem of his, written in the Album of a friend,
shortly before the end, and till now unpublished :
" Lange hab' ich mich gestraubt,
Endlich geb' ich nach ;
Wenn der alte Mensch zerstaubt
Wird der neue wach.
1 Madame Obrist Grant Duff.

i882 MRS. CRAVEN 33
Und so lang du das nicht hast
Dieses Stirb und Werde,
Bist du nur ein milder Gast
Auf der dunklen Erde."
Mrs. Stanley Nelson sends an amusing riddle :
"A word of eleven letters. The first six Gladstone
loves, the rest he hates. The whole said slowly he would
like to do. The whole said quickly is where he ought to
be. — Reform-a-tory."
 supplies the antidote to this in a letter to

my wife. She mentions that Lady Sligo, becoming
impatient with a common friend, said to him the other
day, "Really, I think, you see no difference between
Gladstone and the Pope." " Oh, yes," was his reply,
"a great difference; / don't think that the Pope is
infallible." Mrs. Craven writes from Paris, with reference to a
letter which I had sent her from Guindy, in memory
of 9th February 1848 : —
" How strange it is that you should remember so faith
fully that day, whose memory is kept up by myself alone
in the country where so many might remember the time
these dates refer to. Everything that was generous,
loving, even cheerful, seems to disappear from the French
VOL. I D

3+ NOTES FROM A DIARY 1882
disposition, and, at times, I feel wretchedly alone — not as
all old women must from the gradual disappearance of all
their contemporaries, but in a quite different and new
way. Madame Swetchine, though she was older than I
am, when she died, was to the last surrounded by younger
friends, with whom she could entirely sympathise, the
colour of whose thoughts was quite the same as hers. But
that is just where the great change has taken place, and so
I understand nobody, and nobody understands me."
I have been taking exercise chiefly by riding up,
and walking down the hills behind the house, diverg
ing, from time to time, to search the sholas for
plants, and am gradually getting to know something
of the Nilgiri flora.
28. The European Mail, which arrived to-day, left
London on Good Friday, in the middle of the Easter
Recess. It brought accordingly but little from my
friends there. Renan, however, sent from Paris his
translation of Ecclesiastes, the preface to which is full
of suggestive remarks, as, for instance, the following : —
" Ce que Cohelet,^ en effet, est bien essentiellement et
par excellence, c'est le Juif moderne. De lui a Henri
Heine, il n'y a qu'une porte a entr'ouvrir."
' i.e. the Preacher.

i882 A THEODOLITE 35
May
8. I was just starting to breakfast with Bashir-ud-
Dowla, the brother-in-law of the Nizam, who is
staying at Ootacamund, when a telegram was brought
to me. It contained the terrible news of the murder
of Frederick Cavendish, and, of course, altered all my
arrangements. II. Attended the Wellington races and lunched
with my staff, who have a pretty camp near the
course. Wild weather, with thunder, rain, hail, and
what not, cut short the proceedings, and we drove
back in a deluge, accompanied by the largest flashes
of lightning I ever beheld. The four horses never
shied nor flinched.
12. The English Mail comes.
Lubbock mentions that a boy, sent from Rugby
to a school where more attention was paid to science,
was asked, " What is a theodolite ? " " A hater of
God," was the reply !
Lady Reay writes that a French girl, speaking of
her husband's quiet way of enjoying a joke, said, " II
sourtt aux eclats."
18. Daud Shah, the late Commander-in-Chief of

36 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1882
the Afghan Army, one of the handsomest and most
gigantic men I ever saw, dined with us. In the
evening, someone showed him a picture of Mecca, in
a recent number of the Graphic. He asked, " Where
is the Caaba ? " And, on its being pointed out to
him, lifted it to his forehead and kissed it.
25. We did not keep the Queen's birthday yester
day, as it was the anniversary of poor Adam's death.
To-night we had an official dinner of forty-five (at
which I spoke) and a ball after it.
The English Mail comes. A correspondent tells
me that the Prince of Wales introduced Chamberlain
the other day to a foreign Royalty as "Mr. Chamber
lain, the member for Birmingham." " Birkenhead,"
said the potentate, " I vos there ven I vos yong.
It is a dirty 'ole ! " yune
2. Our new daughter, born 1 6th March, was
to-day christened Iseult Frederica by Bishop Gell.
Her godmothers are Mrs. Greg, the companion of so
many of our journeys, associated, too, with our visit
to Brittany, the meeting- place of the Iseults,^ and
' See Mat. Arnold's Tristram and Iseult.

i882 THE MONSOON BURSTS 37
Lady Malmesbury, the youngest daughter of my old
friend John Hamilton. Her godfather is Sir Frederick
Roberts. 5. The monsoon is fairly upon us. Captain Bagot
and I were riding on the slopes of Dodabetta, in
weather which recalled Skye during the autumn
rains, when we were overtaken by Sir Frederick
Roberts, who introduced to me his new Aide-de-Camp
Captain Hamilton, a very interesting letter by whom,
describing the disaster at Majuba Hill, he lent me the
other day.
9. The English Mail arrives. Mrs. Bishop tells
me that Millais' picture of Cardinal Newman is " of
his red silk and his fatigue, not of his pathos and
subtlety and English grit."
28. The Goethe Almanack, which George Bunsen
sent me, and which always stands on my table, quotes
for to-day the passage of Faust, in which occurs the
line " Weh dir, dass du ein Enkel bist ! " It reminds
me of the letter of the Duke of Bedford to Arthur
Russell, announcing the birth of his first boy " Weh
dir, dass du ein Onkel bist ! "
Lady Reay mentions that when the Prince of Salm-
Salm was travelling in the United States, some one

38 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1882
asked where he came from, " Oh from Sing-Sing,"
was the answer !
John Morley, writing to me of the author of yohn
Inglesant, speaks very happily of his " melodious and
composed kind of English." July
2. I received this morning a cipher telegram from
the Viceroy, warning me that we might have to send
troops to Egypt. I saw accordingly the Commander-
in-Chief, as well as the Military Secretary, and tele
graphed to alter the arrangements for my approaching
tour, some portions of which, as originally settled,
would have taken me too far from the railway.
Leaving Ootacamund on the morning of 3rd July
with several of my staff, I visited Erode, Bhawani,
Trichinopoly, Dindigul, Tanjore, Vellum, Vellore,
Chittore, Ranipet, Arcot, Wallajahpet, Bellary,
Kamlapiir for the ruins of Vijaynagur, Hospet, the
Sandur Valley, Gooty, Anantapur, Tadputri, Cuddapah,
Conjeeveram, Arconum, and other places, returning
to my starting-point on the 26th, after a journey of
more than 1 800 miles.
I received a variety of addresses and made thirteen

1 882 CHITTORE AND BELLARY

39

speeches ; but all the business side of my tour is
described in a long official minute, which is on
record, so I only insert here a very few matters of
non-business interest.
II. Just as the fireworks began at Vellore a
telegram, announcing that the bombardment of
Alexandria had commenced, was placed in my hands.
12. While the municipal address was being read
to me this morning at Chittore, a huge elephant,
belonging to the Zemindar of Kalastri, a great
temporal chief, charged a smaller elephant belonging
' »,the Mohunt or High Priest of Tripaty, thus
^tablishing the church much more rapidly, alas !
ve did in Ireland. The stampede of the crowd
was a sight to behold. The natives took to the trees
like squirrels.
17. I spent some time to-day at Bellary in looking
through a book of extracts and a collection of auto
graphs belonging to my host Mr. Huntly Gordon.
The first, which had been formed by his grandmother
when she was residing in Brussels in the Rue
Ducale, contained, inter alia, some lines by Scott on
his return from visiting the field of Waterloo, on the
loth of August 1815.

40 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1882
The emotion of the moment carrying him into
exaggeration, he wrote —
"The sound of Cressy none shall own,
And Agincourt will be unknown ;
And Blenheim be a nameless spot.
Long ere thy glories are forgot."
Byron read or heard this when he, in turn, visited
Mrs. Gordon on 4th or 6th May 1816, and imme
diately added —
" I'll be d  d if they will, Mr. Scott."
In the same volume, in Byron's own hand, are the
'¦'¦ primi pensieri" for the great passage in Childe
Harold— " Stop, for thy tread is on an Empire's dust."
At the bottom of this page an artist, Mr. Reinagle,
sketched an eagle tearing the ground with his talons,
and it was on seeing or hearing of this that Byron
altered the line —
" Then tore with bloody beak the fatal plain,"
which he first wrote, into —
" Then tore with bloody talon the rent plain."

1 882 MR. HUNTLY GORDON 41
A year or two later came, in the same book,
the autographs of Wordsworth and Coleridge. The
former copied his own exquisite lines on Lucy ; the
latter, I forget what.
Byron evidently looked through this album, for
opposite the epitaph beginning —
" Ere sin could blight or sorrow fade,"
attributed by the copyist to another hand, he had
written — " No, these lines are Coleridge's."
On another page there was an epitaph, of the comic
kind, which was new to me —
" Readers, approach, but not with your hats on,
For under this stone lies interred Bailie Watson."
In the autograph book were a note from Mirabeau
to Count Lamarck, a letter from Kirkpatrick Sharpe
to Sir Walter, rejoicing in the gift which some one
had made to him of five hairs of King Charles of
blessed memory, — four gray and one brown, — and
calling attention to that monarch's own lines about
his " gray discrowned head," as throwing some doubt
on certain hair shown as his. Here, too, is the original

42 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1882
version of " Bonnie Dundee " in Sir Walter's own
hand. In the printed version there are many small
corrections, — all I think improvements, — such as in
line 2 " go down " for " shall fall."
In a letter from Bentham to Ellice (" the Old
Bear" with whom I long sat in Parliament, as I did
with his son, now also dead) occurs the following
passage about Cobbett : — " A more odious compound
of selfishness, malignity, insincerity, and mendacity
never presented itself to my memory or my imagina
tion." The letter is a remarkable one, and should certainly
be printed, if it has not been, as throwing a good deal
of light upon Bentham's character, and that light a
favourable one, for it is an appeal to the Government
in favour ij/" Cobbett.
Have I any where noted that I once heard Bear
Ellice say, "When I was young and wanted to go
from London to Edinburgh, I ordered a post-chaise
and put ;^ioo in my pocket. Now I put ^^5 in my
pocket, and there is about as much of that sum left at
the end of my journey, as there used to be of the
other." In one of these books I lit upon the curious Italian

i882 PERILS OF DEAFNESS 43
saying, alluded to in this Diary for January 1876, in
a Spanish dress, and transferred to the period of
Ferdinand VIL, when the hope of so many Spanish
Liberals was in England —
" Paz con Inglatcrra,!
Con todo el mondo gucrra ! "
25. In a letter, which came by the last English
Mail, but which only reached me to-day, I find the
following : —
" Scene, an evening party in London.
"Lord S  . 'Are you going on to  House .¦' '
" Lady  •. ' No, I am going to my bed.'
"Lord S  , who is very deaf, 'Then we shall meet
again very soon !
Amongst other things at Conjeeveram, I went to
see a little Jain temple, left unfinished, as it would
seem, by the original builders, and adopted later to
the Shivite worship. Now it is abandoned by all its
worshippers, but on its front stands the census number
1 I have to thank Lord Colchester for calling my attention to a
passage in Lord Stanhope's History of the TVar of the Spanish Succession,
from which it would appear that these words were familiar in Spain at
the time of the Peace of Utrecht, and were supposed to have been spoken
by Philip II. on his deathbed.

44 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1882
9-A, — emblematic of the new order of things. I
smiled at the unintentional epigram.
29. Mr. Brandt, Judge at Trichinopoly, told me
this evening that many years ago he heard a barrister
make a most remarkable peroration, in addressing a
jury in the Court of Exchequer. Channell, who
presided, said, " Eh I what did he say ? " and the Clerk
of the Court replied, in a stentorian voice, " He said,
my Lord, that it was a flea-bite in the Hocean " I
Les beaux esprits se rencontrent. I myself heard, as I
have mentioned on a previous page, Sir George
Balfour use the same phrase, without the H, in the
House of Commons.
The Mail arrives, and brings a letter from the
Comte de Paris, to whom I sent last month some
Nilgiri orchids. He writes from Chateau d'Eu, and
his views of European politics are as far from cheerful
as those of most of my friends of all ranks and
countries.
August
9. My Goethe Almanack says to-day : —
"Alles in der Welt lasst sich ertragen,
Nur nicht eine Reihe von schonen Tagen."

i882 A BARE MAJORITY 45
I wonder if the poet would have written that here
on the fortieth day of all but uninterrupted rain.
It was while I was on this tour that I received a
letter from  , who mentioned that at the time of
Prince Leopold's marriage Lady  and Gladstone
found themselves together looking down on half the
most beautiful women in London in the fullest evening
dress. "What a magnificent pageant ! " said Gladstone.
" Ah," replied Lady  , " on this occasion I am not
surprised at your being in favour of a bare majority ! " ^
The Mail brings a long letter from Mr. Webster,'
of Edgehill, which contains the following character
istic passage : —
" You please me by asking of my books. I was unable
to resist the Beckford Library, — out of all sight the most
uniformly line of any large collection I ever saw, alike
in purity and perfectness of condition and in admirable
beauty of the bindings. It would be worth your while to
get sent you a copy of the priced catalogue : the ants
would surely spare it for a day or two to let you read it.
But no catalogue can give one an idea of the spotless
beauty of every book in it. You know that he never
allowed sunlight to touch them or any artificial light.

1 A phrase which constantly recurred in the party-strife of the period.
^ M.P. for Aberdeen.

46 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1882
except from the top and through a double glass roof like
that in the House here. Thus the backs of the books are
as fresh as their sides ; and by opening them freely to
air instead of shutting them up under glass, there was no
damp in any I examined. The rage at present is rather
for great old bindings from distinguished libraries with the
cachet of their arms or particular styles than for anything,
and thus the enormous and undue prices. A copy of the
first edition of Buchanan's Psalms, the same as yours,
brought ;^300 odd. To be sure, it was an L. P., in perfect
white beauty as when printed, and encased in such a
binding ! from the Grolier Library, spotless, delicate,
perfect. I got many other things, an almost unique L. P.
copy of Bishop Burnet's Memoirs of the two first Dukes of
Hamilton in folio with proofs of the Portraits, and Beck-
ford's autograph notes and in fine old red morocco ; also
some lovely red moroccos and blue moroccos by Derome
and Padeloup of Bayle's lesser works and others about
Spinoza, and the first editions, under false names, of
Voltaire's sceptical brochures, and books of emblems. It
was a speciality of Beckford that every book containing
prints should have them proofs."
19. It is reported that some one showed Gladstone
and Childers a telegram in which it was stated that
Arabi had let salt-water into the Mahmoudieh Canal.
The replies were like the men. The first said " the
wicked wretch ! " the second, " how clever 1 "

1 882 MUST— MUST 47
Rendel writes from the division lobby under date
2 1st July : "We have gone from bad to worse. The
weariness of this House of dull dispute is intolerable.
It is like travelling through a dreary country in a
perpetually stopping train. The fidget of it and the
futility are beyond belief."
Mallet writes that G. Brodrick said, "The
Bombardment and Arrears Bill are both excellent
measures, but the first should have been applied to
Ireland and the second to Egypt."
24. The conversation turning at the Council
luncheon to-day on large trees, and especially on the
great Eucalypti in Australia, said to be as tall as
Strasburg or even as Cologne Cathedral, Brandis, who
did not discredit the statements, said that the highest
trees he had ever seen v/ere an Antiaris in Tenasserim,
allied to the Upas tree of Java, and a Deodara in a
valley belonging to Kulu. Both were about 250
feet high.
Sullivan tells me that a friend of his was in the
Anaimalais. In his camp was an elephant who, in
the middle of the night, began to eat the thatch off
the hut in which he was sleeping. His servant in
alarm rushed in and awoke him, saying, " Elephant,

48 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1882
Sahib, must must." The sleeper, half awake and
rolling round, replied, "Oh bother the elephant, tell
him he mustn't."
26. Brandis, who breakfasted with us, spoke of
Nitszch's long sermons (see this Diary for 1854), and
mentioned that a friend of his, mistaking Frau
Nitszch for his own wife, had said to her, as he
came out of church, " Heute hat er ganz ordentlich
genitszcht ! "
The English Mail arrives. The Dean of
Salisbury writes of a recent gathering at Exeter
College, Oxford : " It was curious to see Froude
quite in Orthodox Society dining in Hall where
the Nemesis of Faith was burnt ! "
Mat Arnold writes, " I wish all happiness to
your little Iseult ; she coincides with Swinburne's
poem on the subject, which is just published, and
which he has sent me with a pretty letter." After
a charming account of the flowers round Wotton in
Surrey, he goes on to speak of the religious changes
that are coming in Europe, and quotes a very pro
found sentence of Ewald's : " Eigentlich von der
Verkehrtheit des Verhalten's gegen das Gottliche
alles Ungliick ausgeht."

i882 COCHIN 4.9
I left Ootacamund with my wife and some of my
staff on 28th August, and returned thither on 20th
September, after visiting Coimbatore, Trichore,
Cochin, Ouilon, Trevandrum, Camp Gorge,
Courtallum, Tinnevelly, and Madura — a round of
more than 800 miles.
Arrived once more at headquarters, I recorded my
usual minute, which having been printed with its
appendix of addresses and speeches, need not be
given here ; but I add some other particulars belong
ing to these pleasant weeks.
The Coonoor Ghaut looked more beautiful than
I have ever before seen it, for the recent heavy rains
had crossed the hills and penetrated even to it.
Large and gorgeous butterflies sailed about in all
directions. The Walliar Jungle, too, presented a remarkable
contrast to the parched and unsightly thicket I had
visited in January. It was one mass of foliage and
flowers. All along the road from Shoranore to Trichore
they burned incense at intervals — a mark of attention
to an earthly potentate I have never before seen !
The following is the translation, which they
yoL. I E

50 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1882
handed me, of the Hebrew prayer for the Governor, at
the Synagogue of the White Jews in Cochin on 30th
August ; —
" Our Father which art in Heaven, Thou that hast
blessed our ancestors, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, bless
His Excellency and magnify his fame. May the Lord
preserve him and lengthen his days and years in
prosperity. So also may our Father which is in Heaven
preserve and bless all his family ; the King of the
Universe will hear their prayers, and deliver them from
all accidents and misfortunes, and make them worthy in
all their doings, and may the Father of mercy inspire
him and all rulers to be gracious and good unto us and to
all Israel our brethren, in his days and in their days. Also
in our days let the trumpet of salvation be heard, and let
the Redeemer speedily come to Zion. Amen."
The Ouilon Residency, which looks like a Gros-
venor Square house, stands on the edge of a lovely
reach of the lagoon known as Loch Lomond. The
prettiest view is just as one rounds a promontory on
which is placed the tomb of a retriever, who is said
to have saved his master's life at that spot.
September
On the 3rd I attended the Syrian Mass in

i882 THE SYRIAN CHRISTIANS 51
the morning, the Catholic Benediction in the
afternoon, and the Anglican Service in the evening.
The Syrian Mass was, we were told, partly in
Syro-Chaldaic, partly in Malayalam. The communion
was administered in both kinds.
The very interesting body known as the Syrian
Christians or Christians of St. Thomas is divided into
several groups much opposed to each other. In an
excellent Address presented to me, they said that
"this was the occasion which for the first time after
ages of separation witnessed the spectacle of all the
different sects of their community following divergent
articles of faith, sinking for once their religious differ
ences to do honour to their common friend."
After the Catholic Benediction the native children
sang an English hymn.
The lake in which we halted on the 4th for
breakfast reminded me of those near Potsdam, but
it opened into the Indian Ocean which rolled in
over the bar without, however, producing any effect
where we were lying.
One of my reasons for visiting Anjengo was that
it was long the residence of Mr. Forbes, the author of
ihe Oriental Memoirs^ who sprung from the Forbeses

52 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1882
who owned Corsindae before it passed to the Duffs,
brought up his grandson Charles Forbes de Mont-
alembert, and is thus indirectly connected with some
of my most cherished associations.
We found our European Mail at Trevandrum. It
brought me, inter alia, a letter from Story, the
American Sculptor, giving, by desire of Mrs. Marsh,
an account of the death, at eighty-one, of our old
friend, so long Minister of the United States in Italy.
It was an euthanasia ; —
"He died," says my correspondent, "on the 23rd of
July of an aneurism of the heart. Nothing seemed to
presage a sudden termination of his life, and here, among
the woods of Vallombrosa, where he had come to pass
the summer, he had seemed to be better in health
and spirits than he had been for some time previous. On
the day of his death he had been occupied as usual, and
had been out sitting under the trees and talking freely. He
then retired to his room, and at about 9 o'clock was seized
with a sudden difficulty of breathing, which lasted some
ten minutes, and then, without a struggle, he expired."
The place as well as the manner of his death was
fortunate. Where could so great a partisan of the
woodland pass away more appropriately than at a spot
consecrated to tree-worship alike by Milton's verse

i8S2 MR. MARSH

53

and by its being now the seat of the great Italian
Forest School ?
There comes back to me, as I write, a recollection
of long years ago, the tomb of a forester buried
amongst his oaks at Tharandt, near Dresden, and
that again leads me to Gregorovius's epitaph on a
German historian who died in Rome : —
" Hier ruht der Geschichtschreiber,
Im Staube der Geschichte."
In a letter to me this spring, Mr. Marsh mentioned,
by the way, the death, at a far more advanced age, of
Colonel Caldwell, at whose house in Rome I met, for
the first time, so many pleasant people, and above all
the Orlichs, so often mentioned in these pages.
Camp Gorge, where we arrived on the night of
the 7th, and where we remained to the morning of
the loth, is itself lovely, and the eight miles before
one reaches it from Trevandrum even more so.
On the 9th some of the planters, who have settled
in these wild regions, got up a beat for us ; but
neither bison nor elephants appeared, though some of
the former were said to have gone back through the
beaters.

54 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1882
We sat in an abandoned coffee estate, rapidly
passing into jungle, with the primeval forest all
around. A great black eagle sailed above, and I
heard a tree, whose hour had come, crash down with
its own weight and that of years.
Amongst letters which met me at Camp Gorge
was one from Lyall, in which he had enclosed a
translation into Greek, by Frederick Pollock (eldest
son of Sir Frederick, so often mentioned in this
Diary), of "The Hindu Ascetic watching the Proces
sion of the Prince of Wales at Delhi."
The lines are transferred to the mouth of a
Gymnosophist in the Punjab, B.C. 327. The last
four are : —
'AAXa yevoiO' ore ravr ippu trdXiV axTre Koviyjv
'AvSpoiv //.apvanevoiv eaKeSacre Zetpvpoi
^^X'? ^' '^5 x9€cnvT]S p.opt^Tj'i (pOoyyoivTe k^krjOe
N^jve/xoi/ i^avvoi vi'jypeTOS i^crvXLrjV,
which represents very well,
" When shall these phantoms flicker away,
Like the smoke of the guns on the wind-swept hill,
Like the sounds and colours of yesterday ;
And the soul have rest and the air be still ? "
The rain followed us to Courtallum, and was

i882 COURTALLUM

55

persistent there, except on our last day, the 12th,
when we made an excursion into the hills, seeing
the second and third waterfalls. At Courtallum, by
the way, the whole talk is of waterfalls, and, on the
loth, when we arrived, the first or lowest was certainly
very striking. All three are pretty, and the view or
the first, across the tank of the temple, really beautiful.
I was surprised to find that Courtallum is only 500
feet or thereabouts above the sea. I had fancied it
was a place like Coonoor, to which it has not the most
remote resemblance.
Mrs. Davies, who was staying at the Residency
here, showed me an ornament made of the claws of a
tigress which her husband, Colonel Davies, had shot
in the Coimbatore District, after the creature had
destroyed one hundred and thirty people.
Mr. Hannyngton saw the same Colonel Davies
shoot a tiger which had sprung on the back of a
young elephant and was trying to kill it. The
elephant escaped and joined the herd.
On the way from Trevandrum to Pullode I saw,
for the first time, the golden Oriole, which has been
seen, however, even in the Park of Government House
at Madras.

56 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1882
On the 7th we stopped, amongst enchanting
scenery, to visit a temple on the edge of the river,
where the red-eyed Mahseer are so tame that they
almost came on shore for crumbs and rice, tumbling
over each other in their eagerness to be fed.
In this part of our route we ought to have met
with wild elephants, but only saw their recent
tracks. The rain keeping us imprisoned in the little
bungalow of Kadathur Polay, some eighteen miles
on the way from Pullode to Camp Gorge, surrounded
by its deep trench to keep away these creatures, I
amused myself by reading the Discours of Cherbuliez
and Renan at the Academic Fran^aise, which the
former sent me by the last mail, thus bringing
civilisation and barbarism — Europe and Asia — into
sharp contrast. Cherbuliez is as bright and sparkling
as his subject, the excellent Dufaure, was not. Renan
is as interesting as usual.
Some months ago a report was forwarded to the
Government about the Municipal Dispensary at
Tinnevelly, in which the following remarkable state
ment occurred : — " Total number of patients treated
is somewhat less this year when compared with that

1 882 TINNEVELLY 57
of the year preceding, on account of the great panic
caused among the people by cholera."
With reference to this the Government not un
naturally observed : —
" The decrease is ascribed to a panic created among
the people by the outbreak of cholera. This is not
understood. In an outbreak of cholera, it may be
supposed that medical relief would be more largely
sought. If the falling off was caused by people from
outside being afraid of entering the town, this should be
stated." The statement was quite accurate, for when the
cholera arrived the population abandoned the European
medicine-men, and went back to the Devil temples,
which have been very generally furbished up in
consequence. The European Mail of 24th August arrived just
as we were leaving Tinnevelly.
Mrs. Craven writes from Menou, chiefly to thank
me for the " brin de jasmin " enclosed in mine of
13th July.
I took some pains, by the way, to get the same on
the evening of 12th July, at Chittore, forgetting that

58 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1882
I was to receive and visit some great chiefs the next
day, and that before the sun set I should be swathed,
smothered, and drowned in jessamine. The species
used here for garlands are different, however, from
that which grows in French and English gardens,
which I have up to this date seen but once in India,
at Hassoon Abdool, in the far north.
I had no idea that the Shiva Temple in Tinnevelly
was as fine as it is, and am glad I saw it before
Madura. Very memorable to me, too, is a view of
the town over a great tank with the mountain of
Mohundragiri, and the fine mass of rocky hill known
as the Sailor's Cape Comorin rising behind. No one
would think that amidst what looks like a cocoanut
wood was hidden a large and populous town.
Mr. Pennington's house is the best I have seen in
India, putting aside Government houses, but is subject
to the inconvenience of the Tambrapurni now and
then flowing through it.
I have noticed in the official minute the beautiful
illuminations at Madura ; but may further mention,
as things which interested me, the brilliantly-lighted
corridor of the Muttum where the Pandaram or Hio-h o
Priest lives, and the Tunkum, the residence of the

i882 THE HEART OF MONTROSE 59
Collector, in which the far-travelled heart of Montrose
is said to have passed some time.i
High above the Kaity Valley, on the rocky ground
to the left as we went down, I saw, for the first time,
the noble Nilgiri lily in its wild state. On the
Coonoor Ghaut an Argyreia was very conspicuous.
From Shoranur to Trichore Mimosa sensitiva, the
sensitive plant, introduced, but introduced more than
two hundred years ago, was extremely common ;
so were two plants which the natives called Kua,
apparently Xingiberacea, which I have not yet
identified. One of the after-pleasures of the journey was an
examination of Van Rheede's magnificent Hortus
Malabaricus, published at Amsterdam near the end
of the seventeenth century.
I think I know another Governor, who might be
described as Johannes Munnicks described him in a
letter addressed Lectori Botanico in vol. iii.
" Henricus de Rheede quondam Malabarici regni
gubernator strenuissimus, praestantissimorum Regum ac
magnanimorum illustriumque Heroum ad exemplar, in
^ For the extremely romantic story of its wanderings see Napier's
Life of Montrose.

6o NOTES FROM A DIARY 1882
ipso etiam armorum strepitu, rerumque politicarum
occupationibus diversissimis studiose semper excoluit
rem herbariam, et stirpium in isto mundi tractu
nascentium cum primis fuit delectatus."
23. The Mail of the ist arrives. Rutson^ writes
from Eggesford, the Portsmouths' place in Devon
shire : —
" Nothing can be more charming than the country, of
woods, lanes, cornfields — with views of Exmoor, in shades
of delicate blue and violet, on the one side, and the
severer and grander, but much less lovely Dartmoor on
the other. Both these are very striking, seen as they are
beyond many miles of rich farms and scattered villages."
24. I have been talking much with an eminent
Anglo - Indian, who is staying here, of Sir Alfred
Lyall's poems. He said to me this afternoon : " I
suppose to be good, one must put on a black coat on
Sunday." " Oh, no," I replied, " on your way to and
from the top of Dodabetta, you won't meet a soul."
"Ah," he rejoined, "the black coat on Sunday is one
of the last survivals of religion in a Scotchman's mind,
' It is Theology in extremis I ' "
^ The companion of my journey through India in 1874-75, ^^^ ^^^
friend of many who will read these pages.

1 882 BLANCHE DE CASTILLE 6i
25. I do not think I noted in this Diary at the
time an exquisite little epigram, which Mrs. Craven
once repeated to me as I was passing through Paris, and
which I found to-day in a memorandum-book. A
Catholic dignitary had spoken of the Empress as
Blanche de Castille. Some one wrote —
" Que chacun garde son nom,
L'Imperatrice est fort gentille ;
Elle est blanche et de Castille,
Mais Blanche de Castille — 6 non ! "
30. The following curious passage occurred in an
official document sent me the other day. The writer
was Mr. Andrew, C.S. : —
" One illustration I may give in passing. Sir C.
Trevelyan visited Wallajahpett many years ago ; I believe
shortly before the trade fell off. When there, he naturally
asked to see the cloths, carpets, etc. Soon after (owing to
the railway, of course,) trade began to diminish, and, to
this day, I hear that even the well-to-do traders think it
was owing to this visit, as they believe that if a great man
takes particular notice of a person or place, ill-luck will
follow. I can show this by what happened to myself
lately. A month ago I was walking near Ranepett, and
stopped for a minute to notice a good native house, and
asked whose it was, etc. A few hours after, the house

62 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1882
took fire (the owner after his prayers upstairs had left a
light in his room !), and the people in the town think the
fire was caused by my having noticed the house ! So when
His Excellency drove through Wallajahpett last July, the
bazaar people did not show him their best cloths, fearing
ill-luck would follow ; but also because they thought he
would introduce their trade in carpets, etc. , into the
Central Jail, Vellore, and so ruin them ; and it was not
until afterwards that the Tahsildar and Vice-President was
able to persuade them that His Excellency meant to do
them good, that they sent some better pieces to Ranepett,
which, unfortunately, did not arrive until after we had left
for Arconum."
I ought to have noted at the time that when, in
the end of July, it was reported that I was going to
the Anaimalais, the neighbouring population took to
flight. "He is coming," they said, "with an army
to fight with the Rajah of Cochin about the boundary
dispute, and we are sure to be impressed to carry the
baggage ! "
Rode in the afternoon with  . He told me
that Archdeacon  , a friend, once addressed him
as Dr.  , and that he had said, " If you call me
Dr. I will do the same to you." " Oh ! " replied the
other, " you can't ; I am not a Dr." " You soon

i882 MUSICAL HYENAS 63
will be," replied  . " I'll be D  D if I am,"
rejoined the Archdeacon !
October
5. The anniversary of our leaving England.
Major Bagshawe, commanding the troops here, told
me, at a Ball in Government House this evening, that
a few days ago he had seen two hyenas just above the
gardens, and within hearing of the band which was
playing at the time.
6. I found the other day in a note, by one of my
colleagues on an official paper, an excellent bit
of canting heraldry, — the motto given to a Dr.
Symonds, — I know not whether the father of J. A.
Symonds or another : —
"In mundo immundo sim mundus."
7. A social incident to-day reminded me of a picture
which I saw some thirty years ago in a German comic
paper ; I think the Fliegende Blatter. An agonised
Musikkenner is pouring out his soul to a lady, little
knowing that she is the mother of the Wunderkind
who has just been singing : — " Ich begreife nicht, dass
die Eltern des Madchen's zugeben, das sie singt !

64 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1882
Wenn sie auch so ziemlich gut aussieht, ihre Stimme
ist wie ein alter Kessel und geht durch Mark und Bein
und dann die Aussprache ! "
The European Mail arrives.
Aberdare writes : —
"I often think of you, climbing and botanising in a
region which, — not I trust from enchantment lent by
distance to the view, — I imagine full of picturesque beauty.
I remember that Macaulay compared its approaches to
the vegetation of Windsor Forest or Blenheim spread over
the mountains of Cumberland, described the climate as
equable as Madeira and bracing as Braemar, was eloquent
on the beauties of the forest and garden, which you would
appreciate better than he. So you can gratify, under
delightful conditions, your two master-passions of Govern
ment and Botany."
This passage called my attention to Macaulay's
letters about Ootacamund, quoted in his life by George
Trevelyan. The historian was here in 1834 during
the monsoon, and encountered the same horrors which
we have experienced, but habits have greatly changed.
" During a month together," he says, " I did not get
two hours' walking." I have scarcely missed walking
or riding two hours any day, rain or no rain, and have
botanised a great deal,

1 882 SIR G. C. LEWIS 65
I remember Whitbread's telling me that Sir George
Lewis said to him, " I don't understand how it is that
all you young men want so much exercise. I never
take exercise."
Had his premature death, which occurred soon after
wards, anything to do with this physical sluggishness ?
and what would have been the effect of his survival
upon Enghsh history ? are questions which I have often
asked. His own forecast of the future was curious :
" Palmerston must soon go, and after him we may
have Russell for a time ; but then Gladstone is
inevitable, and in five years he will have smashed the
party to atoms."
He did not foresee the election of 1880 ; but he
foresaw at least eleven years, for he died in April 1863,
and as Disraeli said to Lord Lytton, " In politics, two
years is an eternity."
I had also a long letter from Coleridge, to a portion
of which I replied in the following postscript : —
" I had been already warned by a friend, who knows
my way of thinking, not to read Mozley. My interest
in the Oxford movement is greater than you suppose.
Probably, we never talked much on that subject. I myself
came under the spell ; but I came under it very early, and
VOL. I F

66 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1882
it had ceased to have much influence upon me before I
went up to Balliol in 1847. I have retained, however,
the greatest curiosity about it, and the greatest wish, before
I die, to see its history worthily written. I trust, indeed,
two histories of it will be written, one which you could do
better perhaps than any man living, if you had the time, —
the history of the Oxford movement pur et simple, and the
other the history of the Oxford movement, as an episode in
the great wave of reflux towards mediceval Christianity in its
best form, which followed the French revolution and in
which the names of La Motte Fouque, F. Schlegel, the
Stolbergs, and Radowitz in Germany ; of Manzoni in
Italy ; of Ravignan, of Gerbet, of Lacordaire, of Mrs.
Craven, and of Charles de Montalembert in France, are
amongst the most prominent. Both would be most
difficult books to write, because they would require, if they
were to be valuable, to be written by persons who saw
that they were, to a very great extent, mistaken movements,
but who, at the same time, sympathised deeply with all
that was good in them.
" I don't think you know much about Radowitz, — to
me an extremely interesting figure. I once began but
never finished a paper about him. Some day I may take
it up again. He was, for a short time. Prime Minister or
virtual Prime Minister in Prussia, and died in 1852.
" You probably have long long forgotten that the first
time we ever met at Mr. Gibbs's — ages before we were
ever thrown much together and became friends, — you

i882 HANNIBAL 67
said to me of Ravignan ' that he had opened to you a
new chapter in the human mind.' You had heard him at
Farm Street. To my infinite regret, I never heard him ;
but I have known intimately those who knew him
intimately. " I do not think I should have ever taken much to
Lacordaire, but Gerbet must have been one of the most
fascinating of human beings, who extended his sway over
persons who shared few or none of his most cherished
beliefs. "
12. I paid a visit to Hannibal, the little bird who,
exactly a year ago to-day, came on board the Rome as
we were crossing the Bay of Carthage. He is living,
fat and well looking, in the nursery of Government
House at Ootacamund.
Miss Lee, a daughter of the famous Confederate
General, who is staying with Sir Frederick and Lady
Roberts, dined with us. She told me what I had
either never known or quite forgotten, viz., that
Stonewall Jackson had received a mortal wound by
the fire of his own men. His body lay in State at
Richmond, and her father said to her, " I have lost
my right arm ! "
The Northerners, when they marched into Lexing
ton, respected the Southern flag which floated over

68 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1882
his grave, — a fact which is interesting in connection
with the story told in Whittier's striking ballad —
" Up from the meadows, rich with corn
Clear in the cool September morn
The clustered spires of Frederick stand.
Green-walled by the hills of Maryland."
Miss Lee was wearing a bracelet, which attracted
my attention, and she took it off, at my request.
It was formed of buttons from uniforms worn
in the American war. One was her father's, one
Beauregard's, two belonged to two of her brothers,
one to an uncle who was a Commodore, one to Prince
Polignac, who had fought on the Confederate side,
and one to Wade Hampton.
I bade good-bye to the Hills, for this season, early
on 27th October, and driving across the Downs to
the top of the Sigur Ghaut, descended on Kalhutti,
where we breakfasted and then continued our way,
mainly on foot, till we reached the malarious little
hamlet which stands at the foot of the Pass. .
Passing on through jungles where Mr. Brown,
who was driving us, had seen as many as sixteen wild
dogs holding a council on the road, we passed a village

i882 CHARLES NORTON 69
where the Morning Glory Pharbitis nil was in the
greatest perfection ; and crossing the Mysore frontier,
about twenty-six miles from our starting-point, reached
the Residency, at the capital, in time for dinner, having
driven some seventy-eight miles in about twelve hours.
Here I paid and received the usual visits, saw
Seringapatam, examined the jewels of the Maharajah,
talked with the Dewan, assisted at a really brilliant
exhibition of fireworks, with much else, as is further
set forth in my official Minute, dated 6th November
1882. The Mail which reached us at Mysore brought a
long and extremely interesting letter from Charles
Norton, dated Ashfield, Massachusetts, 19th September,
in which occurs the following passage —
" These verses of Emerson remind me of himself. The
chief event, the great change in my life during the past
year, is his death and Longfellow's. Death did not come
untimely to them, and their absence makes no change in
the usual course of the days ; but with them away the
world is different, and there is a lack that can never be
made go6d. They were a large part of the best that life
gave me, — and it is now all relegated to the past. Two
natures more intrinsically sweet, and pure, and good are
not left ; they had both made the best of life ; they

70 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1882
preserved their simplicity, and they leave absolutely un
clouded memories ; nothing but what is fair in the thought
of them. Their death is a great blow to New England.
So long as they lived, she easily maintained her intellectual
leadership, and her moral influence over the imagination
of the nation. This influence needs reinforcing rather
than weakening in these days when the West is growing
so strong in its material prosperity, and mere material
ends become more and more attractive to the mass of men.
America gives no promise of developing an intellectual
life in proportion to her material development. She is
likely to become more and more towards Europe what
Sicily was, at first to Athens, then to Rome. The great
and more than preponderating compensation is, that here,
for generations to come, a vastly larger number of men
will be comfortable, will enjoy life with a certain Sicilian
semiculture, will be good natured, and mutually helpful,
than the world has ever known in such circumstances.
Nowhere has the condition of the community made it so
easy for a rich man, with a sensitive conscience, to enjoy
his wealth."

Lady Reay sends me an amusing account of a con
versation of years ago between Lady Westmoreland
and old Princess  about a marriage once proposed
between Princess Mary of Cambridge and the present
Emperor of Austria.

i882 PARADE AT BANGALORE 71
" But the religion," said the Englishwoman,
"would be a difficulty." "Quant a cela," said the
other, "on change sa religion comme sa chemise ! "
From Mysore I went to Bangalore, where we have
a large garrison, and where I assisted at far the most
striking parade I have yet witnessed. The gallop
past of the Horse Artillery with the guns taken and
re-taken at Mai wand, to the tune of" Bonnie Dundee,"
which the band of the 1 2th Lancers played superbly,
was quite a new sensation.
• From Bangalore we went to Hosiir, the Remount
station for Madras, — a lovely little bit of quiet English
scenery, — avenues of fine trees, paddocks enclosed
with hedges, fields of oats and lucerne, happy horses,
hay-making in full progress, to say nothing of various
amiable dogs, a pony who came into the drawing-
room, two grand white Persian cats and most friendly
entertainers. Round this place, as all through the part of Mysore
we traversed, Guizotia oleifera, a new crop to me, lit
up the landscape with its golden composite flowers.
From Hosur we returned, twenty-eight miles to
Bangalore, and started in the evening for Madras.
The English Mail of 12th October reached us

72 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1882
before we left Hosiir. Lady Reay writing of Lowe
says, " he touched his forehead with the words ' I am
like my father ; he withered at the top.' " We had
observed symptoms of his memory going, before he
left the House of Commons.
She also sends an anecdote pour la petite jeunesse :
Mother. — "Are you a good little girl to-day ? "
" No, mamma, not weddy dood, not weddy bad — ^just
a comferable little girl."
Victor Cherbuliez, writing on 9th October, says,
with all his curious felicity of diction, apropos of my
invitation to Madras, " Quelle pature pour ma
curiosite ! C'est une esperance a laquelle je ne veux
pas absolument renoncer. On dit qu'il faut qu'une
porte soit ouverte ou fermee ; une porte entr'ouverte
a son merite, et les esperances vagues sont un element
du bonheur."
The conversation at the Residency in Mysore,
where I was staying, turning upon the Khan of
Khelat, Major Wylie, who had been in charge of him,
mentioned that when that rather barbarous potentate
was going down to the Delhi assemblage, he and his
suite were found crouched on the table and seats of

i882 END OF MY FIRST YEAR 73
their saloon carriage with the water swashing about
on the floor. One of them had turned the tap in the
bathroom, and like the magician's apprentice had not
found the proper spell to bridle the torrent.
On State occasions the Khan never sits down till
the Chiefs of the two great Confederations, — the
Clans of the North and the Clans of the South, — have
done so. These clans make his legitimate army —
the one set marching under a red, the other under a
yellow flag. He advances in the centre with his body
guard flying the green standard of the Prophet. His
constant endeavours to increase the bodyguard and
become more independent of his very republican sub
jects have been a fruitful source of troubles.
November
5. Reached Government House, Madras, this
morning — on the same day and almost at the same
moment at which we arrived last year.
I may note a few particulars outside the realm of
purely official business. I have made fifty-seven
speeches, of which nine were in Madras and its
neighbourhood, three at Ootacamund, and the rest all
over the country from Hospet to Tinnevelly.

74 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1882
We have had a variety of balls, dances, and other
entertainments in the evening ; while at dinner we
have had 1089 persons, excluding our own party and
friends staying in the house. Of these 674 dined at
Madras and Guindy, 415 at Ootacamund. Two
hundred and sixty-one persons were also asked to dine,
who were unable to come.
I have made five tours, traversing 4875 miles (of
which 1 014 were by road, 215 by water, and the rest
by rail), and seeing nearly half the most important
places in the Presidency. I have got to know about
250 plants of the Hills, and a much larger number on
the plains ; but of these last I have not so exact a record.
The personnel of my staff has remained as it was
on 5th November 1881.
16. Lord and Lady Harris come to stay with us.
He is the son of the Lord Harris who was Governor
of Madras from 1854 to 1859, and great grandson of
the conqueror of Tippoo.
He mentioned at breakfast that he had seen on
his way hither, at Malta, an armour plate which had
been struck in the bombardment of Alexandria by a
Palliser shell, and on which the word Palliser had been
printed by its impact !

i882 SEASON PROSPECTS 75
17. We talked over the season prospects in Council
on the 14th, agreeing that there was no cause for
uneasiness as yet, though much for watchfulness.
Mr. Sullivan said, " I never get uncomfortable till
the 15th is passed." In the night heavy rain came
on, and more than six inches have already fallen since
his remark was made.
18. I have been glancing first at Hosur and then
here at the journals of Caroline Fox in which Mill
and Sterling play so great a part. Have I anywhere
mentioned that the first said to me of the second, when
I expressed some disappointment with his writings,
that "no one who had not heard his conversation
could form the faintest conception of what he
was " ?
19. The English Mail arrives. Rutson, speaking
of a gentleman who married an intimate friend of
mine, says, " You know he is your Friend-in-law."
He also repeats a French story new to me. Im
mediately after the declaration of war against Prussia
in 1870, the audience in one of the theatres called for
Musset's Rhin Allemand. The Manager came for
ward and explained that there had not yet been time
to learn it, whereupon Emile de Girardin rose in his

76 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1882
box and said, " II est done plus long a apprendre qu'a
prendre ! "
The friend with whom I stepped for the first time
upon Indian soil, and who was the first to call my
attention to the atmospheric effects of this country,
dating from Hampstead Heath, contrasts the soft
grays and greens around her with the scene upon
which I will be looking when I receive her letter.
That reminds me that I have nowhere noted what
sort of a place this is, in which I am at present living,
so I will here enter a description of it which I wrote
the other day : —
Government House stands in a Park, or, as it is
locally called, a Compound, of 75 acres, between the
great thoroughfare known as the Mount Road and
another road running along the beach famous for its
surf, which is magnificent to those on its landward,
and terrific to those on its seaward-side.
It is a large building, of dazzling whiteness, and of
an architecture as anomalous as the church in Langham
Place, which was described by the Irish bricklayer as
built according to Mr. Nash's positive order. The
interior is not well planned, and there is less accom
modation than the outward appearance of the pile

i882 GOVERNMENT HOUSE 77
would lead one to expect ; but its deficiencies are, in
some respects, compensated by the great Banqueting
Hall which stands near it, by the Marine Villa which
is one of its d'ependances, and by a small bungalow
inhabited by an Aide-de-Camp. The stables are
excellent. The north-east monsoon is at its height, and
some six or seven inches of rain have fallen during
the last few days. To-day the sky is clear, still
flecked with clouds, and the sea-breeze continues
strong. As I stand, about half- past two, in the
verandah, I have right before me the Bay of Bengal,
covered with white horses, while the surf booms like
the roar of a great city. Only two buildings are
visible from where I am — to the right the Senate
House, where I go once a year, in my capacity of
Chancellor, to confer degrees ; to the left the Fort,
where I go once a week to hold Council.
The space between me and the sea is filled, first,
by the Napier Bridge which crosses the Coum just at
its mouth ; secondly, by a reach of the Coum and a
grove of the wild date. Phoenix sylvestris. Still nearer
is a large round pond covered with the Nelumbium
speciosum, the most historic of plants, as it has been

78 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1882
well called, for does it not figure in the pages of the
Father of History ? At this moment, the inrush of
water from the late rains has made a clear space quite
round the plants, but they generally come close to the
edge. Nearer me, and slightly to the left of the pond, is
a clump of the splendid Lagerstroemia Reginae — not
now in flower — while between me and it, is another
clump of the sweet-scented Plumeria alba, one of the
most good-natured of trees, which goes blooming on
and on all the time we are here, and was the first
object which attracted my eye when I looked from
the verandah on the morning of 5th November, last
year. Between these clumps a number of antelopes are
reposing. If I turn slightly to the right, I see a wide space
of grass, only broken by three large trees, planted at
considerable intervals, being fine specimens of the
Albizzia Lehbek, the Ficus religiosa, and the Ficus
Bengalensis, respectively. The two last, under the
names of the Peepul and the Banyan, are familiar to
all readers of Indian books. The other carries my
thoughts to my first tropical evening at Assouan.

i882 MAJOR EVELYN BARING 79
I have purposely taken my station a yard or two
back from the front of the verandah, so as to limit my
view and not see the more distant portions of the
Park in which there are several pleasant nooks, not
ably a pond surrounded by the wild date.
It is from the front of the verandah that every fine
day after luncheon the kites are fed — a spectacle of
which — thanks to their perfect grace, strength, and
amiability to each other — I never weary.
24. Major Baring, Financial Member of the
Viceroy's Council, with his wife arrives, and we
immediately proceed to business. Later in the day
Mr. Mackenzie, the Home Secretary to the Govern
ment of India, who had been detained in the roads by
wild weather, is able to land, and joins us.
There ensued a series of conferences with them at
Government House, in which Messrs. Carmichael,
Sullivan, Master, Forster Webster, Forbes, Colonel
Sankey, Colonel Hasted, and I took part. In the
course of these all the principal questions open between
the two Governments were carefully discussed.
Mr. Sullivan mentioned to me that one evening in
the verandah of the Madras Club he saw something
wriggling. It turned out to be a fish, a species of

8o NOTES FROM A DIARY 1882
Ophiocephalus which was taking a walk, as it appears
frequently to do, upon dry land.
I recollect hearing that another member of the
Madras Club met a jackal in the passage out of which
his bedroom opened.
29. I found that Baring, though belonging to his
family, had never happened to see the fine lines about
Windham's death in St. Stephen's, with which, when
I showed them to him, he was much struck :- —
" Ev'n in his death, as manly as in life.
He fix'd the moment for the surgeon's knife ;
Each wheel of State in cautious order set.
Lest clerks might miss what nations would regret ;
Wrote to his friends with bold accustom'd hand.
Arguing the problems that perplex'd the land ;
Struck the account that earth to heaven should bear.
His last soft thought — the heart he loved to spare ;
And, to life's partner, life's dread risk unknown.
He closed the door from which there came no groan."
December
I. Our business being now pretty well settled,
the Barings went off last night with Captain Awdry
to Ootacamund.

i882 DECAYING ARISTOCRATS 81
2. The English Mail comes. Thiselton Dyer
writes of a new Cycas lately sent him from Cuddapah : —
" Colonel Beddome had given me fronds of it before,
and I was able to see that it was different from the Chinese
C revoluta with which he had identified it. Now I
have male and female flowers, and it comes out something
quite new, and I propose to name it Cycas Beddomii in
Beddome's honour. I shall describe it, I hope, in the
Transactions of the Linnean Society. The mere discrim
ination of a new species is an amusement which palls
upon us at Kew. But a new member of the Cycadeie —
these decaying aristocrats of the vegetable kingdom, who
were in their prime in the Mesozoic before the present
flora was even dreamt of — Is quite an event. Southern
India was, in some respects, the last place where such a
novelty was to be looked for."
He also sends me a very curious notice of Laportea
crenulata from the Gardener s Chronicle, written by a
Mr. N. E. Brown, who having been stung by one
single hair of it in the Palm House at Kew, did not
lose the sensation altogether for eighteen months.
In a letter from  occurs the following pas
sage : —
" Since I wrote to you,  and I have been ' making
a retreat ' at the Convent of the Sacre Cosur at Roehamp-
ton. I think you will understand, and not despise me if
VOL. I G

82 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1882
I say that I don't think I ever really grasped the clear-cut
reasonableness of the Catholic ideal of life before. Simplest
and noblest of formulas is surely St. Ignatius' fundamental
rule given in his Spiritual Exercises. I cannot but see
its perfect adaptation to meet the sadness, the despair,
intellectual and moral, of the pessimists. I trust, I am
stronger for the severe process of eight days' thought of the
issues of life — about seven hours a day were given to
earnest consideration of them according to the Ignatian
method — and except for one or two accomplished and
devout nuns, we had no companionship. I suppose all
doctors of the great religions of the world prescribe this
remedy — Buddhists most of all — solitude and silence.
Forgive me for writing so much of my own inner self.
You know of the lady who, coming out of retreat, was
surprised to see ordinary life going on and exclaimed, ' Est-
ce qu'on batit encore des maisons ! ' "
5. The Barings and Captain Awdry return from
Ootacamund. I told the Financial Member that this second visit
was a sort of substitute for Sidney Smith's " Screaming
gate," where he stopped, as he drove away from home,
to call for the things he had forgotten, and that we
should use it to bring forward all the pecuniary ques
tions that had been left unsettled between our Govern
ments. These were not many however,

i882 GENERAL WILSON 83
General Wilson, the Military Member of the
Viceroy's Council, arrived this morning.
Went over the Powder and Gun-Carriage Factories
with General Wilson. At the former, which I had
not seen before, I learned with some surprise that
our gunpowder is made from the Dhall [Cajanus
Indicus), of which I saw so much in Mysore. In
England the fine powder used for shooting is or was
made from dogwood, that used for great guns from
the alder. In 1857, Lady Mildred Hope told me
that in the Crimean War there was a distinct fall in
the price of the dogwood and a distinct rise in the
price of the alder on the Bedgebury Estate.
I saw some pebble (must I say powder .?) about
two inches square.
8. Walked with General Wilson in the verandah.
He told me that he went through the whole of the
defence of the Residency at Lucknow — 155 days. One
morning, about 9 o'clock. Sir Henry Lawrence was
lying on his bed with his hands behind him on the
pillow. General Wilson with one knee on the bed
was taking some orders about rations, when a shell
crashed in and exploded. For several minutes there
was total darkness. He called out " Sir Henry are

84 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1882
you hurt," no answer ; he called again, no answer ;
he called a third time. " I'm killed," said Sir Henry,
in a faint voice. He had been struck by a large
portion of the shell, and died some twenty-four hours
after. The boy who was pulling the punkah was also
mortally wounded. General Wilson himself had his
clothes torn off, and was badly cut in the back, but
not on the spine. A fourth person who was in the
room was untouched. Sir Henry's last words to
General Wilson were, " All your life beware of irre
sponsible advisers." The allusion was to the young
officers who had misled him into fighting the unlucky
action at Chinhut.
9. Conversation turned at breakfast on the mutiny,
and my wife made General Wilson repeat the account
which he had given her of its breaking out at
Lucknow. For several days there had been rumours
of an intended rising, when, on 31st May, a sepoy
came to General Wilson, and asked him to arrange
for his messing in the Residency that night, as the
mutiny would break out when the evening gun was
fired. General Wilson told Sir Henry Lawrence. In
the evening they had the usual large dinner, their
policy being to show the most perfect confidence and

i832 THEY ARE VERY PUNCTUAL 85
unconcern. When the evening gun was fired. Sir
Henry, leaning round the lamp which stood between
them in the centre of the table, said, "Your friends are
not punctual." Before Wilson could reply there was
a tremendous volley of musketry. " They are very
punctual, sir," he answered.
When after the relief of Lucknow, he arrived half-
mad with hunger at Cawnpore, he asked a sergeant,
" Is there a mess here." " Everything is a mess here,"
replied the man. And he was quite right. Wind
ham's troops were quite out of hand, had plundered
right and left, even drinking up a bottle of ink which,
in their intoxicated condition, they mistook for port
wine. II. Glancing the other day over a volume of
addresses by Huxley, who succeeded me in the
Rectorial Chair at Aberdeen, I came on the following
passage, which naturally interested me : —
" In fact, if, for a moment, I imagined that your
intention was simply, in the kindness of your hearts, to do
me honour, and that the Rector of your University, like
that of some other Universities, was one of those happy
beings who sit in glory for three years, with nothing to do
for it save the making of a speech ; a conversation with

86 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1882
my distinguished predecessor soon dispelled the dream.
I found that, by the constitution of the University of
Aberdeen, the incumbent of the Rectorate is, if not a
power, at any rate a potential energy ; and that whatever
may be his chances of success or failure, it is his duty to
convert that potential energy into a living force, directed
towards such ends as may seem to him conducive to the
welfare of the corporation, of which he is the theoretical
head. "I need not tell you that your late Lord Rector took
this view of his position, and acted upon it with the com
prehensive, far-seeing insight into the actual condition
and tendencies, not merely of his own, but of other
countries, which is his honourable characteristic among
statesmen. I have already done my best, and, as long as
I hold my office, I shall continue my endeavours to follow
in the path which he trod — to do what in me lies to
bring this University nearer to the ideal — alas ! that I
should be obliged to say ideal — of all Universities, which,
as I conceive, should be places in which thought is free
from all fetters, and in which all sources of knowledge
and all aids to learning should be accessible to all comers,
without distinction of creed or country, riches or poverty.
" Do not suppose, however, that I am sanguine enough
to expect much to come of any poor efforts of mine. If
your annals take any notice of my incumbency, I shall
probably go down to posterity as the Rector who was
always beaten. But if they add, as I think they will.

1882 THE ISLE OF MAN 87
that my defeats became victories in the hands of my
successors, I shall be well content."
Arthur Russell writes : " In the world of science
the last news is that Rawlinson's Chronology, by the
discovery of cylinders recently deciphered, has been
disturbed by two thousand years. He told Lady 
that it prevented him sleeping at night ; for these
two thousand years must be fitted in somehow.
Better he should suffer from this than from Russo-
phobia ! "
Walpole writes from his sea- beat kingdom : —
"This place is a very curious one. I suppose the
Lieutenant-Governor of the Isle of Man sees more of the
various machinery of Government, on a small scale, than
any man in the British Empire. In the first place, he is
Chancellor, and sits (with Assessors) as Chancellor ; in
the next place, he is President of the Common Law
Courts, and always presides at the Gaol Delivery ; in the
third place, he presides on the Council which is our
Insular House of Lords ; and in the fourth place, he
presides in the Tynwald Court in which the two branches
of the Legislature sit together and vote separately (just as
the English Parliament did in the days of the Plantagenets).
In addition to this, the Governor is his own Minister ; he
is his own financier and his Home Secretary, and is

88 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1882
occasionally obliged to explain and to defend his own
policy both in the Council and in the Tynwald Court."
Coleridge writes better in health, but rather
saddened at the thought that he will be the last
Lord Chief Justice of England, who will ever sit in
Westminster Hall.
15. My colleague Carmichael told me to-day that
a lady in this Presidency, who had a sick child, wrote
to the Collector of Coimbatore that she wanted it to
have fresh ass's milk, at some point on its way down
from the hills. The Collector was friendly, his native
staff zealous, and at the station named the traveller
found all ready to be milked — a she-bear. The words
for bear and donkey in Tamil have, in the mouth
of an European, almost the same sound.
22. The Harrises return. She says very truly that
sailing along the wild West Coast lagoons is like
travelling in fairyland. You turn round a corner,
and find yourself in a magnificent house, where
attendants, food, wines, and all the refinements of
civilisation seem to be placed before you by the wand
of an enchanter.
25. The English Mail comes.
Lady Temple's sister, who stayed with us at Kneb-

i882 FOR MY PRINCE AND COUNTRY 89
worth, and who even as a girl in the schoolroom
sang " Ton Souvenir est toujours la," ^ so wonderfully
well, has, it appears, just married and settled in
the Baltic Provinces, whence she writes, enraptured
with the splendid winter skies, the clear atmosphere,
the pine forests, the rocks, and the river which
runs through her husband's property into the sea
close by.
26. Ride with Lord Harris, who told me that his
great-grandfather, having been wounded at Bunker's
Hill, and trepanned in consequence, had mirrors so
arranged about his room so that he could see his own
brain during the operation.
I asked Lord Harris whether it was not true that
the veteran had had to wait many years before he got
his peerage for Seringapatam. " Yes," was the reply ;
" that was why he took the motto, ' For my Prince
and Country,' not 'For my King and Country,'
the Prince Regent having always supported his
claims." 31. The Harrises leave us for Calcutta, to our
great regret.
I recorded a few days ago a Minute in which I
' See this Diary for 1876.

90

NOTES FROM A DIARY 1882

briefly summarised the principal changes that have
taken place in this Presidency in the course of 1882.
After it had been submitted to my Honourable
Colleagues, it was " placed on the Editors' table," or,
in other words, made public.
My day, since I returned to Madras, has gone
much as it did last year (see this Diary for 1881),
except that my work under heads 3 and 4, — coming
to know my leading officials, and visiting the chief
institutions of this place — was pretty well got over
before I went up to the Hills in April.
I have risen slightly later, and instead of riding a
little and walking a good deal have this season ridden
a good deal and walked a little.
The weather has been, to my taste, delicious.

i883
yanuary
4. The first day of the year found us still in
Madras, where we remained chiefly to show our
selves on the third at the Fair — a great popular
festival — which did not take place a year ago, on
account of the wet weather which then prevailed.
5. We transferred 'ourselves to-day to Guindy.
II. Brandis long with me, to take leave, on
returning to Europe.
12. English Mail of 22nd December arrives.
Lady Reay mentions, on the authority of Mr.
Ward, an American, that Mademoiselle Lenormand
was intensely interested, during her last days, in
Eugene Sue's Mysferes de Paris, which was coming
out en feuilleton, and offered her doctor 20,000 francs

92 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1883
to keep her ahve just long enough to finish the last
chapter. She did finish it.
Madame Von Schubert, writing from her new
home, tells me that Esthonian is necessary, as her
servants speak nothing else, but it is a very difficult
language to learn. Even the very numerals, which,
in most languages are more or less alike, icks,
kaks, kolm, do not remind one much of one, two,
three. Mrs. Craven writes : " Adrien de Mun is well,
and has quite recovered his spirits ; his disposition is
now as in his youth — one that breaks down quite, and
goes to the very verge of despair ; but, then, it is
accessible to distraction (in French) and needs it, and
so gradually his high spirits recover themselves, and
bring him back to life again, like a ship out of a
storm which has vanished on the waters. It is a
very curious character, yet kind and loveable in the
extreme." Mat Arnold, writing on 14th November, to
introduce a young connection who has just left his
letter, says, "In next month's Macmillan there will
be a little poem of mine, which, I think and hope,
you and your wife, and perhaps Clara too, will like.

i883 M. ARNOLD 93
John Morley, who has not seen it, persists in speaking
of it as the Dirge on a Parrot. I will only say that it
is not that." 1
24. General Godfrey Clerk told me that when the
English Military Attache at Petersburg was con
templating a nude statue at the Hermitage, Schouvaloff
came behind him and said, " Vous voyez, mon ami,
en Russie nous ne cachons rien ! "
25. Finish the rough Inventory of the Guindy
Gardens. The house has been nearly full almost ever since
we arrived, and we are about to be gayer than ever ;
so to-day Mr. Hardinge, a grandson of the Governor-
General, comes to stay with us, for a little, as extra
Aide-de-Camp. Mrs. Awdry had to-day a letter from Lady Harris,
in which she mentioned that her husband asked a
station-master on the Darjeeling Railway, the other
day, whether they might change from a first into a
third-class carriage, "Yes, if you do not inconvenience
the third-class passengers ! " was the reply.
Duke John Albert, the third son of the Grand
^ This refers, of course, to " Poor Matthias," the canary, who has by
this time become as celebrated as Geist in all English-speaking lands,

94 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1883
Duke of Mecklenburg - Schwerin, with two com
panions, comes to stay with us.
26. Rode, for the first time, a new horse, which
has been given to me by Colonel Gloag, who is
about to leave India. He came from the Cape,
but has obviously Arab blood, and his name is
Renown. 29. M. de Heydebrand Lasa, introduced by Count
Miinster, dined with us. He was the first Minister
sent by Prussia to Denmark after the war of 1864,
and spoke in high terms of the perfect good-breeding
with which Danish Society received him. It was
not quite the same with the lower classes, but they
also behaved relatively well.
30. A day of much ceremonious visiting in con
nection with the approaching ceremonial, besides a
Legislative and Executive Council.
At night my wife gave a Fancy Ball, to which
people were asked to come, as much as possible, in
dresses made of Indian materials. She herself appeared
as Starlight, with powdered hair, a dress of silver, and
diamonds. Mrs. Mostyn, a young bride, sister of
Mrs. William Stuart, the wife of our Minister at
the Hague, and with whom I travelled to Parma, on

i883 THE MAHARAJAH OF TRAVANCORE 95
my way to India in 1874; Mrs. Awdry and Mrs.
Garstin were also charmingly dressed.
The two Ranees of Travancore were present —
an unheard-of event ! February
I. To-day I presented the Insignia of a Knight
Grand Commander of the Star of India to the
Maharaja of Travancore.
Duke Johann, Count Von Sierstorpff, and Baron
Von Tiele added not a Httle to the pageant, dressed,
as they were, in the gorgeous uniforms of the Prussian
Hussars and Lancers of the Guard.
A Gazette Extraordinary gives details of the
ceremonial. Father Weld, one of the five Assistants of the
General of the Jesuits, dines with us.
Coleridge writes on 4th January: —
"I have been reading, for the first time since I was at
Oxford, Aristotle De Pcetica. It disappoints me, I con
fess. It is so very external and technical. Now and then
there are very profound observations, dropped as it were
by the way, but it is a curiously exoteric view of the subject.
The best thing I have come to (but perhaps you know it)

g6 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1883
is that if you introduce anomalies (Caliban, the witches,
Ariel, for example, as I take it), they must still follow their
own rules. Kcti/ yap dvmp.aXo'S tis fj, ofuiys oyxaAus
avrnfiaXov Stl elvai.
" That is a wonderful bit for the time of Aristotle.
There is not a trace in him of his thinking Euripides
one whit inferior to the other two ; rather the contrary,
which, as you know, falls in with one of my prejudices.
But the treatise is disappointing, and he promises to
explain in another treatise what he means by the famous
definition of tragedy — a purifying of passions by means
of pity and fear — but no such explanation, it seems,
exists. Oh dear, how I wish I had you here to talk
about what I care about and you too ! None of the
younger fellows seem to care an atom about such
things." This day brought to an end the first scene of the
second act of our Indian life, which began on
5th November 1882. We have seen at Madras, as
well as at Guindy, an unusual amount of society,
and some of that Society has been very pleasant.
Now my wife is just starting for the Hills, taking
Victoria with her, and my departure is even more
imminent. On the evening of 3rd February I left Madras by
the Satara, in wildish weather, with Captain Awdry,

i883 1823 AND 1883 97
Captain Cavendish, and Dr. Mackenzie. Landing
on the 6th at Gopalpore, I travelled for nearly six
weeks in the Ganjam, Vizagapatam, Godavari, and
Kistna Districts. After my return on 17th March,
I recorded a very long Minute,^ in which all our
proceedings which had anything of an official
character are set forth with an appendix of addresses
and speeches. I think I made in all twenty-three
of the latter.
Here, however, I only note a very few incidents,
which had nothing to do with business.
7. The one inhabitant of the deserted Fort of
Ganjam was a fox, the first I have seen in India, and
a very pretty creature. He could not understand our
intrusion, and looked round, when he had run a
little way, with mingled surprise and disgust.
9. Sat long under a banyan-tree by a small Hindu
shrine, in a wild island of the Chilka Lake, while
my staff were shooting deer in the woods around, —
^ On my return to Guindy I turned to the Minute of my illustrious
predecessor. Sir Thomas Munro, dated 7th January 1823, upon the same
tour. To bring the changes that have taken place, in this part of the
Presidency, more prominently forward than by placing his Minute and
mine side by side would be hardly possible. Only sixty years separated
the two documents, but we might have been writing about two different
planets !
VOL. I H

98 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1883
my thoughts far away in the Rue de Sevres. The
beaters caught and brought to me a little fawn, which
I took care of till the dogs were tied up, and there
was a fair prospect of its mother finding it.
10. The fort of the Kalikote Zemindar is
approached by a long avenue, on both sides of which,
for some little distance, several species of Bauhinia,
now in full flower, v/ere planted. It is not often
that so happy a thought occurs to a native proprietor.
At breakfast in a tent at Kalikote, Mr. Goodrich
mentioned the old, but to me unknown, answer given
to the question " Whether is the Dauphin or the
Prince of Wales the greater man ? " "Juvenal has
settled that. Does he not say,
' Quanto delphinis balaena Britannica major ' ? "
1 1 . Saw a fine wild boar trot across the road, on
the way from Rambha to Aska. Later in the day
our horses ran away, and we were, for a few moments,
in very great danger.
13. English Mail arrives.
Miss Lyall, the companion of my journey from
Berlin to Dover in 1875, writing under date of i8th
January, says, speaking of Gambetta : " I don't know

i883 MALBROOK 99
that he is a loss to France politically, but personally
I did feel very sorry that that bright strong spark
was blown out. I can't help feeling a special pain
at the death of the people who love life, unless they
are old and full of days."
Mrs. Bishop writes under date of 14th January :
" I mean to get gallantly through the London
twilight, which is not a Gottes-dammerung, but the
days are half an hour longer, and that is much joy."
16. At a nautch this morning, in the Fort of the
Mandasa Zemindar, Mr. Goodrich said to me, " Do
you recognise the air to which they are dancing ? " It
was "Malbrook se va-t'en guerre." Bussy taught it
to the dancing-girls of Vizianagrum, and they to
their neighbours.
19. At Parla Kimedi, where I have been for the
last day or two, I found an old copy of Angela Pisani.
As a novel, it is absurd and extremely blackguard
to boot ; but there is something in George Smythe's
writing that has always had a fascination for me.
It had in 1845, when I first came across his Historic
Fancies at Bowls on the verge of the now vanished
Hainault Forest, and fifty-four has not repudiated the
judgment of sixteen.

loo NOTES FROM A DIARY 1883
How good — from the speaker's point of view — is
this fragment of a speech at Canterbury, quoted by
Lady Strangford in the Preface : —
" I desert the Tory party ? Why, my sole regret is
for the youth, the earnestness, the energy, and the passion
with which, as a mere boy, I asserted before you the
seeming paradox that the Tory party was the party of
progress and of the people ! But what is this Tory party ?
What are its principles, its traditions, its illustrations, its
oracles ? Is it a mere chorus of whiners, who, in all
times, all places, all seasons, have whined and whimpered,
and canted and cried for a yesterday f Are the principles
of the Tory party to be reduced to the negation of the
' No Popery ' cry ? Are the traditions of the Tory party
the traditions of Titus Oates, or even of Sacheverell ?
Is its illustration the flame of Lord George Gordon's
mob ? Are its oracles the echo speech upon Penenden
Heath, or the hiccoughs of Pitt Clubs ? Or is the Tory
party a succession of heroic spirits, beautiful and swift,
ever in the van and foremost of their age, — Hobbes and
Bolingbroke, Hume and Adam Smith, Wyndham and
Cobham, Pitt and Grenville, Canning and Huskisson ?
Are the traditions of the Tory party the noblest pedigree
in the world — that long line of democratic measures
which begin with the Habeas Corpus Act and end with
Corn Law Repeal ? Are the illustrations that glorious
martyrology which opens with the name of Falkland and

i883 GEORGE SMYTHE loi
closes with the name of Canning .? . . . When I am
accused of having departed from true Toryism, I claim
asylum, I take sanctuary in the tomb of William Pitt, —
not the Pitt of mythology and of Pitt Clubs, but the Pitt
of history, the Pitt of immortality. He defeated, if he
could not conquer, a narrow, a selfish, a grasping, and a
monopolising aristocracy ; he raised the commercial class
to those high places which, in a commercial country, are
their heritage ; he enacted those measures of free trade,
which he had inherited, in theory, from Adam Smith, and,
in practice, from Bolingbroke ; he sympathised with those
great spirits in 1789 in France, whose production stilt
governs the world, and whose memory still fills it ; he
forecast a large measure of conciliation to Ireland ; and
when, defeated by bigotry in high places, he was pre
vented from enforcing it, he resigned. Such were the
principles of that great master. I learned them in the
story of his life, and by a diligent study of his speeches ;
and if I am wrong, I can only say that I would rather be
wrong with Pitt, than right with those who profane his
memory and blaspheme his great name."
How many men on that side of politics have, in
our times, said or written anything equal to the
sentence : " When I am accused of having departed
from true Toryism, I claim asylum, I take sanctuary
in the tomb of William Pitt — not the Pitt of

102 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1883
mythology and of Pitt Clubs, but the Pitt of history,
the Pitt of immortality."
Good, too, is his saying : " The admiration of
posterity is only the admiration of an ill-informed
mob " : and, " The man who at five-and-thirty in any
measure realises the dream of five-and-twenty, his is
the happy life. He may look forward to doing the
same at five-and-forty, or five-and-fifty : " and, "The
complexion of consumption is the most terrible
antithesis in life."
New to me also was Claudian's fine line quoted in
the book : —
" Et platanus platanis ulmusque adsibilat ulmis.''
and this version of the well-known words which he
quotes from Montecuculi : —
"Je ne suis pas venu mettre la paix mais I'epee."
Neither had I heard the amusing epitaph on a
maker of fireworks, of which, by the way, we have
a display at almost every town in which we sleep.
" He has gone to the one place where his inventions
can be surpassed ! "
19. English Mail arrives.
Lady Reay writes under date of 31st January:

i883 THE POTINGHY GHAUT 103
"They took \is to a great meet of the Pytchley  .

We were covered with furs, and thus we watched the
fox escaping beside the carriage from his three or
four hundred pursuers. He winked at us as he passed
into a thicket."
22. We arrived, immediately after sunset, at our
camp, which was pitched on a high bluff, overlooking
the Salur River, amidst a characteristically Indian scene.
Far off rose a fine mass of purple mountain, while
the nearer distance was occupied by a large mango
grove, in full blossom. Still nearer was an immense
space of sand, covered by the stream in the rains, over
which a great herd of cattle were slowly wending
their way, and at our feet an elephant, obedient to
every word of her mahout, was enjoying to the full
the luxury of a bath.
23. We started as the sun was rising on one
side — the moon, just past the full, setting on the
other — and driving to the foot of the mountains,
climbed them by the new road, which is being made
to Potinghy, some two -and -twenty miles off. It
is a work of first-rate importance for the civilisation of
vast regions in this part of the Presidency, and the
loss of life, which has been caused by the deadly fever

104 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1883
of these hills, can only be looked upon as incidental
to a campaign against famine and barbarism. Never
theless, when the men employed on the works
salaamed as I went by, the old words of the Amphi
theatre came back to my mind, " Ave, Caesar,
morlturi te salutant ! "
25. At Vizianagrum the scenery round the Garden
Palace, where we are staying, reminds me strongly of
Spain. Max Miiller writes, under date 28th January,
saying, amongst other things, that Gladstone writes
from Cannes, " I am recovering the only great faculty
which I ever possessed, the faculty of sleep."
Dyer writes on ist February : —
" We are most grateful for the seeds you have sent us.
Most of them are things we particularly want. You
exactly hit the point when you say that such things slip
out of cultivation. With our cloudy skies it is impossible
to ensure keeping them. They don't perfect seed, and
are often hard to propagate by other means."
March
4. A portion of the English Mail of the 9th
February reached me at Rajahmundry.

1883 MISS NIGHTINGALE 105
Sir F. Pollock writes, under date of loth
February : —
" Really Madras is the land of good things. Your last
story of the bear would make a good pendant to the old
one, in which a drowsy grandmother, hearing a child
read in the Old Testament, ' and three children Milcah
bear,' stopped the reading to ask, ' How could three
children milk a bear ? ' Please go on sending these
excellent anecdotes."
There is much truth in a remark made by Miss
Nightingale, in a letter which I have just received
from her, as to the advantage of having two, or, better
still, three constitutional elements keeping each other
up to the mark, but that presupposes that the con
stitutional elements are really anxious to get the work
done in the best way, which, unhappily, in political
life is by no means always the case.
On 3rd March, I received at Cocanada from Sir
James Stephen the terribly sad announcement of the
death of Henry Smith.
The Mail of i6th February brings from Miss
Smith and from Acland full accounts of this tragedy.
Maskelyne writes, under date of nth February : —
" I don't know any one who does not feel that to-

io6 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1883
morrow a part larger or smaller of his power of loving will
be covered by the earth of an Oxford churchyard. People
say, truly certainly, that to' have known Henry so nearly
and so dearly as we did was in itself enough.
" But to me at least that is no filling of a void, nor will
it bring us back the light elastic ring of his fine raillery,
or the ever-fresh fountain of his intellectual sympathy — a
sympathy that was as much and as heartily given to those
who were far beneath him in power as to those who could
move by his side in the highest pathways of man's
intelligence. " You must feel a glow of pure pleasure when you read
the Times article on him. I remember, when I read that
speech which they quote, thanking you in my heart for
it." The reference was to an article in the Times of
loth February, which I did not see till I returned to
Guindy, the end of which ran as follows : —
" No one who knew the amount of practical work of all
kinds undertaken and accomplished by Professor Smith
will be surprised that he has given so little permanent
literary work to the world. But if his scattered mathe
matical papers should ever be collected and published, and
if he should have left the results of the investigations in
which he was for years engaged in anything like a
completed form, it will be found, if we are not mistaken,
that his mathematical genius was of the very highest order.

i883 HENRY SMITH 107
In general literature he has done very little in proportion
to his powers and culture. We can only recall an Essay
on the ' Plurality of Worlds,' reviewing the controversy
between Whewell and Brewster, which was published in
the first volume of Oxford Essays, and a graceful bio
graphical notice of his friend Professor Conington,
prefixed to an edition of the latter's Literary Remains.
But Smith's real work was not done with the pen or in
the study. He was a scholar and a student all his life,
but he was always and before all things a man of affairs.
' The Savilian Professor of Geometry,' said his friend Mr.
Grant Duff, in commenting in the House of Commons on
his nomination as one of the Oxford University Com
missioners, 'is not merely in the first rank of European
mathematicians, but he would be a man of very extra
ordinary attainments even if you could abstract from him
the whole of his mathematical attainments. He was the
most distinguished scholar of his day at Oxford. . . . But
Professor Smith's extraordinary attainments are the least of
his recommendations for the office of Commissioner. His
chief recommendations for that office are the solidity of
his judgment, his great experience of Oxford business, his
services on the Science Commission, and his conciliatory
character, which has made him perhaps the only man in
Oxford who is without an enemy, sharp as are the
contentions of that very divided seat of learning.' The
eulogy may have been thought a little extravagant at the
time as applied to a man who was not prominent as a

io8 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1883
politician, nor distinguished as a man of letters, and
who was better known to the world at large perhaps as a
fascinating companion than as a learned professor or a busy
man of aifairs. But those who knew Henry Smith best
will acknowledge the justice of Mr. Grant Dufi^'s descrip
tion of his friend, and though his premature death has
invested the words with a mournful significance, we recall
them with pleasure as the most fitting tribute we can offer
to his memory.''
Bradby of Haileybury, whom I have seen only once
or twice since I took my degree, and who gained the
Balliol scholarship along with Henry Smith, sends me
a full account of his funeral, and adds : " I saw Jowett
for a Httle afterwards. He was very sad, saying it
would make all the difference to Oxford. Henry
held all parties and all studies together, — the great
reconciler." ^
14. Almost the first book I found on my table,
when I reached Mr. Horsfall's house at Masulipatam
this morning, was the earliest series of Miss Ingelow's
poems, and I turned instinctively to an old favourite : —
^ Jowett emphasised this in writing to me a little later and added ;
" You and I have lost one of our dearest friends — to me one whose
loss makes life sensibly different. I have thought a good deal about
him since his death, and he seems to me perhaps the most remarkable
man I have ever known."

i883 THE BRIDES OF ENDERBY 109
" The old Mayor climbed the belfry tower,
The ringers rang by two, by three ;
' Pull if ye never pulled before ;
Good ringers, pull your best,' quoth he.
Play uppe, play uppe, O Boston bells !
Play all your changes, all your swells.
Play uppe the Brides of Enderby."
One could not have more appropriate reading in
this place, where, in November 1864, some 30,000
people were swept away by a storm-wave. Colonel
Hasted, who is with me here, was in the midst of the
catastrophe, and wrote an account of it, which has been
largely made use of in the forthcoming Kistna Manual.
From Masulipatam we sailed to Madras.
This tour, while extremely full of business interest,
has had less of non-business interest than almost any
other which I have made.
The beauty of the Chilka Lake, however, deserves
to be mentioned, and the fine hill outlines which are
visible all through Ganjam ; nor, amongst the humours
of the journey, should one omit to record the astonish
ing sermon of which we heard, in which the clergy
man observed, "Salvation is freely offered to all, —
even to the repoulsive native," — and God knows he is
repoulsive !!

no NOTES FROM A DIARY 1883
17. Receive, on landing," the English Mail of 25th
February. Under date of 17th February, George Boyle writes
from the Deanery of Salisbury, speaking of Henry
Smith: —
" I heard no more until last Saturday, when, on my
return from the Cathedral at eleven, my wife broke to me
the terrible news. It was in your rooms that I first began
to know what a man he was. I had met him once or
twice before in Palgrave's, but ever since 1847 I think I
have steadily increased in admiring regard for him, — the
Admirable Crichton of our time. How we talked of him
when we were in Ireland together ;1 but when, of late
years whenever we met, did we not talk of him ? It was,
however, when you were his guest, or he was yours, that
you knew him most. A real delight has gone from earth,
and Oxford has lost the man of whom you said so well
that he had not an enemy. I often have desired that he
should have done more in literature. The Essay on
Whewell and Brewster was one of rare promise. But one
can only think of lines like W. S. Landor's on Rose
Aylmer in connection with him."
William Spottiswoode, the President of the Royal
Society, has sent me a good article by himself upon
1 In 1855.

i883 HENRY SMITH in
Henry Smith, published in Nature, and I have read in
the Spectator another by Charles Bowen, now one of
the Lords Justices.
The newspaper tributes to his memory from all
sides have been creditable to the writers, and have
conveyed to the public as much of the impression of
his greatness as could be so conveyed ; but it is
diiBcult to put into words one's real thoughts about
him. For myself, his whole being, and especially the
extraordinary facility with which he did everything to
which he turned his attention, gave me less the idea of
his htmg a superior mant]\2.n of his being a quite ordinary
and every-day specimen of a kind of creature superior
to man, who, without having a suspicion of the true
state of the case, somehow found himself amongst
human circumstances and accommodated himself to the
situation as best he could.
I remember, when we were walking down
Montserrat in 1864, asking whether he thought that
he had more turn for mathematics than anything else.
" Oh no," he replied, " I think I could have taken
quite as kindly to half a dozen othei" things."
Something turned the current of our ideas — I
think the sudden discovery that we might miss the

112 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1883
train at Manresa or some neighbouring station, and
we did not recur to the subject for years. At
length in Scandinavia, in 1873, ^ recalled our old
conversation, and said to him, " Now, if you had been
by any accident shut out of mathematics, what would
have been your second choice ? " " Well," he said,
" I think classical archaeology ; " and I could quite
understand its being so, remembering the intense
interest in the antiquities of Athens which he showed,
when we were there together in 1871.
He was, I fear, very tired. As we passed through
Schleswig, I recollect his saying that he would not
regret to be at rest, and that is nearly ten years ago.
Personal ambition and the love of fame are dangerous
but powerful stimulants. He was far above these, and
simply did what his hand found to do. If it had been
otherwise, we might have had a great man still ; but
we should not have had Henry Smith.
20. Admiral Hewett, who is commanding in these
seas, called at Guindy yesterday, and to-day I returned
his visit on board the Euryalus. Many as are the votes
of thanks to which I have been a party, I never knew
that the vote resulted in a material object ; but in the
Admiral's cabin were several very handsome pamphlets

i883 VOTES OF THANKS 113
in folio, beautifully printed, two of which were signed
by Sir Thomas May, one of these being the vote of
thanks of the Commons for Ashantee, in which I
doubtless joined.
25. The surpassing beauty of the nights has been-
a great pleasure during Easter week. I have not been
sleeping very well, and have walked up and down the
verandah, out of which my room opens, from time to
time. The glorious moonlight has killed out all the
smaller stars, but the Southern Cross has been in great
beauty, and yesterday evening after dinner Orion was
quite magnificent. Nothing that I have seen in other
lands surpasses the loveliness of Guindy in the silent
hours. 31. Presided in the Convocation of the Madras
University, and admitted the candidates to their
degrees. In an examination, by the way, which took place
in connection with that Institution some years ago,
one of the questions asked was : " State how the two
points first marked on the thermometer are obtained."
The following was perhaps the wildest of some 570
wrong answers : " The two points were obtained by
Sir Stamford Raleigh, when he was in Ireland."
VOL. I I

114 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1883
Another ran thus : " If you dip the thermometer
in a solution of hydrogen gas, you will obtain the first
two points."
These pearls are to be found in a pamphlet published
in 1877, and lately lent me.
April
Professor Lawson, who has come out from Oxford
to take charge of our botanical afi^airs, has been staying
with us a good deal, and I have had the pleasure of
presenting him to many of my vegetable favourites.
These seventeen days at Guindy have been par
ticularly pleasant. I have ridden much in the Park,
where the Neem is in full blossom and the Banyan
covered with its fresh green leaves. The spotted
deer and antelopes hardly pretended to be startled as
we cantered by.
The swimming bath I have had made in the
building, which I remember in 1875 as a tealery, is
a great addition to the general comfort, and we have
had a number of small dinners, at which Mrs. Awdry
has done the honours.
A great many officials and others assembled at

i883 THE GOVERNMENT ASTRONOMER

"5

the station to say good-bye. Amongst them was Mr.
Pogson. "What," I asked, "are the names of the
two stars that point to the Southern Cross, which I
have been watching so much lately .? " " They are,"
he replied, " a and /B Centauri ; the lowest one is the
nearest to us of all the fixed stars. Light only takes
three years and a half to come to us from it."
4. Reached Ootacamund.
8. I came across a striking saying of Fievde's : " La
politique meme dans les gouvernements representatifs
est ce qu'on ne dit pas."
10. As we were looking on at Polo, my wife
reminded me of the beginning of Canto XXII. of the
Inferno, which fairly, though unintentionally, describes
the game.
13. English Mail arrives. Mrs. Craven writes : —
" I had quite resolved to be punctual this time, and not
to let this month get so far advanced without giving you a
• signe de vie ' ; but my time has been lately more taken up
than ever, and quite recently very painfully by a short,
but rather alarming, illness of my husband's, the first
he has ever had since we married, you know how many
years ago} He is now quite well again, and, of course,
^ In August 1834 !

ii6 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1883
\
we are arrived at that time of life when illness must be
expected; but the first shock of an anxiety, )2ever before
experienced, was to me very great ; it made me realise
(what I had never done before) that I was not the only
one who was getting old. However, thank Heaven, I
don't think his hitherto perfect health has received any
serious check, and I hope that, with only taking some little
more care of himself, he will continue to be much the
strongest of the two, as well as the youngest, which a man
only two years older than his wife ought to be considered.
I send you a tardy thanks for your amusing and interesting
account of your Arabian Nights' festival for the investment
of your Maharajah. I wish Clara could have been present,
as I am quite of my mother's opinion, that one is never
too young to be allowed to see any grand or brilliant sight.
Early youth is just the time to make provisions for pleasant
future recollections, besides those years being the only
ones in life when enjoyment can be unmixed and free
from drawbacks. I always remember how I enjoyed the
fine sights I saw in my seventeenth and eighteenth
years, beyond whatever came in my way later in life
in the matter of amusement."
Rutson writes : —
"We then went to see some of the Ashburnham MSS.
It is an extraordinarily rich collection ; but you can
hardly imagine the pleasure that is given by two Missals,
— one with miniature groups and landscapes by Perugino,

i883 MRS. SYDNEY BUXTON 117
Francia, etc., called the Albani Missal ; and another
executed for one of the Medici. These are among those
the nation is to buy. They are, I think, the most lovely
things of the kind or of any kind I have ever seen."
Mrs. S. Buxton writes that she was not much
interested by these, but very much by some of the
autographs. " There was," she says, " a long letter
from Swift, and a characteristic note from Sarah,
Duchess of Marlborough, commenting on her
dismissal from Court ; and a description of the battle
of Drumclog, written the same evening by Graham
of Claverhouse, and (best of all) the original return of
the names of the Buckinghamshire people (there was
one woman among them), who refused to pay ship-
money. We were told that when this was shown to
Mr. Childers,! he very properly remarked, 'The rascals.' "
20. English Mail arrives.
Rutson writes, under date 29th March : " I told
Bowen your bit of educated native English. He
reminded me of some one rendering —
'The paths of glory lead but to the grave,'
into — 'Ad tumuli fauces ducit honoris iter,'
1 Then Chancellor of the Exchequer.

ii8 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1883
which, Monro said, would give to a Roman a notion
of this kind —
' The road of civil ofiice leads to the jaws of a hillock.' "
Sir F. Pollock sends news of the Breakfast Club : —
" We had a charming breakfast at my house last
Saturday. The talk was more purely literary than it
often is, and less about political matters.
" Henry Cowper had a story of Emerson's absence of
mind and difficulty of finding words when getting old.
Going out for a walk with his daughter, he said, ' Have
you brought your — your— what's its name — your — thing
that your friends steal from you — your — umbrella ? ' "
Lubbock writes : —
" I am glad you like Christ's ^ book, which seems to me
most excellent. By the way, did I tell you of an indignant
letter I had from an excellent countryman of yours, com
menting on a reference in my Ants to Christ, which, he
thought, referred to the New Testament ? "
28. Glanced again at the Album mentioned under
date of 17th July 1882, which its owner had lent us.
The thing which Coleridge wrote in it on 25th June
1828 was Touth and Age, in which occur the lines : —
^ The eminent botanist alluded came to see me some years ago at York
House. I then learned that his full name was, strange to say, Christ-
Socin.— (1898.)

i883 ACTON'S SENTENCE 119
" Hope leaves not us, but we leave Hope,
And quench the inward light of youth."
Lawson remarked very happily that the view of
the great plain from the road towards Lamb's Rock
reminded him of looking at the moon through a
telescope. 30. A conversation at York House before I left
England has had an interesting result. Acton has
drawn up a list of ninety-eight books, which Lubbock
has recently transmitted to me.
"This list is submitted," says Acton, "with a view to
assisting an English youth, whose education is finished,
who knows common things, and is not training for a
profession ; to perfect his mind and open windows in
every direction ; to raise him to the level of his age,
so that he may know the (twenty or thirty) forces that
have made our world what it is and still reign over it ;
to guard him against surprises and against the constant
sources of errors within ; to supply him both with the
strongest stimulants and the surest guides ; to give
force and fulness and clearness and sincerity and
independence and elevation and generosity and
serenity to his mind, that he may know the method
and law of the process by which error is conquered

I20 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1883
and truth is won, discerning knowledge from prob
ability and prejudice from belief ; that he may learn
to master what he rejects as fully as what he adopts ;
that he may understand the origin as well as the
strength and vitality of systems and the better motive
of men who are wrong, to steel him against the charm
of literary beauty and talent, so that each book
thoroughly taken in shall be the beginning of a new
life, and shall make a new man of him."
If a grander sentence was ever written about educa
tion I never met with it.
May
I. Bagot told me that Dr. Bernays, lecturing at
St. George's one day, drank off the contents of a phial
before him, mistaking it for water. As he lost con
sciousness, he said to those who were supporting him,
" Write upon my tomb it's iodide of mercury ! "
He did not die, however, but lived to confirm to
Bagot the truth of the story.
On our way to the Wellington Races, where I was
expected to appear, I talked with E. F. Webster,
Chief Secretary to the Madras Government, about
Acton's list of books which I had shown him. " And

i883 THE MISSIONAIRES DE MARIE 121
yet," he said, "after reading so many of them, we get
no further than the words of Hamlet — ' Farewell, the
rest is silence ! ' "
He mentioned later in the day that a mahout had
once said to him, " If you will tell that elephant to
take off your ring, he will do so." And the wise
creature did what was expected of him.
2. With Clara to see the Mere Superieure of the
convent, where she is learning French, and stayed
for the Benediction. The order is that of the
Missionaires de Marie, founded, in 1870, by a Breton
lady, still alive in Rome, where they have a convent ;
but the parent-house is situated between St. Brieuc
and Lannion. These two — the one here and a
branch at Coimbatore — are, I think, their only
establishments. 5. A day or two ago, at breakfast. Colonel K.
Herbert mentioned that he had, in 1867, been staying
at Mr. Sitwell's in Derbyshire along with General
Blumenthal. The conversation turned on a war
between France and Prussia, the danger of which
seemed to have been for the moment averted : " If
you had gone to war, what do you think would have
been the result ? " asked one of the party. " That

122 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1883
we should have been in Paris in six weeks," was
Blumenthal's reply. Some doubt was expressed, and
the General added, " If we do go to war, I shall be most
happy to see all present at breakfast in the Tuileries —
in the Tuileries I say, for I presume that they will
give the Adjutant-General good quarters ! "
6. Dr. Trimen dined with us and mentioned,
speaking of the passion for collecting, that he had
known a man who collected the patterns of the lids
which cover the openings of coal-cellars in London
pavements. He used to stop when he saw a new one,
whip out his pocket-book, and make a sketch of it.
8. While writing to Mrs. Craven I chanced to
open Alexandrine's copy of Le plus court chemin, and
found, in her own hand, these words as true in
intellectual and practical life as in the life of mystical
devotion : " Nous ne ferons jamais rien si nous ne
disons pas a chaque instant, et surtout chaque matin :
Seigneur, faites que je commence aujourd'hui (ou a
present), car tout ce que j'ai fait jusqu'a present n'est
rien." They must have been written when she was at
Naples in 1840, seeing from her windows the Palais
Acton and the Vomero.

i883 MAJOR DYER 123
She adds : " II faut aussi dire : faites moi arriver
(faites les arriver) au degr6 de perfection oit vous me
(les) voulez."
Captain N. Chamberlain dined with us and told
several good stories of a Major Dyer, now dead.
This officer had risen from the ranks, but could take
extremely good care of himself.
One day a young officer, who saw him mounting
his horse, said, " Dyer, do you know what you remind
me of ? " " No," said Dyer, " of what ? " " Why,"
replied the other, "of the statue of George III. in
one of the London streets." "Ah," rejoined Dyer,
"and do you know what you remind me of?"
"No." "Well, then, just of the dirty little street-
boy looking at it ! "
Again, he one day met a lady entering a ball-room.
" Good evening, miss," said he. " Good evening.
Major Dyer," answered his friend, very coldly. "You
are looking very well to-night, miss," rejoined Dyer.
" I wish I could return the compliment," said the
lady, who detested him. " Oh, but you could, if
you were to tell a lie as I did."
I observe that I have not noted that when we were
in the Kistna District, Mrs. Hasted mentioned that

124 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1883
she was once lying on a sofa in a verandah of her
brother's house at Pondichery, when she saw a large
black scorpion crawling steadily towards her. Too ill
to move or to speak, she lay staring at the creature in
utter helplessness, when a great lizard darted down
from the ceiling, seized her dreaded foe by the tail
and slowly swallowed him.
9. I have continued my examination of Le plus
court chemin, reading every one of the passages which
its former owner has marked. They are very
numerous, and are exactly such as I should have
expected to strike her as echoing the ton de son dme
during that Neapolitan sojourn, so diifisrent from its
predecessors. Here is one which is interlined and marked on the
side with red ink : —
" ' Mais comme dit tres bien Platon ' en ce qui regarde
les choses divines, il faut en croire les enfants de Dieu
quand meme ils ne donneraient aucune raison de ce qu'ils
avancent. 11 n'appartient qu'aux insenses et aux impies
de rejeter comme fausses les choses relevees et secretes
parce qu'elles ne leur sont pas connues ; et de ne pas
ajouter foi aux plus honnetes gens lors qu'ils parlent de
choses de Dieu sur ce que leur propre experience leur en
a appris.''

i883 CARDINAL BONA 125
Cardinal Bona seems to have been born in 1609,
for he began his thirty-eighth year in the autumn of
1646. 13. Clara reads to me a review in the Spectator of
a life of the late Lord Hatherley. I never knew,
what I have learned from it, that Dr. Hook, of Leeds
and Chichester, was a nephew of Theodore, who
never made a better joke than is that relationship !
Have I anywhere noted that Lady Hatherley told
me, in her husband's presence, at Rendcomb, that she
once saw two young squirrels run up him, mistaking
him doubtless for a tree, while the mother sat
chattering in alarm ? Probably, she undervalued his
amiability, having never heard Lord Westbury's
account of him, " Our present Chancellor has a
character unredeemed by a single vice."
All the afternoon rain fell furiously, but, in the
early evening, it cleared, and I walked out with
Colonel K. Herbert. On reaching the top of the hill
above Government House, where, a little later in
the year, the Pedicularis Zeylanica and the Halenia
Perrotetii grow so abundantly, we beheld a remark
able spectacle. The clouds over the valley of the
Moyar and the Mysore plateau had arranged them-

126 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1883
selves so as to present the appearance of a scene in
Greenland — glaciers, with a deep still fiord running
up between them. A ship at anchor in the midst of
it would have seemed, had we not known that it was
an optical delusion, the most natural thing in the
world. Walked after dinner for a long time up and down
the terrace with Mr. Webster, the Southern Cross,
which I have rarely seen in this cloudy climate,
standing bright over Elk Hill.
Mrs. Awdry has been reading to me, in these last
days, passages from the third volume of the life of the
late Bishop of Winchester (Wilberforce), and I have
to-day turned over the rest of its pages.
The most interesting — to me, indeed, the only
very interesting — passage in the book is the follow
ing, under date of 1870, in the first days of the
Franco-German War, and written, as I understand,
by Dr. Woodford, now Bishop of Ely : —
" In the castle of Falaise, we stopped for a few minutes
at the head of a flight of stairs, before entering the room
in which William the Conqueror is said, probably without
sufficient reason, to have been born, when I noticed a
group of women busied in some employment, I knew not

i883 WASHING SKINS IN THE STREAM 127
what, beside a little stream in the valley. ' What are
they doing } ' the Bishop asked. ' Washing skins in the
stream,' our guide answered. More than 800 years
before, Robert, afterwards the Duke of the Normans,
had looked upon the same scene as he returned from
hunting, and Arlette, the tanner's daughter, had become
the mother of the Conqueror. I remember well the
Bishop's far-away look as his mind seemed to sweep over
those centuries of change which had left unchanged that
picture of village life."
How Arthur Stanley would have enjoyed such an
incident of travel !
The things that have excited most attention in the
volume, inter alia, the frank judgments of public men
by each other, are to me no surprises. I should not
have rated the late Lord Clarendon so highly as I
do, if I had supposed that he thought better of the
late Lord Derby than page 235 shows that he did,
while the judgments passed upon Mr. Disraeli by the
Bishop himself seem to me perfectly correct.
Considering the immense amount of scandal he
has caused, the editor has peppered his work with
wonderfully few things, at once new and good, and
one of the best, the translation of Hearse by Mors
Omnibus, belongs, as I have mentioned in a previous

128 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1883
page, to Sir George Rose, who ought to have had the
credit of it.
It is an interesting and characteristic fact, observes
the editor, that one of the greatest of the Bishop's
University sermons was preached from no other note
than the single word "Fog," written on the back of
an envelope. Nothing could be more appropriate or
suggestive. I remember Robert Chambers's account
of a great sermon which the Bishop preached in St.
Mary's at Oxford before the British Association, I
think in 1847. " It was admirable; it was faultless,
or rather there was only one fault, that it was a
fallacy from beginning to end ! "
My own experience was identical. His language
was flowing and forcible, but nothing of any value
remained on the mind " die Menschen zu besseren
und zu bekehren."
His definition of a drysalter as Tate and Brady
should survive all his sermons, except, indeed, that
one, if it be authentic, which was contained in his
reply to the rough who asked him the way to heaven.
" Take the first turn to the right and go straight
on!" Another passage reminded me of a story, which

1883 PROFESSOR N. S. MASKELYNE ,29
circulated at the time, and which has not, so far as I
know, been preserved. At the great party held to
open the Foreign Office, Mr. Disraeli, who was then
Prime Minister, took the Princess of Wales to her
carriage. As he returned, he saw his old friend, the
Duchess of Somerset, erst the Queen of Beauty,
waiting in the hall for her's, and said to her as he
passed, " Isn't it like a play ? "
I closed the book with the impression that so
amiable and remarkable, though so imperfect, a
personage who, in spite of his having, as one well
qualified to speak said, "spent his life in deceiving
himself and others," had so many gifts and good
qualities, deserved a better fate than to fall into the
hands of so injudicious a biographer.
17. Maskelyne says in a letter just received : —
"Writing to you again brings back to my mind our
old link of love, Henry Smith, whom I find myself
thinking more of and regretting more instead of less, as
time puts its aerial perspective between me and my
pleasant communion with him.
" I don't agree in your measure of his quality. I could
not take a measure of it, it is true ; but I had more to do
with him than you had in the field in which he rose to a
really high stature. Mathematics, I think if he had chosen

yOL. I

I30 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1883
some other field, Philosophy, Economy, Philology, not
perhaps active Politics, he would have been recognised as
a big man ; but, all ambitionless as he was as regards the
ordinary rewards of success, he had one sublime ambition,
namely, to soar sunward in the quest of some of the great
results that mathematics have yet to yield to the human
intellect. How well do I remember, in a walk with him
nearly thirty years ago, his telling me that his ambition
then was to be one day Savilian Professor of Geometry, and
to add to human knowledge in that historic chair ; and his
patent scorn of the forms of ambition that lead to fame or
to money as such quite startled me in those days ; and in
later times, in one of the long nights I used to enjoy with
him in the little room I had at my disposal when I went
to Oxford, I remember his standing up and, with glowing
face and in his golden speech, solemnly telling me that
when he was in the spirit of his mathematical generalisa
tions he did look down with indifference on what the
world values as symbols of happiness and success : a pro
found and lofty indifference. He had been, in his lucid
way, opening some of the aspects of the transcendental
mathematics, as seen by a man who was able to employ
them, not only for dealing with the most complex
problems of the physical world, but as the simplest and
most elegant weapon for the treatment of more ordinary
questions. " People did not think Henry original ; he seemed to
lack initiative. He did not, however, in mathematics ;

i883 PROFESSOR HUXLEY ,3,
there he had all the nature of a poet, — glancing from
heaven to earth and earth to heaven.
" Well, I won't go on ; but it is a calm Sunday, and
I feel as if in Church, and better than I generally feel
there, when I think of that noble single spirit so great in
the aspirations of his intelligence, so sweet in all the inter
course of life, who guided other men as a woman reins a
horse by the very gentleness of her resolute hand."
Clara reads to me an article by Huxley in Mac
millan for this month. I see he considers that the
ancient Egyptians belonged to the Dravidian stock,
and were its highest branch as the Australians are its
lowest. I have been corresponding lately with him
about certain deposits in this Presidency, an examin
ation of which may add considerably to our know
ledge of the aboriginal inhabitants of South India.
I write to-day to Bryce, finding from a paper in
the same periodical that his estimate of J. R. Green's
greatness as a historian and his likeness to Gibbon
exactly correspond with my own. See this Diary for
September 1874.
Amongst many equally just remarks, he likewise
says, " Those who knew Green used to feel that they
got from his conversation an even higher impression

132 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1883
of his intellectual powers than they did from his
writings, because everything was so swift and so
spontaneous. Such talk has rarely been heard in our
generation, — so gay, so vivid, so various."
He died at Mentone less than a month after Henry
Smith. Since I left England, Green the Hegelian,
another most distinguished Oxford man, whom I
knew much more slightly, has gone too.
24. With Sir F. Roberts to the parade in honour of
the Queen's birthday. I wore the uniform of the
Colonel of the Nilgiri Volunteers.
Official dinner of forty-five, at which I spoke.
After it a Ball numerously attended.
English Mail of the 4th arrives.
Lady Reay writes : " London is dull and gloomy.
The north-east wind still blows, and the world of
society is chilled and dulled — dynamitise and econo
mising." - — — says, " By the by, had you ere leaving heard
Gladstone's definition of a deputation, namely, ' A noun
of number signifying many but not signifying much ' .? "
He also says, speaking of the inquiry which has
lately been going on with reference to Industrial
Schools ; —

i883 PHIRMAN OF THE GRAND SIGNOR 133
" I was deeply impressed with the prodigious contrast
in feeling and thought between Great Britain and Ireland,
especially coming fresh to the latter country from the
Scotch part of my inquiry. One point of difference was
very characteristic of the two peoples. In Scotland, the
prevailing conviction was that the Industrial School system,
with its many years of detention and exclusion from the
' world,' had been carried too far ; that home — unless
the very worst — and freedom were a better preparation for
' life ' than a prison, however benevolently conducted.
" In Ireland, where the Industrial Schools are almost
wholly under the management of religious orders, male
and female — excellent people, skilful at their work — the
'world' was the thing to be avoided; the contrast with
vice in ordinary homes brought far more evil than any
possible good which might arise from domestic influences ;
the one thing was to seclude the children from all outer
life, — to make them good and religious, — and to trust to
the good impressions thus made to resist the inevitable
temptations hereafter. It was the theory of Protestant
and Catholic in direct antagonism."
26. The following curious note was sent me a few
days ago by Lieutenant-Colonel Wilson, the historian
of the Madras Army, who resides here : —
" Translation of a Phirman from the Grand Signor.
" The Sultan absolutely forbids that any Franks' ships

134 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1883
be permitted, on any pretence whatsoever, to come to
Suez, or to be concerned in any trade from Jeddo to Suez,
openly or secretly. This is decisive.
" The Suez sea is reserved for the holy pilgrimage of
Mecca, and all such as are content to admit Franks' ships
to a passage, and do not exert themselves in preventing it,
are guilty of infidelity to their religion, to their sovereign,
and to all Muhammadans.
" Such as do not attend to this express command, so
important to our State and religion, will most certainly
meet with severe punishment in this world and in the
world to come. Do, for ever, with all zeal and ardour, as
we command.
" Our Royal orders are gone forth, and this is our
Will." Copied from Government Consultations, April
1781. There is nothing in the context to show how the
paper was obtained, or why it was entered.
28. Lubbock writes : —
" You have probably heard the comparison of the
Egyptian war to a game at whist. Turkey shuffled, Arabi
cut, England led and played the deuce, France played the
knave, and claimed half the honours."
30. There are good papers on both Green and

i883 SIR JOHN LUBBOCK ,35
Henry Smith in the Fortnightly, which arrived last
week. Mr. Glaisher says of the latter that he was
the greatest English mathematician since Newton.
Lubbock, just starting for a few days' botanising
at and near Varallo, during the Whitsun recess, sends
a delightful blunder, which he found the other day in
looking over a French translation of his book on
Ants, in time, alas I to prevent its being printed : —
High Elms, Down, Kent,
appeared as Les Hautes Ormes, Bas-Kent.

fune
2. Mrs. Awdry is re-reading to me the life of
Natalie Narischkin.
When I was in Naples, for the first time, at two-
and- twenty, I wrote to some one, I think George
Boyle, that one could not look from any eminence, in
or around the city, without seeing some spot associated
with a folly or a crime. The statement was perfectly
correct. And yet how many associations of a very

136 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1883
different kind have, in later years, gathered for me
round Naples ! With equal justice, if I had known
all I know now, might I have quoted Keble's lines : —
" There are in this loud stunning tide
Of Human care and crime.
With whom the melodies abide
Of the everlasting chime ;
Who carry music in their heart
Through dusky lane and wrangling mart,
Plying their daily task with busier feet.
Because their secret souls a holy strain repeat."
Pollock lately wrote to me from London that
Madras was the very land of good things. I fear he
generalised a little hastily ; still one who likes to be
amused is not absolutely famished.
Last year a man in Coimbatore asked me to "put
his enemies in hell."
I have now on my table a petition addressed to —
" The Almighty God,
Care of
The Right Honourable
Mountstuart E. Grant Duff,
Governor of Madras,"
from market-people at Trichinopoly, dissatisfied with

i883 ADVOCATE-GENERAL OF DIVINITY

137

the decision of their Municipality upon a small matter,
with which the Government was unable to interfere.
A gentleman of high position to whom I recently
sent my photograph rather prettily framed, and with
an autograph letter, writes as follows to a common
acquaintance, who sent the original to Captain
Awdry : —
" I celebrated a splendid ceremony in honour of His
Excellency by inviting all the gentry of this place, and
receiving them in due manner with betel leaves and nuts,
sandal rubbings, and such other spices as might meet them
with extreme joy. Nautches of dancing-girls were merrily
represented, fireworks inflamed, and salutes fired ; and an
entertainment was given to the most part of the citizens.
"After performing everything necessary to commemorate
His Excellency, I offered my best and sincere compliments
of deep loyalty and devotion in the presence of the photo
graph placed on a throne specially prepared for the purpose."
Mr. Buck, Secretary to the Government of India,
who is staying with us, has shown me the copy of
a letter which he had seen directed to an officer in
charge of a Christian village as : " Captain  of the
Heavenly Host Divinity Force, the Advocate-
General of Divinity."
I extract, also, from some papers he has given me.

¦ 38 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1883
the following answers made in an examination at
Calcutta : —
" Who was Cardinal Wolsey r
" Cardinal Wolsey was an Editor of a paper named the
North Briton,
" As Bishop of Yourk, but died in disentry in a church
on his way to be blockheaded.
" Cardinal Wolsey was Governor of India (Wellesley T).
" Cardinal Wolsey was said to be the spiritual guide of
the Methodists (Wesley ?).
" What is the meaning of Ich dien ?
" Ich dien was the word which was written on the
feather of the blind king who came to fight, being inter
laced with the briddles of his horse.
" The Plantagenets put on head an ornament like broom
stick, which was called Ich dien.
" Ich dien. The French called the Battle of Waterloo
Ich dien.
" What is the meaning of Sheriff ?
" Sheriff was the English Bill of Common prayer.
" Sheriff, Latin term for ' shrub,' we called — broom
worn by the first Earl Enjue, as an emblem of humelity
when they went to the pilgrimage, and from this their
hairs took their crest and surname.
" What is the meaning of ' Thanes ? '
" Thane was a title given to the merchants who have
walked three times round the world."

i883 OFFICE CAT ,39
Mr. Buck also gave me the following : —
" Office Note.
" Office cat, by reason of death of rats, daily growing
lean. Will superintendent please increase the contingent
allowance for her restoration to stoutness ? "
And this appeal against a fine by a native Christian —
" Your Honour may be right, I may be wrong ; I may
be right, Honour wrong ; let Honour give me back the
fine, and then at day of resurrection, when all hearts will
be open, if I am wrong, I will most gladly, sir, return your
Honour the money."
5. In his sketch of the work of the Geological
Survey in Southern India, I observe that Mr. Bruce
Foote says that the existing outlines of these Nilgiri
Hills are almost entirely due to atmospheric erosion,
acting over vast periods of time, the gneissic highlands
of the south of the Peninsula being one of the oldest
known portions oi terra fir ma.
7. The European Mail arrives.
Lady Russell sends me kind messages from the
wild hyacinths of Pembroke Lodge, sorely tried this
year by a wintry May, and describes the defeat on the

HO NOTES FROM A DIARY 1883
Affirmation Bill as : " The triumph of all that is bad
in the name of all that is good."
That is worthy of her late husband, and recalls to
my mind the definition of a proverb attributed to him
as " the wisdom of many and the wit of one," or his
answer to Burdett, when the latter talked of the cant
of patriotism as the worst thing possible, that, viz.
" the re-cant of patriotism was worse still."
I received also a copy of the Clairon of 1 1 th May,
in which, under the title of " Un Exemple," I find
the following : —
"Au moment oh. Ton expulse, oh Ton insulte, oii Ton
menace de toutes parts autour de nous, nos pauvres Soeurs
enseignantes ou hospitaliSres, il est a la fois consolant et
aifligeant de voir comment leurs services sont apprecies,
et quelle justice on salt leur rendre aux plus lointaines
extremites des Indes.
"Le Gouverneur actuel de Madras, M. Grant Duff,
pendant une recente tournee dans son gouvernement,
repondant, le ler mars dernier, k une adresse du Maharajah
de Vizianagram, accompagnee d'un rapport sur le progres
de I'instruction publique dans ces regions, s'exprime dans
les termes suivants, qui nous semblent valoir, a plus d'un
litre, la peine d'etre rapportes.
"'Maharajah . . . je n'avais pas besoin de lire cet
interessant rapport pour etre assure que le possesseur de ce

i883 SOEURS DE SAINT-JOSEPH ,4,
noble domaine accomplissait le plus dignement possible
les devoirs d'un des plus grands seigneurs de I'Empire
Britannique. Mais j'avoue que j'ignorais combien ce
college e'tait prospere, et jusqu'a quel point les eleves
avaient deja su repondre aux genereux efforts dont ils sont
I'objet. Ce qui m'etait egalement inconnu jusqu'a ce
jour, c'est ce fait interessant que celles qui, les premieres
dans cette partie des Indes, ont reussi a associer une dame
indienne au mouvement de I'education populaire, ce sont
les soeurs de Saint-Joseph, et je crois que tous ceux qui
savent aimer et admirer le beau dans le monde moral,
comme dans le monde materiel, seront aussi heureux que
moi d'apprendre que cet honneur appartient a un ordre
qui ramene notre pensee vers Saint Fran9ois de Sales, et
dont la maison-mere est situee pres de ce charmant lac
d'Annecy, dont le souvenir est si etroitement associe, en
Occident, a celui de la religion et de la civilisation.
" ' Je me souviens aussi d'avoir visite sur les rives de ce
meme lac, I'eminent historien M. Taine, dans une habita
tion dominee par le vieux chateau de Saint-Bernard et
d'avoir appris, alors, que la derniere chatelaine de ce
manoir, fidele aux traditions du lieu, etait morte victime
de son devouement aux malades et aux blesses pendant
la guerre franco-allemande.
" ' Ces souvenirs, qui reportent ma pensee si loin de ces
lieux, ajoutent encore pour moi a I'interet de la ceremonie
a laquelle j'ai I'honneur de prendre part.
" ' Quant h la demande que le Maharajah vient de me

,42 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1883
faire, de donner mon nom a une classe destinee a former
des institutrices, qui doit etre confiee a la direction des
sceurs de Saint-Joseph, il est superflu de dire que j'y
consens avcc la plus vive satisfaction.'
" Mais pourquoi faut-il que ce noble langage soit tenu
au bout de la mer du Bengale, par le representant de la
reine Victoria, tandis que les representants de la France ne
songent qu'a renier leur gloire nationale la plus pure, et
usent de leur force pour I'aneantir, parce que cette gloire
est celle de I'antique religion de la patrie, aussi bien que
celle de la patrie elle-meme ! . . . " Louis Germain." ^
9. Speaking of a recent letter against Chamberlain,
the Duke of Bedford said to  " What an excellent
letter. How one would have liked to have written it,
and — to have put it in the fire ! " Well might the
friend who sent me the anecdote add, " Like the man,
isn't it .? "
The following passage, which was re-read to me
to-day, had quite slipped my memory : —
" Le lendemain de sa mort, Natalie revint prier pres
d'elle. Ce jour etait le 10 fevrier, c'est-a-dire precise-
ment I'anniversaire de celui oh, cinq ans auparavant, a
Bruxelles, elle avait rcvu Olga sur son lit mortuaire, et oti
^ Mrs. Craven.

,883 JOUBERT ,43
elle avait pric pres d'elle pendant ces longues heures dont
elle se souvint toute sa vie. Elle no les oublia pas, on le
devine, dans ce jour 011 par un si puissant et courageux
elan, elle venait d'unir etroitement son ame a celle de
cette amie qui I'avait tant aimee en Dieu, et dans la vie et
a la mort.
" On dira sans doute que cette coincidence de dates est
un pur hasard, et nous ne voulons point en exagerer I'im-
portance. Nous aimerions cependant a croire fondees les
paroles de I'abbe Gerbet a ce sujet, et a penser comme lui
'qu'il y a des harmonies dans les heures, en faveur de
certaines ames, et que le temps si fantasque, si souvent
rebelle a nos arrangements profanes, est sous la main de
Dieu, un rhythme souple et docile.' "
13. Turning to-day once more over the pages of
one of my copies of Joubert, before lending it to a
friend, I lit upon the following : —
" Quelques mots dignes de memoire sufEsent pour
illustrer un grand esprit.
"L'homme d'etat est un messager a qui le temps pre
sent est remis en depot, pour etre rendu, tel qu'il est ou
meilleur, au temps a venir.
"Les Jansenistes semblent aimer Dieu sans amour et
seulement par raison, par devoir, par justice. Les Jesuites
semblent aimer Dieu par pure inclination, par admiration,
par tendresse, enfin par plaisir."

144. NOTES FROM A DIARY 1883
15. Mr Sinclair, great-grandson of Sir John Sinclair,
the Agriculturist, mentioned to me, this evening, that
General Frost, who commanded the Missouri Militia,
at the commencement of the American War, had told
him that General Grant had offered his sword to him
(General Frost), and the Southern cause, in return for
a Captain's commission. He refused the offer.
Captain N. Chamberlain, who also dined with us, told
me that he had played in a polo match at Mhow, one
afternoon, had then dined at the Artillery Mess, there
after danced at a ball till the early morning, and finally
ridden 174 miles to Goonah, where, on arrival, he
attended the muster parade of his regiment.
16. In a deed of gift by Poorneah, the famous
Minister of Mysore, I find the following exordium : —
" May that God, who, in his third incarnation, lifted
the earth with his fangs, — that earth which may justly be
compared to a large parasol, having for its knob Mount
Maru itself,- — save you ! "
I find the following curious statement in a pam
phlet by Mr. Leighton on the Indian gold-mining
industries : —
" Shareholders should bear in mind the fact that in
Wales 9363 oz, of gold were once obtained from 40 tons of

,883 RENAN'S SOUVENIRS ,45
quartz, and yet gold-mining in Wales has declined year by
year, until at present it can scarcely be said to have an
existence at all."
17. The Spectator of 19th May has published a list
of the persons who have died in England, within the
last ten years, leaving personal property valued at
^^250,000 and upwards. There are comparatively
few in the list whose names I have heard, and still
fewer whom I knew. One of those I did know,
and one of the wealthiest, was the same individual
who said to Mrs. Sartoris (Adelaide Kemble),
"Do you know what I like to do best.?" "No."
" Shall I tell you ? " " Yes." " To take off
every stitch of clothing and sit in front of the
fire." That highest pleasure hardly required so gigantic a
pedestal !
18. "On ne doit jamais Retire que de ce qu'on
aime. L'oubli et le silence sont la punition qu'on
inflige a ce qu'on a trouv6 laid ou commun, dans la
promenade a travers la vie."
This passage, which I find in the preface to
the Souvenirs which Renan lately sent me, would
make a good motto for the title page of this Diary,
VOL. I L

146 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1883
for I have steadily acted upon the idea which it sets
forth. 20. Colonel K. Herbert mentioned that he was one
day inspecting a small stove, which produced con
siderable results with no more fuel than a sheet of
the Daily Telegraph. " Do you always use the Daily
Telegraph ? " asked a lady, who was present. " It is
not necessary to do so," said the tradesman, who was
showing the invention, " but we use it because it
contains so much matter ! "
21. English Mail arrives.
Arthur Russell writes that the Irish Extremists
say : " The Holy Father is infallible, but under the
evil guidance of England he has adopted an 'erring
tone.' "
22. To see Lawson's herbarium. He has about
1000 plants already dried, and has, in some five
months, found 1300 species at Madras, in Ceylon,
and here.
23. When the present Dean of Westminster's
Lectures on Arthur Stanley were being read to me,
it occurred to me to note that when I was once
speaking to him of his delight in preaching on
great historical anniversaries, or in remarkable places.

i883 SCHOPENHAUER 147
I said, "You preached, I think, at Constanti
nople on the anniversary of its capture by the
Turks?" "Yes," he replied, "but which of all
the sermons I ever preached do you think gave
me the greatest pleasure ? It was the sermon I
preached to the Caravan, on the little plain at the
foot of Mount Sinai ; and what do you think I
took for my text ? " Now this Hagar is Mount Sinai
in Arabia."Two years this night since I last sat on the
Treasury Bench.
26. It comes over me that I have nowhere written
down the little-known words of Schopenhauer, which
almost daily recur to me since Lubbock sent out to
my wife that wonderful photograph of the San Sisto,
which now stands upon an easel in the drawing-room
here : —
" Sie tragt zur Welt ihm und er schaut entsetzt
In ihrer Grauel chaotischer Verwirrung,
In ihres Tobens wilde Raserei,
In ihres Treibens nie geheilte Thorheit,
In ihrer Qualen nie gestillten Schmerz,
Entsetzt : doch strahlet Ruh und Zuversicht
Und Siegesglanz sein Aug' verkiindigend
Schon der Eriosung ewige Gewissheit. "

148 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1883
28. The European Mail arrives.
Errington sends me from Rome De rebus Hihernice
nuperrima apostolicis sedis acta.
Mrs. Craven, writing from Paris on 8th June, upon
the same subject, says: —
" Of course, we are deeply interested in watching the
effects of the Pope's Circular on those queer Catholics,
the Irish ! Its contents have often been repeated before,
and really the simplest Christian common sense would
suggest them and make them binding, and yet all the
prestige of Papal authority will have to be exerted to get
these strange people to admit that 2 and 2 are 4, for what
is true for all the world is not true for Ireland according
to their view, and the wrong done by an Irishman is not at
all in their eyes like the same wrong done by any other
man in the world. They are clever, dangerous, mad
children." Captain Evans-Gordon sends me an account of the
Moorghias, a wild tribe in Marwar and the adjoining
regions, which Colonel Martelli is trying to civilise.
He had collected a number of these people into a
village and given them land, but they soon burned
their houses, and came to him saying: " Nourisher of
the poor, we will give you half the profits if you will
let us plunder the country round I "

1 88 3 WILLIAM SPOTTISWOODE ,49
July
I. The sad news of the death of William Spottis
woode is confirmed by Lawson this evening. It was
but a few weeks ago that he was writing of Henry
Smith, and now he too has gone —
" God buries His workmen, but carries on His work."
I have taken my exercise mainly by riding and
walking on the slopes of Dodabetta, but have fenced
twice with General Morgan, a pupil of Angelo's. I
have not had a foil in my hand, with the exception of
once in the open air at Eden, since my departure from
Petersburg in the end of December 1863 obliged me
to decline the pacific challenge of the Duke of
Leuchtenberg. Of course, one wants practice and
gets easilv tired, but I do not find that my right hand
has quite lost its cunning.
This day completes twenty months since I took
my seat as Governor of Fort St. George, the third
part, that is to say, of five years.
Our relations with the Government of India have
been up to this time of writing, since Baring's mission

I50 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1883
in November last, all that I could desire, but this is not
the place to enter into particulars about public affairs.
On the 5th of July I left Ootacamund accompanied
by Captain Awdry, Dr. Mackenzie, and Captain
Agnew. We slept at Coimbatore, and then visited successively
the Shevaroy Hills and Madras, whence we passed to
Gooty and crossed the Kurnool District to its capital.
We then went, via Nandyal, to Pacheria in the
Nellamalai Hills, and, returning to Nandyal, followed
the Kurnool canal to Kistnapuram. Thence we
transferred ourselves by rail to Ranigunta, and saw
Chandragiri as well as the sacred hills of Tirupati.
Leaving North Arcot, we next crossed the Nellore
District, halting at Venkatagiri, at Giidiir, and at
Nellore town.
At Kistnapatnam we embarked on the Buckingham
canal, tarrying at Dugarazpatnam, at the Sriharikot
jungles, at Coromandel, and at Ennore.
From Ennore we drove to Guindy, where we
remained two days, and then went on to Cuddalore,
from which place we returned to Ootacamund on 4th
August, having passed over some 1755 miles of country.
I recorded, after our return, my usual Minute, with

DR. KING

'51

its appendix of addresses and speeches. Here, then,
I merely jot down, according to my custom, a few
things of no business interest.
My sister writes from Weimar : " By the way, our
Princess ^ plays so admirably that Liszt says, ' Si elle
avait pu etre artiste elle serait une des premieres.' "
And again, "When I was so ill, I used to have Le
Recit read to me in the night till they might give
me my morphine. No other book would have been
so tranquillising." 8. At Yercaud our party was joined by Dr. King,
of the Indian Geological Survey. He told me, as we
walked down the first slopes of the Atiir Ghaut, that,
when recently in Europe, he had spent a month at
Eden with the gentleman to whom Lord Fife has let
the place. He knew, of course, all my old haunts —
the Den, Carlincraig, the Riverside, the Bridge of
Alvah, etc.
Night fell long before we had reached our camp ;
but we rode on by torchlight, for the malarious,
though beautiful woods, through which we passed did
not invite delay.
" Married later to Duke Johann of Mecklenburg mentioned on an
earlier page.

152 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1883
9. On reaching Government House at Madras,
the first thing I observed was that the faithful clump
of Plumeria alba was, as usual, in full bloom. That
of Lagerstroemia Regina must have been at its best
three or four weeks ago. Only a few spikes are still
out, but I see this grand flower on the tree, for the
first time.
I do not think that I have recorded the fact that
we have in the Madras Museum the gold coin which
Claudius struck to commemorate the conquest of Britain.
It was found in the Madura District of the British
Indian Empire, — a circumstance "qui donne a penser 1 "
Two or three days ago I received a letter from Dr.
Trimen, in which he makes an appeal to me in
favour of the Madras Government's using the form
" Cinchona " instead of " Chinchona," which is, I
think, kinder to Linnasus than to the Countess of
Chinchon ! We are at the worst not so bad as
Montalembert, for, in a note to the introduction to
his St. Elisabeth, I have this morning, at Tammaraz-
palli, read this piece of truly delicious nonsense : —
" Par exemple, la fleur qui dans toutes les langues de
I'Europe s'appelait le Soulier de la Fierge a ete nommee
Cypripedium Calceolus. Citons encore un exemple notable

THE BENIGN ONE

153

du grossier matcrialisme qui distingue ces nomenclatures
brutales. Tout le monde connait cette charmante fleur
bleu-de-ciel dont les lobes arrondis semblent un feston
d'azur autour d'une aureole d'or, que les Allemands
nomment Ne m^oubliez pas, et qui en France avait re9u
le nom de Plus je vous vols, plus je vous aime, et plus
generalement encore celui de Yeux de la Sainte Fierge.
Le pedantisme moderne a remplace ces doux noms par
celui de Myosotis scorpioides, c'est-a-dire en propres termes,
Oreille de souris a physionomie de scorpion ! et voila ce qu'on
appelle le progres des sciences ! "
The Myosotis scorpioides, by the by, is not the true
Forget-me-not, but the much-less conspicuous plant now
known as Myosotis versicolor, because it is first yellow
and then blue. The true Forget-me-not is Myosotis
palustris. Mr. Glenny told me to-day that the large black
ant is called by the Telugu people " the benign one,"
because, unlike his red brother, he will not attack you
without something which he considers provocation.
He added that they think it courteous not to say
seven but six and one, because the word seven is
similar in sound to the imperative of the word to
lament. We passed on to talk of euphemisms generally,

154- NOTES FROM A DIARY 1883
and I quoted the first verse of Faber's lovely lines on
Therapia : —
" The sunny wisdom of the Greeks
All o'er the earth is strewed :
On every dark and awful place,
Rude hill and haunted wood.
The beautiful bright people left
A name of omen good."
18. The European Mail arrives.
Rutson writes : —
" Spottiswoode had looked tired and ill for many
months. He was a representative man of the Victorian
period you speak of in your Queen's birthday speech, —
so eminent in science, so much in sympathy with his
work people, so fair minded, so gentle, and so perfectly
devoted to things that are good."
Writing under the date of 25th June, Mrs. Craven
gives me an account of a recent visit to Boury, which
is now in hands very different from those in which it
was when I was there in March 1874. The present
owner is a M. Zendt, an industriel of Beauvais, who
married Mademoiselle de Boury, belonging to the
family which owned the chateau before the first
Revolution. "They are excellent people," and keep

i883 THE BECKFORD LIBRARY ,55
up " every one " of the recollections which have made
the place memorable.
25. English Mail arrives.
Webster of Edgehill, writing on 30th June, says : —
"While you will be journeying through a sweltering
Indian plain, I have been, for the last two forenoons,
enjoying the most delightful hours in a worshipping
inspection of the De Romes, the Padeloups, the Dcseuils,
the Boyets, the Ruettcs, Kalthoebers, — I cannot spare you
one of them, — in the third part of Beckford's unparalleled
library ; and, indeed, I shall own that I only deferred the
writing you till I should be able to say something of at
least the first week's sale. But ... I must defer my
description of the great fights at the sale till its ending.
Then I promise myself the gratification of tantalising you
by telling you of the treasures of binding that have for
ever escaped my hands, and have passed into hands better
able to disburse the monstrous prices all will bring. In
truth, it is a goodly sight to gladden one's eyes with, and
the exquisite perfection that bindings reached in the great
Frenchman's hands in the eighteenth century might rouse
any one to a feeling of their loveliness. Those men were
artists, — not workmen. I am inclined to say, indeed, that
Deseuil has got an undue character as the paragon of
the school, probably from Pope having so spoken of him ;
he is unequal ; some of his Httle volumes arc admirable
(and it is in Svos or i2mos rather than in a larger size

156 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1883
that binding is seen to advantage, — books should be
handleable) ; but I was a little disappointed with the
— well — roughness of others. For all that Deseuil is the
name to conjure with, and a volume from his hand, not a
bit better than one by De Rome (wrong, it is Derome),
shall bring double the price. You see I know that I can
run on with these effusions of Bibliomania to you, safe in
the consciousness of your kindred feeling for the subject."
With reference to our descent from the Shevaroys,
Dr. Maclean writes, " Spare me a line to tell me of
the health of the party. I have been anxious, for we
literally walked through a valley of the shadow of
death." I trust the real one may be as picturesque I
It was, however, the presence of Dr. King, the
geologist, which differentiated this journey from all
others I have made in India.^
To find, in fact, a month in which geology has
played so prominent a part in my life, I must go back
to the days when I travelled with Robert Chambers
in Moray, before I was in Parliament.
August
2. English Mail arrives.
' See as to this my official Minute.

i883 OFFICINA PROCONSULUM 157
Kinglake tells me that Hayward and he were
much amused by the examination papers mentioned
in these notes for June last.
Speaking of one of these answers. Sir F. Pollock
writes, " For the merchant who has walked three
times round the world becoming a Thane, my son
tells me there is a kind of warrant in a certain
fragment of Anglo-Saxon law ; " and he encloses a
note from his son, from which I make the follow
ing extract : " If a merchant so throve that he
fared thrice over the wide sea ^ of his own means,
he was then thenceforth of thane-right worthy."
De veteri consuetudine promotionum, a. document of
uncertain origin. Palgrave {Rise and Progress) thinks
it poetical in form. From Palgrave and Stubbs (who
treats it as credible), it has no doubt passed into
popular manuals, and so to the poor Indian of '¦'¦over-
tutored mind."
In the same letter. Sir F. Pollock, writing with
reference to Lansdowne's nomination to Canada,
further observes, "Truly the Breakfast Club is the
Officina proconsulum, and no doubt Goschen's election
1 The " wide sea " is, I am informed by the same high authority, the
North Sea as distinguished from the Channel.

,58 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1883
will tend to bring him back into political office all the
more rapidly."
Speaking in his capacity of Secretary of the
Dilettanti, he says, " We hail, with the welcome of
veterans in the field, the intended promotion of a
School of Art and Archaeology at Athens, which was
started at a meeting at Marlborough House."
After our return to Ootacamund, I fell back
immediately into my usual way of life there — with
Councils on Wednesdays, rides, and walks in the
afternoons, etc.
6. Miss Martin showed me to-day a passage in
Joubert, for which I had long looked in vain. It
occurs in Titre II. Les Chapitres : "Plus une ame
est semblable a Dieu, plus une pensee est semblable a
une ame, et plus une ame est semblable a une pensee,
plus tout cela est beau 1 "
It was quoted to me in a slightly altered, and as I
think improved, form by Mrs. Craven, when I asked
her how it was that the letters of her sisters were
superior even to those of Charles de Montalembert.
See the paper in my Miscellanies, "Must we then
believe Cassandra ? "
10. European Mail arrives.

i883 PARSIFAL 159
My sister writes, speaking of the Wagner l^heatre
at Bayreuth : —
" It is supremely perfect, not luxurious— strange to say.
All is very simply done, but perfect in good sense. For
instance, the audience are so placed that every individual
sees and hears perfectly. There are no bad places. Then
they can all leave the building in three minutes ; then
the orchestra is invisible ; then the stage is of immense
depth and height ; then no applause is allowed.
" The scenery, incredibly beautiful, is nevertheless
simply managed. There is a separate man for every rope
in the place, and each rope has its name written beside
it. " Signals are given by electricity, and one can never
tell where the music comes from ; it is in the air all
round you, beneath you, above you, like the sounds in
nature. "The Director waits till the audience is so still that
you might hear a fly sneezing.
" Then he gives three little taps ; then silence ; and
then a sound — a tone — steals through the air so super-
humanly lovely that it goes through ' Mark und Bein.'
" Parsifal has begun."
II. With my wife, Lawson, etc., on the slopes of
Dodabetta, finding, amongst other new things, Laportea
terminalis — a much more formidable-looking, though

i6o NOTES FROM A DIARY 1883
not nearly so dangerous, a plant as the crenulata, which
happily prefers the lower hills.
17. With Mr. Lawson and Captain Bagot to
Kartairy, where we spent an hour or two in the Shola
under the Fall.
We left soon after ten, and were easily back at
Government House by five ; but I suppose the differ
ence in the temperature of the Kartairy Valley and of
this place must have been something like twenty-five
degrees of Fahrenheit.
It is not surprising that the general aspect of the
vegetation was quite different.
European Mail arrives.
Mrs. Craven, writing from La Roche en Breny,
says, " Madame de Griinne is here with her five fine
children, as charming as ever. I certainly hope you
will see much more of her hereafter, and place a visit
to Brussels among the trips you will think nothing of,
when, after your return, you will be visiting your
European friends. I don't know any woman of her
age who quite equals her."
19. Glance, as frequently of late, at the Avant-
Postes de Cavalerie Legere, by General de Brack, lent
me by Captain Chamberlain. It is a perfect specimen

1 88 3 CANON MELVILLE 161
of a first-hand book, written, not with the help of other
books, but straight out of its author's experience — a
model of perspicacity and good sense.
20. I have omitted, I see, to notice that a month
or two ago George Boyle sent me a little volume
containing translations of Tennyson's Epitaph on Sir
John Franklin. Two Latin ones by himself are
good ; but I have lit upon nothing equal to the Greek
one by Canon Melville of Worcester, which Gladstone
repeated to me at York House, and of which Melville
sent me a copy just before I left England : —
(Tw/xa fxtv ApKTiitat, VK^aSes Xai^ov, oipaviav Se
-rjp.iOeo's 4'^X'l (^TiXXiTai cvTvXot-qv.
I prefer this to any of the three versions signed by
Melville himself in the book above mentioned.
Here I may record, as a curious sign of the times,
that I have just received Flosculi Graeci Boreales, an
Anthologia, edited by Professor Geddes of Aberdeen,
and largely made up of contributions by youths from
such places as the remote parishes of Strichen and
Edinkillie. The editor says in his preface :• —
"Neque enim dubitare fas est, nisi frigidior multo
circum praecordia steterit sanguis, quod in praefervido
VOL. I M

1 62 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1883
ingenio Scotorum niinime metuendum est, quin si
Buchananus et Arturus Jonstonus palmam Latinae poeseos,
suo uterque saeculo, principes tulerint, locus satis honestus
in curriculo Olympico adhuc restet Epigonis occupandus.
"At nos, Scoti hodierni, tantorum luminum tardi
sectatores, videmur, neglectis Graecis Litteris, Latinas
quoque mancas ac dimidiatas reliquisse, adeo ut multis
iisque emunctae naris hominibus ipsae Latinae Litterae
vilescant. Nee immerito : hand enim poterunt florere
Latinae Litterae, nisi ibidem simul fovebitur fax ilia
sempiterna, quae, Athenis accensa, Latium ipsum atque
Europam totumque orbem terrarum irradiavit. Vale."
Personally, I had much rather see Professor Geddes's
pupils reading Greek than writing it, for I am
one of those who regard such " tours de force " as
" elegantem quandam insaniam," to borrow a phrase
of the Professor's own. Still the book marks an
advance of civilisation in north-eastern Scotland.
22. Sir F. Roberts told us, at the Council luncheon
to-day, that a high official in the Punjab, whose
personal attractions were not equal to his abihty, used
to be called by the natives Akhal be Sakhal — Wisdom
without form.
25. Rutson, writing of Wenlock Abbey by the
mail of 3rd August, which arrived last night, says : —

i883 VOLNEY 163
" Lady Catherine has adorned the line of ruins with a
magnificent army of white lilies, and the gentle whirr of
pigeons' wings, as the birds glide from the old walls to the
smooth turf of the lawn, makes a pleasant sound on a hot
afternoon." I read this to my wife to-day, who remarked,
" Anything would be pleasant on a hot afternoon ! "
and no wonder, for this is, according to Captain
Agnew's reckoning, the eighth day on which we,
denizens of the tropics, have not seen the sun !
27. I have been accused, and perhaps not without
reason, of being "I'esclave de mes projets une fois
arretfe." So was Volney ; but he Kved to write the
following striking passage : —
" Ceci me rappelle encore un singulier Hollandais, jadis
Ambassadeur au Japon, et que j'ai connu a Paris, Titsingh ;
il me disait en fevrier, ' Je partirai le 6 septembre pro-
chain, a sept heures du matin, pour aller voir ma sceur a
Amsterdam ; j'arriverai le 12, a quatre heures.' Si cela
manquait de demi-heure, il etait malheureux. J'ai un pen
ete de cette etoffe, jadis ; j'etais un homme precis : j'en
suis bien revenu. Les projets sont a mon ordre, je ne
suis plus a leur. Chaque annee, quand I'hiver m'attriste,
je parle d'aller en Provence, et quand je songe au depart, je
m'enfonce dans mon grand fauteuil, et je fais plug grand feu

i64 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1883
pour remplacer le soleil. La bonne chose que d'etre en un
bon chez soi ! ... Usons de chaque jour sans trop de
prevoyance du lendemain. La prudence est bien quelque
chose dans la vie ; mais combien le hasard n'y est-il pas
davantage ! 'Je suis le plus jeune du Senat,' me disait
Fargue, 'je ferai, etc' ; nous I'enterrions dix jours apr&s.
Moi, j'ai compte mourir chaque annee de 1802 a 1805, et
me voilk en 18 19. A la Providence ! pret k tout."
28. Captain Chamberlain mentioned at dinner that
a balloon one day descended in the parish of Claygate.
The rustics, never having seen anything of the sort,
believed that it came straight from heaven, and, when
the aeronaut asked the name of the place, replied, with
clasped hands, " Claygate, God Almighty ! "
31. Mrs. Awdry has been reading to me Mrs.
Craven's sketch of Montalembert, in the copy made
doubly valuable to me by the inscription :
A. M. Grant Duff,
L'ami de mes amis.
Paris, March 21, 1874.
How well I remember Jules Simon recounting to
me, just after the event, the story of Mademoiselle de
Montalembert's announcing to her father her wish to
go into a convent, and the dismay with which the

i883 MONTALEMBERT 165
author of Les Moines d^ Occident received the announce
ment !
It was gratifying in connection with that recollec
tion to read the following passage : —
" Celle qu'il avait pleuree il la retrouva a I'heure oh
I'epreuve s'appesantissait sur lui. II la retrouva, non plus
comme un enfant, qui venait chercher son appui, mais
comme un doux et ferme appui qu'il allait chercher lui-
meme, comme une ame forte et sereine pris de laquelle il
puisait le courage et la paix dont son ame avait besoin."
The weather has continued wet and cold. The
English oak and the weeping willow are both under
the impression that winter is imminent, and act
accordingly, shedding most of their leaves. The
Australian Acacia dealbata, now a weed here, has
been, and still is, in full flower. The Acacia
Melanoxylon is coming into flower, but it is as
much less ornamental as it is more useful than its
congener. On the open grassy hills Impatiens scapiflora, which
we must now, it seems, call Beddomii, is giving way
to Pedicularis Zeylanica. In the garden a sweet-
scented narcissus is abundant, and the camellia is also
in full flower — sights strange to an English eye at

i66 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1883
this season ! I generally have in my room one or
more specimens of the noble Nilgiri lily.
31. The European Mail arrives, bringing me a
letter from  , who, with reference to some re
markable historical answers, which will be found a
few pages back, tells me that a young lady said to her,
" I do not remember much about Cardinal Wolsey,
but I know he had a son who fought in Egypt ; " and
mentions that a boy in a German school replied in her
hearing to the question, " For what was Frederick the
Great most famous ? " " He fought the Thirty Years'
War against Napoleon ! "
A friend writes of Colonel Yule, the editor of
Marco Polo: —
" He is now deep in revising the proofs of his (and the
late A. Burnell's) Discursive Glossary, one of the most
wonderful books I have ever seen, giving a complete, or at
least all but complete, history of Indian words, which
have gradually found currency in European books. It is a
book in which you especially will take the deepest interest.
But it will not be out this year, as his additions in the
proof slips necessitate constant alterations in the type.
It is tantalising to find how many words in common
parlance appear to defy etymology ; there is plenty of
work left for generations of philologists."

i883 JOHN WARREN ,67
John Warren ^ writes : —
" Your second letter of 29th June reached me in Shrop
shire, whence I have just returned from staying with the
Leightons for a fortnight. Their park is all but in Wales
(Montgomeryshire) and the Breiddan, or hill of the
robbers, towers up from the plain about three miles due
west, an isolated mountain peak or islet of alpine vegeta
tion. Here I have just revisited Potentilla rupestris.
Lychnis viscaria, Cardamine impatiens, and other lesser
lights in the way of stonccrop and saxifrage. It was a
comfort to reflect that these individuals were represented
in Parliament by Stuart Rendel, with whom I was pleased
to renew an old friendship of Eton and Oxford this year.''
Professor Axel Blytt, to whom I had sent some
seeds, before I started for my last tour, acknowledges
them from Christiania under date of 3rd August, and,
speaking of our excursion recorded in this Diary for
September 1873, says: "Unfortunately, it was too
late in the year, so you had no opportunity to see our
rich Christiania flora in its best state."
September
I. I went this afternoon, with Lawson and
Hollingsworth, to botanise on the lower slopes of
Snowdon, finding a walk, which, though hard by, I
1 Later Lord De Tabley.

1 68 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1883
had not seen before, and which is one of the most
beautiful I have met with on the Nilgiris. The
views of the valley of the Moyar and of the Mysore
plateau, before we passed into the woods, were en
chanting, and the luxuriance of vegetable life would
have impressed even those who cared nothing for the
individual plants. The most striking effects were
produced by Strobilanthes Zinckerianus, which was
covered with its blue flowers intermingled here and
there with a white variety. The mosses, too, were of
surpassing loveliness, particularly those on the trunk of
an aged Meliosma — a garden in itself.
I thought of a passage in Ruskin, which I lately
re-read : —
" Mosses. — Meek creatures ! the first mercy of the
earth, veiling with hushed softness its dintless rocks, —
creatures full of pity, covering with strange and tender
honour the scarred disgrace of ruin, laying quiet finger on
the trembling stones to teach them rest. No words, that
I know of, will say what these mosses are. None are'
delicate enough, none perfect enough, none rich enough.
How is one to tell of the rounded bosses of furred and
beaming green, — the starred divisions of rubied bloom,
fine-filmed, as if the rock spirits could spin porphyry as
we do glass, — the traceries of intricate silver, and fringes

1 883 MOSSES 169
of amber, lustrous, arborescent, burnished through every
fibre into fitful brightness and glossy traverses of silken
change, yet all subdued and pensive, and framed for
simplest, sweetest offices of grace ? They will not be
gathered, like flowers, for chaplet or love-token ; but of
these the wild bird will make its nest, and the weary child
his pillow.
"And as the earth's first mercy, so they are its last gift
to us : when all other service is vain, from plant and tree,
the soft mosses and gray lichen take up their watch by
the headstone. The woods, the blossoms, the gift-bearing
grasses, have done their parts for a time ; but these do
service for ever. Trees for the builder's yard, flowers for
the bride's chamber, corn for the granary, moss for the
grave." Mr. James, who stayed with us at Guindy last
spring, and has recently been travelling in the
Himalaya, having seen at York House, some years
ago, the curious brass lamp which the Crown Princess
found in a fisherman's hut in the island of Fohr,
and gave to me at Potsdam in 1875, has sent to bear
it company a brass Lhassa teapot, which he obtained
from the Chief Lama of a Buddhist monastery in
Ladakh, together with a brass and copper jug of Leh
manufacture, which belonged to the headman of the
village in which the monastery is situated.

lyo NOTES FROM A DIARY 1883
2. I listened to a sensible sermon this afternoon
from Mr. Elwes on the difference between religion
and godliness. A reference in it to Kingsley re
minded me that thirty years ago that eminent person
had said to me, with his curious stammer, "We shall
never do any good, till we have got rid of those
o-dious words Re-ligion and Christi-anity I "
Poor Kingsley, he was the most delightful open-air
companion I ever knew. I was thinking of him only
the other day, in connection with Alford's exquisite
poem Lady Mary, which he agreed with me in
considering incomparably superior to any of its
author's other productions.
The name of Alford makes me think of some lines
in a book which he published, consisting of pieces of
poetry and prose suitable for translation into Latin
or Greek : —
" When time shall turn those amber locks to gray,
My verse again shall gild and make them gay ;
And trick them up in knotted curls anew.
And to thy autumn give a summer's hue.
That sacred power that in my ink remains
Shall put fresh blood into thy withered veins ;
And on thy red decayed thy whiteness dead,
Shall set a white more white, a red more red."

i883 CORNEILLE 171
I suppose the author is quite well known ; but I
have, by some strange chance, been trying to find
out who he was, without success, for more than a
generation. There are few motifs, which touch me more than
that which inspired this poem. Compare Corneille : —
"lis pourront sauver la gloire
Des yeux qui me semblent doux,
Et dans mille ans faire croire
Ce qu'il me plaira de vous;
Chez cette race nouvelle
Oh j'aurai quelque credit
Vous ne passerez pour belle
Ou'autant que je I'aurai dit."
3.  mentioned at breakfast that Sir William
Denison, speaking of an engineer officer whose
blundering had caused some loss of life, said, " He
should have been hung." " He was suspended for
six months," replied the person addressed.
10. I had not realised that M. Paul de Saint Victor,
whom I saw at Victor Hugo's in 1881, and who has
died since, was so brilliant a writer. Sainte -Beuve
quotes a saying of Lamartine's about him, "Quand
je lis Saint-Victor je mets des lunettes bleues."

172 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1883
14. By last mail I had a letter from Coleridge,
in which he speaks highly of an article in the
^arterly about Swift. That led me to turn to
Thackeray's lecture in the English Humourists. I
had quite forgotten the Dean's quotation, when the
lady swept down with her train and injured the
valuable violin :
" Mantua vae miserae nimium vicina Cremonae ! "
which surely deserves the name of "the great pun,"
as well as that mentioned by Longfellow in Hyperion.
"L'amour a vaincu Loth" (vingt culottes), sang one
of the performers at the first representation of the
opera of Lot.
" ^u'il en donne une a Fauteur," cried a voice from
the audience !
I do not think I have mentioned that Mrs. Awdry
lately re-read Hyperion to me. When its writer died,
I did not happen to light upon a single allusion to the
book. And yet it is, to my thinking, one of the most
delightful that has appeared in my time. Putting
aside the great books, there is none I would rather
have written.
Turning over the Four Georges of Thackeray, I

i883 BLUCHER

173

observe that he has fallen into the mistake which
so many fall into about Bliicher. That rough-
tongued D.C.L. (for I think I am right in saying that
Oxford made him one) did not say that "London
would be an admirable place to plunder ;" but looking
from the top of St. Paul's, or rather I believe of the
Monument, on the mean houses south of the river, he
exclaimed " was fiir Plunder ! " What rubbish !
16. I spent yesterday in bed — a rare thing with
me — the ailments of which I have had more than my
share in Europe, Asia, and (remembering the Nile) I
may add Africa, not generally interfering with the
day's work. This afternoon, however, I could not
even read my mail letters with my own eyes, nor
could I go downstairs to the farewell dinner we gave
General Sankey, late Secretary in the Public Works
Department, an able and excellent servant of the
State, from whom I part with regard and regret.
I received to-day the first primroses I have seen in
India. I had heard it stated that they would not grow
here ; but that statement is about as veracious as many
others " quae volitant per ora virum," in this land,
which lies so far to the east of poor Strangford's "line
of habitual truthlessness,"

,7+ NOTES FROM A DIARY 1883
17. Amongst the list of books recommended by the
great authority of Acton is the Testament Politique de
Richelieu. I have been examining it carefully,^ with
a view to mark anything that could help a modern
statesman to do his work better. There is, how
ever, quite astonishingly little. ' Almost every page
throws light on the policy of the great Cardinal, and
would be valuable to one who was studying his times.
There are also a number of perfectly true maxims of
general application, but they have, for the most part,
become mere truisms in the art of governing. Not
many of these are put in such an epigrammatic way
as to cling to the memory. I cite below a few of the
best, but the book cannot be compared, as it seems to
me, for one moment, as a guide for a man in public
life, with the Oraculo Manual of Balthasar Gracian,
which was written before the days of Richelieu, and
whose author, the Rector of a college at Tarragona
(see my Miscellanies, Political and Literary), can never
have had the hundredth part of Richelieu's opportuni
ties of seeing behind the scenes of the courtly and
political stage : —
"Les plus grands Esprits sont plus Dangereux qu'Utile
' In the Amsterdam Edition of 1688.

i8S3 LE TESTAMENT DE RICHELIEU ,75
au Maniement des Affaires, s'ils n'ont beaucoup plus de
Plomb que de Vif-Argent ils ne valent rien pour I'Etat.
"II y en a qui sont Fertiles en Inventions, & Abondans
en Pensees, mais si Variables en leurs Desseins, que ceux
du Soir & du Matin sont toujours differens, & qui ont si
peu de Suite & de Choix en leurs Resolutions, qu'ils
changent les Bonnes aussi bien que les Mauvaises, & ne
demeurent jamais constans en aucune."
"Le Conseiller d'Etat doit s^avoir que le Travail qu'on
fait pour le Public, n'est souvent reconnu d'aucun Par-
ticulier, & qu'il n'en faut esperer d'autres Recompenses
en Terre, que celles de la Renommee, propre a payer les
grandes Ames.
"De plus il doit s^avoir qu'il n'appartient qu'aux
grandes Ames de servir fidelement les Rois, & supporter la
calomnie que les Mechans & les Ignorans imputent aux
Gens de bien, sans degout, & sans se relacher du service
qu'on est oblige de leur rendre.
" II doit s^avoir encore, que la condition de ceux qui
sont appellez au Maniement des Affaires Publiques, est
beaucoup a plaindre, en ce que s'ils font bien, la Malice
du Monde en diminue souvent la Gloire, representant
qu'on pouvoit faire mieux, quand meme cela seroit tout a
fait impossible.
" Enfin il doit s^avoir que ceux qui sont dans le
ministere de I'Etat, sont obligez d'imiter les Astres, qui,
ponobstant les abois des Chiens, ne laissent pas de les

i7fi NOTES FROM A DIARY 1883
eclairer, & suivre leurs Cours ; ce qui doit I'obliger a faire
un tel mepris de pareilles Injures, que sa Probite n'en
puisse etre ebranlee, ni lui detourne de marcher avec
fermete aux Fins qu'il s'est propose pour le Bien de I'Etat.
21. Much talk lately of tigers. The three
A.D.C.s went off the other day in force to slay one
at the Droog who, however, " knew better ." Captain
Chamberlain saw one or more in the woods beyond
Segur. Captain Agnew met with one in the same
district, and now Flip, the adventurous fox-terrier,
which my wife gave to Mr. Creed, has been killed
by a tigress somewhere near Kartairy.
A lady, recently arrived, asked Awdry "if there
was any danger from these animals."
"Practically none," was the reassuring reply,
" unless, indeed, you leave milk about, when they are
apt to come into the houses to lap it ! "
22. Colonel K. Herbert mentioned at breakfast an
amusing slip in English, which he had actually heard
from the lips of a native, "thirty miles as the cock
crows." 25. Glancing at a book called Evenings on the
Thames, published in 1864 by the author of The Broad
Stone of Honour, I find one chapter, the eleventh,

i883 JULES MOHL 177
devoted to the little island opposite York House, a
considerable portion of which belongs to me. In it
occurs the following story : —
"An old French writer gives an amusing instance of
the 'impatient zeal ' of one, not sitting among rushes on a
green bank, indeed, but on what he calls the ' fleurs de
lis,' or, as we should say, on the bench or woolsadk. 'I
knew,' he says, 'a certain counsellor, fond of sentences of
death, who used to doze sometimes on the fleurs de lis.'
One day the President asking for the votes of the com
pany, he roused himself up and said, half awake, that his
opinion was that the man should have his head cut off.
' But it is a question of a meadow,' said the President.
'Let it be mowed then,' replied the counsellor."
26. In Macmillan, for this month, there is a
kindly sketch by Mrs. Simpson of Madame Mohl, so
often mentioned in these pages. She died last May at
a very advanced age. In a note is the following
masterly sketch of M. Mohl by Sainte-Beuve, quite
new to me : —
" Un homme qui est I'erudition et la curiosite meme :
M. Mohl, le savant Orientaliste, et plus qu'un savant, un
sage ! esprit clair, loyal, etendu, esprit allemand, passe au
filtre anglais, sans un trouble, sans un nuage, miroir ouvert
et limpide, moralite franche et pure, de bonne heure
VOL. I N

178 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1883
revenu de tout ; avec un grain d'ironie sans amertume,
front chauve et rire d'enfant, intelligence a la Goethe,
sinon qu'elle est exempte de toute couleur et qu'elle est
soigneusement depouillee du sens esthetique, comme d'un
mensonge." October
2. I have often taken up Dean Ramsay's Remini
scences of Scottish Life and Character, but have in
these last days looked through the book with more
care than heretofore. Putting aside a few excellent
but very familiar stories, I have found, however, less
in it, of real value, than I had expected.
The good Dean has fallen into the error which
Chamfort notices : —
" La plupart des faiseurs de recueils de vers ou de bons
mots ressemblent a ceux qui mangent des cerises ou des
huitres, choisissant d'abord les meilleures, et finissant par
tout manger."
Yet it would be well, perhaps, if a similar book
were compiled for every province of Western Europe
before the social mill grinds down all angles. Amidst
much chaff, there would be found everywhere a little
grain. The best thing in the volume, not already known

1 88 3 THE DYING GLADIATOR 179
to me, is, I think, the old Jacobite lady's method of
drinking the health of the Chevalier de St. George,
" The tongue no man can tame — ^James iii. and
8th ! " — unless it be Lord Eldin's translation of the
motto of the Celtic Club, " Olim Marte nunc arte,"
" Formerly robbers now thieves " !
As Clara was reading Childe Harold to me
to-day, there came into my mind  's story of
the lady who, hearing the Dying Gladiator mentioned,
said " Poor beast." " You don't call the gladiator a
beast, do you .? " said some one. " Why, you wouldn't
call it exactly a fish, would you .? " was the reply.
I think this lady was the same person who, when
Sir John Lubbock, the eminent father of a still more
eminent son, observed, " Well Miss  I am not a
Solon but, etc." " Oh no. Sir John," exclaimed Miss
 , confounding the legislator with the goose, "no
one ever thought you were ! "
3. Colonel Henderson told me this evening that
the Bishop of Peterborough had said to a great lady,
who had scruples about allowing her pretty daughters
to dance, " The Devil has invented quite enough real
sins, to make it unnecessary for your Grace to invent
imaginary ones ! "

i8o NOTES FROM A DIARY 1883
6. Webster of Edgehill writes : —
"I do not think I have said anything of the Beckford
Sale, Part III. It deserved all said about the quality and
price of the books in it. They were in perfect condition
inside and outside ; the bindings as fresh as when new ;
the editions, the plates always the choicest, every volume
a bijou. The reputation of Deseuil was not advanced,
however, on the comparison of his work with that of some
other great craftsmen of the French school, — Derome,
Padeloup, Le Gascon ; but it kept up the price of all
books having his name, and I didn't get even one of them.
I was content with certain productions of Derome, Pade
loup, and Boyet of the eighteenth century ; and I am going
to send you, by the Indian parcel post, a sample of the
great inimitable collection which you may care for. I
add that, while these French binders of the eighteenth
century gave a solidity and a character of their own to their
volumes, not easily described without handling them, it
was in their gilding especially that their excellence is to
be seen, and in the grace of the design of their tools on
the back, sides, and the insides of their books. Modern
binders seem to execute all their designs and ornaments
by machines and so mechanically ; the men of the last and
former centuries put them on by hand by ' petits fers,'
and so, while sometimes irregular, they have more spon
taneous freedom and individual character given to each
book. The one is a manufacture, the other was an art.

i883 EIGHTH TOUR OF INSPECTION i8i
as in the case of real Oriental fabrics and porcelain, before
debased by working on a great scale for Europe ; and
while on a favourite subject I add, too, that, subject to
what I have said about the too great monotony and want
of freedom in the ornaments, nothing otherwise in the
bookbinding of the early part of the last century exceeded
the loveliness and finish of modern bookbinders like
Roger Payne and Kalthoebcr in England down to 1810,
and since, like Bedford, Clarke, Hayday, Charles Louis,
Rividre, or like Trautz Bauzonnet, Lortic, Duru, Cape, of
the recent French school, so infinitely varied and charming
in their handling of morocco."
On the morning of 9th October I left Ootaca
mund with some of my staff, and was joined at
Coonoor by Mr. Lawson. By taking a special train at
Mettupalaiyam, we reached Palghaut in the evening,
and had time to stop for a little at Walliar.
Thence, on the loth, we pursued our journey to
Calicut, whence we passed to Tellicherry and Manga-
lore, which last place we reached by sea on the morning
of the 14th. Thence we made an excursion into
South Canara as far as Karkal and returned via
Mangalore and Beypore to Ootacamund on the
22nd. All this is detailed in my usual official Minute, and

,82 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1883
I merely note during this fortnight a few matters of
non-business interest.
14. At Mangalore the European Mail of 21st
September met us.
Fries of Upsala (see these Notes for 1873) writes,
thanking me for some seeds I lately sent him through
Kew. He is now in charge of the Botanic Gardens
and Museum.
George von Bunsen lately wrote from the steamship
Elbe off New York to say that he had instructed a
publisher to send me a copy of a recent number of
Harper's Magazine, containing an article by him upon
the Crown Prince. The faithless American has not
done so, but I found the article in Mr. Sturrock's
hospitable house at Mangalore.
It is full of striking anecdotes well told ; I quote
two. " Long years ago, when the elder Bunsen was the
representative of Prussia in England, the present
Empress (then Crown Princess) was paying a visit in
London. Bunsen, waiting for an interview, was
looking over a number of engravings which various
print-sellers had sent for her inspection. Amongst
them there was a portrait of the Princess Royal and of

i883 LA BELLE ALLIANCE ,83
the present Crown Prince. These Bunsen placed side
by side over an engraving of the battle of Waterloo,
hiding all except the name La belle alliance, which
was printed at the bottom, and is the one used in
Prussia. Just at that moment the Crown Princess
entered. They exchanged glances, but no word was
spoken till long afterwards."
" After the Council of War at Bar-le-duc, when it
was resolved to try to crush the organised French
resistance before advancing on Paris, there followed
an anxious period during which it was uncertain
whether the movements contemplated could be carried
into effect with precision. At length, as Moltke and
his staff were approaching Sedan, an officer was ob
served riding rapidly towards them. He came up and
stated that two German regiments, which he named,
had met at a point in the neighbourhood. 'Will
you have the goodness to repeat that again \ ' said the
great strategist ; the officer did so. ' Es stimmt,' said
Moltke, taking a pinch of snuff."
The enemy was in the toils !
22. The European Mail, which reached me on
landing at Beypore, brings a letter from Mrs. Craven,
who mentions that the unwise action of the Comtesse

,84 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1883
de Chambord in excluding the Princes of the House
of France from her husband's funeral has rallied the
Blacases, Muns, La Rochefoucaulds, and all the most
ardent Legitimists around the Comte de Paris.
Lord Houghton, who had taken his passage for
India, to visit the Viceroy and myself, writes that he
has been obliged to renounce his project in consequence
of the strongly adverse opinions of Dr. Ouain and Sir
Joseph Fayrer.
He says, too, "I have lately been staying in a
house with the Cravens, and the bright Pauline dis
coursed much of you and your pleasant letters ; she
bears her years with wonderful vivacity."
On this journey, Mr. Lawson took the place of
Dr. King — botany, of geology.
28. Mr. Arthur Cayley's address to the British
Association, which reached me by this Mail, sent by
Mr. Thiselton Dyer from Kew, begins as follows : —
" Since our last meeting we have been deprived of
three of our most distinguished members. The loss by
the death of Professor Henry John Stephen Smith is a
very grievous one to those who knew and admired and
loved him, to his University, and to mathematical science,
which he cultivated with such ardour and success. I

i883 SMITH AND SPOTTISWOODE ,85
need hardly recall that the branch of mathematics to
which he had specially devoted himself was that most
interesting and difficult one, — the theory of numbers.
The immense range of this subject, connected with, and
ramifying into, so many others, is nowhere so well seen
as in the series of reports on the progress thereof, brought
up unfortunately only to the year 1865, contributed by
him to the Reports of the Association ; but it will still
better appear when to these are united (as will be done in
the collected works in course of publication by the Clar
endon Press) his other mathematical writings, many of
them containing his own further developments of theories
referred to in the reports."
Then, after some remarks about General Sabine,
who had long outlived the ordinary age of man, and
with whom I had no personal acquaintance, he adds : —
" There is yet a very great loss : another late President
and Trustee of the Association, — one who has done for it
so much, and has so often attended the meetings, whose
presence among us at this meeting we might have hoped
for, — the President of the Royal Society, William Spottis
woode. It is unnecessary to say anything of his various
merits : the place of his burial, the crowd of sorrowing
friends who were present in the Abbey, bear witness to
the esteem in which he was held."
Letter from Mrs. Bishop. Speaking of Ireland,

,86 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1883
she remarks that she is " a sphinx in rags with a hys
terical face, screaming to every one to answer her."
Of a photograph of Mrs. Craven, who has been
spending twelve days with her, she says : —
" She appears quite as she is — and alas ! seventy-five years
old ; but, I think, we who love her will rejoice to have a
faithful portrait of her dear wrinkles and white hair. Her
hair has grown whiter, as has her husband's. We talked
much of you, whose friendship is a very pleasant light on
her old age."
Rutson writes : —
" Mr. Ruskin came to Laidlawstiel for two nights after
I wrote to you. I was delighted with his courtesy and
charming manner and his eloquence. We went to
Ashestiel. You should have seen the reverent way in
which he approached, with his hat off, an old man who
had worked for Scott, and how he expressed his sense of
the honour of seeing a man who had known Scott, and how
the sense of his having known Scott must make the man
himself very happy. All this, said in a low and rich tone
of Ruskin's beautiful voice, while he stood slightly bowed,
made a memorable little picture — the man standing in his
doorway, and Ruskin just outside the cottage. The man
had a kindly recollection of Scott, but did not quite feel
about him as Ruskin did. We saw the box in which the
MS. was always sent by coach to Cadell's, and the proof

i883 RAM MOHUN ROY 187
returned, and the chair in which Scott read at Ashestiel,
and which (remembering it well) he borrowed in his last
days at Abbotsford, whence, when he had actually died in
it, it returned to Ashestiel, being brought back by the old
man aforesaid. It had been a showery morning ; but the
afternoon was one of the loveliest ever known : and in its
light we partly drove and partly walked to Traquhair,^
getting our first view of it from outside the great gates,
looking down the avenue guarded by the stone bears.
From nearer at hand, Ruskin made a sketch of the house,
which he declares (we not dissenting) to be a true work of
art, faithful to the genius of the place, towers, height, and
pitch of roof, size and mutual relation of windows, and
strength of material, — all harmonising with each other and
suited to the need of its inhabitants and to its situation
among Scottish hills." ^^
He also encloses from Max Miiller the report of a
lecture which he has lately delivered at Bristol upon
Ram Mohun Roy, who is interesting to me, amongst
other reasons, from the fact that he spent much time
at York House in the days of Sir Alexander Johnstone,
to whose wife that place was left by Mrs. Damer, and
whose family sold it to the Comte de Paris.
I have seen it stated that he proposed to write a
theological treatise in the form of a dialogue between
' See this Diary for September 1878.

i88 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1883
a Brahmin and a Christian, walking up and down the
terrace that overlooks the river.
By this Mail, too, I have a letter from Mr. Cook of
Richmond, acknowledging some seeds I have sent
him through Kew for his gardens at Cintra (see this
Diary for January 1 881).
30. With Lawson and Gamble to look for Crypto-
gramma leptophylla, which grows in Guernsey, and is
included in Bentham's British Flora. It is an annual,
and has, for the most part, died down, but we found
one small specimen.
A rock, only a few feet round, on which we
lighted during our search, was a perfect epitome of
the vegetable world. Dicotyledons were represented,
inter alia, by the pretty Parietaria debilis, new to
me ; monocotyledons by one of the Commelynacea,
besides which there were ferns, mosses, liverworts,
lichens, fungi, and algae. Mr. Lawson explained to
me the relations of the last three — surely one of the
strangest of the " fairy tales of science."
Pollock writes, in reply to a question of mine : —
" Yes, the FitzGerald recently gone was the translator
of Omar Khayyam, a man of great accomplishments as an
Oriental, Greek, and English scholar, but most eccentric.

i883 OMAR KHAYYAM 189
He lived in great retirement in the country, and I only
knew him by a pretty regular exchange of letters for
many years past. In addition to his Persian translations,
he was the author of a good version of the Agamemnon,
ot some of Calderon's plays (I should have added a Spanish
scholar too), and of some exquisite little essays. A strange
but very delightful person. Aldis Wright has got together
a number of his letters, and may perhaps attempt a
memoir of him."
I trust he will succeed. How far Mr. FitzGerald's
translation of Omar Khayyam is strictly accurate I
cannot say, but putting on one side the question how
much is due to the nineteenth-century Englishman,
and how much to the eleventh-century schoolfellow
of the Old Man of the Mountain, the poem which
Quaritch published is one of the finest in our or any
other language.
Captain Evans- Gordon writes from Akolia that
when out the other day looking for wild pigs, he and
his friends impressed a neighbouring Rajah's band to
drive the creatures out of the jungle.
The band struck up " Home, Sweet Home," pro
ducing the most ghastly sounds. The pigs appeared
to appreciate the words, for they stuck to their homes
in spite of the noises !

,9o NOTES FROM A DIARY 1883
November
4. The English Mail has brought from Mr.
Webster of Edgehill some lovely books — two from
the Beckford, and two from the Trebinoff collection.
The first which I chanced to take out of the box
was the Amsterdam Petronius Arbiter of 1669, red
morocco, with the gartered arms of the Earl of
Sheffield on its sides, and from the Beckford Library.
The second was a French translation of Marcus
Aurelius, published at Amsterdam in 169 1, and also
a delightful bit of morocco.
The accidental juxta-position of one of the most
licentious and the most virtuous of ancient writers
was amusing ! An exquisite uncut copy of Sallust,
Paris 1744, from the Beckford Library, French blue
morocco extra, probably bound by Ruette or Derome,
came next.
A pretty specimen of Padeloup's red morocco
followed, and the large paper edition ot Burton's
Bookhunter appropriately brought up the rear.
On the morning of 5th November, I left the
Hills, where my wife (who is in very deep mourning)
remains with the children, and started for Guindy,

i883 ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY-FOUR DAYS 191
thus bringing to a close my second year as Governor
of Madras. There have been no changes in the staff since
Agnew joined us.
Sir Evelyn Baring's ceasing to be a member of
the Government of India and Sir Louis Mallet's
resignation of his office as Under-Secretary of State
deprive of most valuable assistance those on whom
rests the main responsibility for the well-ordering of
this great country. From the latter I have heard by
almost every mail since I left England.
My survey of South India, a vold'oiseau, having come
to an end upon 22nd October, the following paragraph
from my English Tour Minute may find a place here : —
"I have seen, in just under two years, all our twenty-
two district capitals, and have visited Travancore, Cochin,
Sandur, and Mysore. I have travelled in the course of
eight tours of inspection, occupying one hundred and
seventy - four days, over something like nine thousand
miles in and about the Presidency, and have received
eighty-eight addresses, all of which will be found in the
various appendices, the eight Minutes forming at once a
useful guide for administrative purposes, and a curious
historical record."
I appear to have made, during the two years,

192 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1883
thirteen speeches when not on tour, eighty -nine
when on tour, of which last eighty were in reply to
addresses — one hundred and two in all.
On the morning of the 6th we reached Guindy,
and fell immediately into the way of life which we
led in the spring. The garden and park were in the
greatest beauty.
9. Went out by moonlight to see the first glory
of the Victoria regia, whose great leaves are now
covering my favourite pond, and whose flower opens
at night. At sunset, when we returned from the
swimming bath, a great bud was just unclosing. By
10 P.M. it had entirely expanded.
13. First Council of the season in Madras.
14. Who said "society should be a strong decoction
of books.''" Who described the election of 1874 as
" Froth at the top, and beer at the bottom ? " Who
spoke of the " immense conversation of the sea ? "
happy phrases which I found to-day in a memorandum
book of 1879.
It was Bastiat, I think, who wrote " Adieu ! ce
mot qui n'est jamais neutre," and Taine who
remarked that " dix millions d'ignorances ne font
pas un savoir."

i883 THE CASA PAOLINELLI 193
16. European Mail arrives.
In a long and very interesting letter, dated 24th
October, Ollivier sends me from St. Tropez his views
about the present state of affairs in France.
The immediate cause of his writing was a speech
which I made at Yercaud, and which had, probably
through Pondichery, found its way to him.
Miss Lyall sends me from Venice a photograph
with a view of the Casa Paolinelli, now Camerini,
the exact position of which I was most anxious to
ascertain. It is the house between the Hotel Bauer-
Griinwald and the Hotel de I'Europe.
"There must," she adds, "be a charming view
from its windows of the Salute. I am so glad to
know the house where they were. Their short
happiness was worth so many'a long life. I envy
those people, dead and gone, more than any living
ones." 1
Further on she says : —
"I have been to Torcello, of course, and to S.
Francesco in Deserto and Burano and Chioggia — all
the islands. How one feels, as you near Torcello in
* Recit d'une Sceur, vol. i.
VOL, I O

194 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1883
that quiet little water-way between low banks, of an
evening, as if one had left the world behind one ! "
Again, speaking of Florence, she says :
" I visited E. B. B.'s grave and the Casa Guidi. I like
the tomb and the place. The moon was rising between
the dark cypress -trees, as I stood there, and the turf
under my feet was full of little fragrant herbs, which gave
out a strong scent at each step."
17. To the great Chembrambakam tank in the
early morning. It is one of the largest we have,
covering some eleven square miles. The largest of
all is Cumbum in Kurnool, which is really a huge
lake. 18. Cavendish brings in from snipe - shooting
Gloriosa superba. Such are our weeds !
22. Mr. and Mrs. Franklen come here on a visit.
Maskelyne introduces her as the niece of "Mr.
Talbot, whom you remember as the Father of the
House," adding, "perhaps you dont remember him,
for, though he is in most important divisions, I never
knew above half a dozen members who knew him
even by sight, and he is generally looked on as a sort
of myth." This 4oes not surprise me, for it was years before

i883 UNE tAcHE DE SUCRE 195
I came to know him by sight, and then not by
accident, but by getting him pointed out by one of
the few who did know him. Aberdare has always
spoken to me of his ability in the highest terms, and
has dwelt particularly on his great powers as a
speaker !
24. European Mail arrives.
 sends me the following anecdote, which was
told her by a gentleman who was present : —
" Scene — A bal masque of ladies and gentlemen in
Paris. Group of ladies still wearing their masks ; group
of gentlemen anxious to find out who they are. The
young Due de  , whose name has an evil record, think
ing he recognises Madame de  an heiress, daughter of
a sugar manufacturer, approaches her and says, ' Madame,
je vois une tache de sucre sur votre robe,' to which she
answers, ' Monsieur, les taches de sucre s'effacent tres
facilement, mais les taches de sang jamais ! ' "
Lubbock tells me of a stormy meeting in the West
Indies, which was described by a newspaper as having
adjourned " sine deo " .'
Let me note some of the characteristics of a
Guindy day at this season : the clamour of the
crows as the dawn approaches ; the gradual flushing

196 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1883
of the Eastern sky ; the fall of the heavy blinds let
down in the verandahs, as the sun begins to rise
behind the trees of the park ; the little striped
squirrels running up and down the ropes ; the fresh
soft air as we step into the garden ; the Ipomaa carnea
showing only a few flowers — the Nyctanthes arbor
tristis surrounded by the blossoms which came out
last night — white petals and orange tubes ; the yellow
Gmelina speciosa in bloom, and near it the graceful lilac
Duranta, beloved of gorgeous butterflies. Further
on is Spathodea campanulata, covered with its large
red flowers towering up on the right just as we pass
among the mangoes ; then the broad walk, and
beyond it the centre of the garden, too full of varied
forms of beauty for me to enter into particulars, but
in which I usually spend some time, returning to the
house about 8 o'clock.
Then come the usual occupations of the day,
interrupted, as far as I am concerned, only by breakfast
(which takes place at nine) until the sun is westering,
when it is time to start for a ride, accompanied by
Cavendish or Agnew. To that succeeds the feeding
of the horses with lucerne, and the swimming bath.
As we return from it, we usually diverge to see if

i883 GUINDY 197
there is a new flower coming out on the Victoria
regia, and hardly ever fail to exclaim with delight as,
just when we pass the Spathodea, we catch the first
view of the eastern of the three blocks into which
the house is divided — looking sometimes white like
alabaster, sometimes, when the sunset is a fine one,
taking the softer hues of ivory.
The swift darkness of these regions is upon us ere
we cross the threshold ; and the jackals begin their
defiant chorus, while I am being read to between six
and seven. At quarter to eight comes dinner, and
then, after a very brief interval in the drawing-room,
which we only prolong on moonlight nights, we
separate ; the cicale, or some insects of similar habits,
keeping up a din to which the ear becomes as soon
accustomed as it does to a waterfall —
" For men may dwell by mountain streams, and all the
summer round
Have music lingering in their ears till they forget the
sound."
29. I lately chanced in volume ii. of the Selections
from the Calcutta Review on an article, by Sir Henry
Lawrence, of the year 1845, in which I found the
following passage about my father : —

198 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1883
" He studied men and manners in the camp, in the
cabinet, and in the peasant's field, as well as in the dusty
records of his office. He examined the past that he might
understand the present ; and such we consider to be the
duty of every Indian official, who would not be led by the
nose by his assistants, European or native. Research of
this kind has, however, its besetting dangers ; it tempts
men to become mere devourers of indistinct manuscripts,
and it is apt to lure them into the wide waste of specula
tion, where, mounted on the hobby of some favourite
theory, they challenge and combat the strongest evidence
that will not take the road they themselves have chosen.
Grant Duff escaped these temptations ; he was eminently
practical. His book is written with the candour of the
accomplished soldier, combined with the kindliness to be
expected from a disciple of Mountstuart Elphinstone. If
the minute details of some portions of the Mahratta
history, in some measure, fatigue the reader, he is re
warded by the fullest information on the character of a
very peculiar people, too generally believed to be as the
Sikhs, a modern sect, or like the Pindarees, to have been
mere bands of marauders, instead of being one of the oldest
races of the Indian peninsula. The record of that portion
of Mahratta history that came under Grant Duff's personal
observations, appears to us to possess the rare merit of
thorough impartiality. Each topic and individual is
treated manfully but courteously. Truth was his grand
object. He sank no point by which it might be

i883 LORD COLERIDGE 199
ascertained or illustrated ; but, while doing so, he uni
formly treated his opponents with unassuming candour."
I have two letters from Coleridge. In the first,
written at New York, he says of Niagara : —
"It is the very sublimity of motion as the Alps are the
sublimity of repose, and what struck me perhaps most of
all was its awful dignity and slowness. At a little distance
it looks like a green curtain with white fringes. I speak
of the Canadian side ; the American side is distinctly
disappointing." And again :
" Far the most beautiful city in America, as far as I
have seen, is Boston, and the State House is the most
beautiful building in the country. At Washington, at
Albany, at Chicago, and elsewhere, you see much grander
and more costly structures, but this is in perfect taste and
proportion ; every interspace the right size, every mould
ing right, every decoration refined — a sort of Adam
architecture of the best type. The situation is noble,
and has been made the best of."
In the other, under date of All Saints' Day, coming
across the Atlantic in the Britannic, he says :
"I am reading the jEneid right through once more
with increased and increasing admiration. The perfectly

zoo NOTES FROM A DIARY 1883
amazing and exquisite beauty of the style grows on me,
but the story, the characters, the narrative — all are of the
very highest order. ... It is like Mozart at his very
best. Do read the sixth book over again.
"I have read, as you ask me, four plays of Euripides
on my outward and homeward voyage, but the book was
too big to take with me on my journeys. He does paint
women — the only one of the Greeks who does — and what
exquisite, pure, lovely women his are ! Iphigenia, Alcestis,
Macaria, Helen, I should say even Phasdra, and certainly
Andromache, and, in the same sort of beautiful sunny
light. Ion and Achilles and Hippolytus. Schlegel, indeed,
made the very wonderful discovery that he was not
Sophocles, but who discovered that he hated women l
There are no such lovely women as his in antiquity."
My sister, on the eve of fifty, writes : —
" You see the Entwickelungskampf of us ex-monkeys is
really particularly serious just now. But one is so sure
that everything will be always getting better. I only
choke with rage that I cannot be there to see how it all
goes on. Just to think how splendidly all has gone on
during one's conscious forty years. I envy all the young
folks who are in the van, and can have a heave at the
battering ram under the Forts of Folly ! "
Mrs. Craven, who is nearly a generation older, wrote
to me on 25th June : —

1883 PROGRESS OF THE WORLD 201
" I wish I could be as sanguine as you arc as to the
state and real progress of the world. In many respects I
admit it. But against that what wild and senseless views
and aspirations and destructions ! I see clearly where
progress and transformation can take place, but also where
human nature has already done its best. There is not, it
seems to me, to be in the future any greater moral beauty,
or indeed physical beauty, than has already existed, and
Art also, I believe, has long before now reached its limit
of perfection." Mr. James Arbuthnot mentioned at dinner that a
man travelling in Wales had been pressed by his
hostess to write something in the hotel book. He
wrote —
" Non missura cutem nisi plena cruoris hirudo."
The lady was much pleased !
December
6. Mr. Jacob, the Simla stone- merchant, whose
story suggested, no doubt, the novel called Mr. Isaacs,
which was read to me during my tour last summer,
appeared this morning, and I made a good many
purchases from him.
9. They sang in the Cathedral this evening No.

202 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1883
379 of Hymns Ancient and Modern. As they did so,
it occurred to me that I had some historical association
with it, and remembered, before it was done, that
it was the Chorale of Leuthen " Nun danket alle
Gott ; " the hymn, of which a .line having been
accidentally sung by a soldier on the evening of the
battle, was gradually taken up by the whole of the
army of the Great Frederick, which had conquered on
that bloody day.
Miss Martin read to me some passages from
Lichtenberg. The following is as true now as it was in his day ;
he died 1799: "Eine Gleichheit und Freiheit fest-
setzen, so wie sie sich jetzt viele Menschen gedenken,
das hiesse ein eilftes Gebot geben wodurch die iibrigen
zehn aufgehoben werden."
Vauvenargues says : " II est faux que I'egalite soit
une loi de la nature. La nature n'a rien fait d'egal.
Sa loi souveraine est la subordination et la depen-
dance." 10. Looked the other day at a review in the
Westminster of Lord Ronald Gower's Reminiscences.
Speaking of a visit to Hughenden, he says that Mr.
Disraeli remarked that " he felt the satisfaction of an

i883 SIR HENRY LAYARD 203
English landlord coming out very strong, on a Sunday
afternoon, in showing his guests his territorial posses
sions, his pigs and his poultry, his farm improvements
and machines, his stock and his steading." That has
not to my ear the ring of Disraeli's talk. Much more
" truthlike," if not more " true," was the story which
was told at the time of his having taken a visitor
round his place, and then said to him, "We have
walked far, too far, but the pride of a proprietor upon
Sunday afternoon — is boundless ! "
I presided at the anniversary of the Saidapet
Agricultural College, and spoke.
12. Layard has, with his usual kindness, sent me
from Venice a further account of the Casa Paolini or
Paolinelli : —
" The house in question," he says, " is of the fifteenth or
end of the fourteenth century. It is small, and the fa5ade is
occupied by one large Gothic (Venetian Gothic) window.
It is nearly opposite the church of the Salute on the
Grand Canal. There is an escutcheon upon it, which
bears the arms of Cotignola or Codignola, as written by the
Venetians. I find that the Venetian Senate, on the 4th
October 1446, sent to the celebrated Condottiere and
their Captain-General, Michele de Cotignola, after the
victory he had gained over the Milanese, to congratulate

204 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1883
him upon it, and to say that 'in signum amoris et
gratitudinis deliberavimus eum in numero nostrorum
nobilium aggregare, et de nostro majore consilio creare, et
praeterea ei donare unam pulchram et honorabilem domum
in Venetia, vel in illo locorum nostrorum qui ei magis
placebit.' It is most probable that the Paolini House was
the one thus given to him. In 1448 he was disgraced and
imprisoned by the Republic and died without leaving
apparently any descendants — the family, or the Venetian
branch of it, becoming extinct. I have failed to ascertain,
although I have had the archives at the Frari, and in S.
Mark's Library examined, into whose hands the house
subsequently fell. All I can learn is that about fifty years
ago it belonged to a family named Paolini, who let it out
in lodgings. Rawdon Brown lived there in 1835 ^^^ 1836.
He afterwards bought the Ca Dario on the opposite side of
the Grand Canal. It passed into the hands of a family
named Paccierotti, who also let it out in lodgings, and it
is now generally known to the gondoliers as ' Ca ' or Palazzo
Paccierotti. It was subsequently bought by a Paduan
named Camerini, to whom it now belongs, and who, I am
told, occasionally lives there himself. The house is
charmingly situated, with a beautiful view. Rawdon
Brown used to point it out to me in former days, as the
pleasantest house he had occupied in Venice. Perhaps I
have given you more information than you required. If
not, and you require any more, pray do not hesitate to
make use of me. Miss Lyall, I presume, has told you

i883 THE GENUS AINSLIAEA 205
that Rawdon Brown died last summer. He was a very
old friend of mine."
Letters from Ootacamund announce the death of
Prinny, our companion in the Ronu and the friend of
the whole household.
14. English Mail arrives.
Mrs. Greg sends the following, obvious enough but
quite new to me : —
" What is a woman worth .?
Double you — O — man
W — o — man."
15. I have had a new avenue laid out, running from
this house to the gate which leads to the Marmalong
Bridge. It is formed chiefly of Dillenia speciosa and
Anogeissus acuminatus, the latter being seedlings from
the very fine tree in the compound of Mr. Price, the
Collector of Chingleput, which was probably planted
by my maternal grandfather.^
Some time ago, Dr. Bidie sent me a botanical
drawing of Ainsliaea angustifolia, a species from the
Khasia mountains which commemorates his name.
A Burman species is called Ainsliaea Brandisiana,
which, considering how close were my official relations
last year with Dr. Brandis, is amusing enough,
' Sir Whitelaw Ainslie,

2o6 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1883
We have had tremendous rains. Our familiar
Adyar, which has generally just water enough to wash
clothes, looks like the Rhine.
16. Two gentlemen. Major Mansel-Pleydell and
Major Symons, dined here to-night : the first had
kept four tame tigers, while the second had had his
collar-bone broken by a kick from an angry male
ostrich at the Cape of Good Hope !
18. Sir Frederick Roberts had a parade and march-
past of about 2200 men on the Island to-day, which
I attended officially.
20. The usual ball in the Banqueting Hall —
always a pretty sight.
21. European Mail arrives.
My sister writes : —
" Think of us on the afternoon of the 24th December.
At four o'clock, as the red sun has sunk behind the
Ettersberg, and there is a last glow through the park trees,
the great bells of Herder's Stadt-Kirche give the signal,
and all the bells join. At that moment, \.\i&fleissige HUnde,
that are nailing up the Tannen-Guirlanden all over the
house, and decorating our ideal wonder of a tree, stop
work and all listen in silence to the Heilig-Abend Glocken
with their memories, and their promises of happy hours
and days. The same bells tolled as Goethe was carried

1 88 3 THE BELLS OF WEIMAR 207
to his grave, and rang in Christmas for him and for
Schiller in their happy times together, — rang to call
Luther to preach in the Stadt-Kirche on Christmas Eve, —
rang to call Sebastian Bach to play the organ on Christmas
Eve, — rang for Jean Paul when he went to church on Christ
mas Eve, for Karl August, for the Frau von Stein on happy
Christmas Eves, when Goethe came to her house to the
Bescheerung, — rang for Corona Schroter when she sang on
Christmas Eve before the Court and Goethe. And when
they are ringing again and you have this, I'll think of
you ! "
A correspondent sends, on the authority of Baron
Solvyns, a Belgian's criticism on the French and the
English : " Le Fran^ais commence par avoir une
bonne opinion de soi-meme ; I'Anglais par avoir une
mauvaise opinion des autres."
From him, too, came the following : " A German
asked a German the name of an English friend. ' His
name,' replied the other, 'is Lord Smith, but it is
spelled — yohnson.' "
The usual reception of natives, etc., in the
Banqueting Hall, with fireworks on the Island op
posite, beyond the branch of the Coum, which bounds
the Government House park.
— .— concludes an amusing letter by saying, "I

2o8 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1883
think I am beginning to maunder, and the result will
not be a Treasury" She sends me also " all allowable
sweetness " from the charming  , an excellent and
most useful formula.
23. Captain Bagot having written to ask me to
send an epitaph for poor Prinny, I have suggested
this : — Princeps,
Catellorum facile princeps
Hie quiescit.
Tarn cari capitis desiderio,
Minime consepulto.
I told Cavendish, on the steps which lead down to
the garden, a piece of his family history which I came
across to-day in Sir James Mackintosh's Memoirs.
The Duke of Devonshire, in 1816, brought over
to London a poodle who had been taught to growl at
the words " Vive le Roi." Lord G. Cavendish, in
exhibiting the creature's accomplishments, addressed
it so roughly that he got his nose scratched. "That
is," said Tierney, "the first blood a Cavendish has
ever shed for royalty ! "
As we drove to the Cathedral, I quoted to Miss
Martin the words of Father Taylor, which Charles

i88 3 SHILLETO 209
Norton once told me, and which I do not think found
a place at the time in this Diary. "Not able to do
it, — too weak to do it, — did not eighteen centuries ago
twelve weak pairs of arms take up the world and carry
it to God ? "
I wonder if any one has noted the epigram against
Gladstone, attributed to Shilleto, the great Cambridge
scholar, which came into my head to-day : —
" Unde mihi lapidem, peterem quo laetus eum cui
Inditur a laeto nomen et a lapide ? "
A letter from Miss Smith to my wife, mentioning
that the Rector of Lincoln is writing his autobio
graphy, has carried my thoughts to Oxford, and
Miss Martin read to me Faber's lines of which I
am so fond : — •

I

" City of wildest sunsets, which do pile
Their dark-red castles on that woody brow !
Fair as thou art in summer's moonlight smile,
There are a hundred cities fair as thou.
But still with thee alone all seasons round
Beauty and change in their own right abound.
VOL. I P

NOTES FROM A DIARY

II

" Whole winter days swift rainy lights descend.
Ride o'er the plain upon the swelling breeze.
And in a momentary brightness blend
Walls, towers, and flooded fields, and leafless trees :
Lights of such glory as may not be seen,
In the deep northern vales and mountains green.
Ill
" Coy city, that dost swathe thy summer self
In willow lines and elmy avenue,
Each winter comes and brings some hidden pelf,
Buttress or cross or gable out to view :
While his thin sunlight frugal lustre sheds
On the straight streams and yellow osier beds."
My wife, writing under date of 23rd December,
says : —
" As Hampden and I returned, the evening was very
beautiful. Elk Hill cut clearly against a primrose sky and
the valley filling with blue mists, while the after-glow
still shone on the yellow-green of the Melanoxylons. In
the foreground a group of natives were gathered round a
little temple. One had lighted a censer from which a
blue smoke was curling, another holding a lamb ready
for the sacrifice. The scene, almost on Christmas Eve,
brought a curious group of associations to one's mind."

i883 LETTERS 211
Lawson said incidentally that it was quite possible
that some of Morrison's plants, alluded to in this Diary
for September 1880, had been gathered by Morrison
upon Naseby Field, as it would appear that he sat
under a hedge reading a botanical book during the
battle !
Charles Norton recently wrote from New England,
under date of 17th November : —
" There is much to say about many things that must be
left unsaid. A letter is a scanty syllabus of discourse.
Its main service is as an expression of remembrance and a
suggestion of sympathy. Its two best words are Euge and
Farewell." I should have said the same till I came to the East.
Now I find that not a few of my friends in the West
can do much better in their letters than say Euge and
Farewell. 28. From a newspaper, lately forwarded to me by
Mr. Webster of Edgehill, I see that the first set of
Burnett Lectures, established, in consequence of the
action taken by him, by Sir J. Clark and myself (see
these Notes for 1879), has been begun. The subject
is "The undulatory theory of light, and the organ

212 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1883
of vision." The lecturer is Professor Stokes of
Cambridge. 26. Lawson mentioned at breakfast that the son of
" The Railway King " had been known at Christ
Church as the Prince of Rails !
Professor Kuenen of Leiden gave, it appears, the
Hibbert Lectures last year, and I have just been
glancing at them. His conclusion has a peculiar
interest for me, because it is so much more hopeful
and so much more in accordance with my own
views (see "Must we then believe Cassandra?" in
Miscellanies, Political and Literary) than was a long
letter which I received from him in (I suppose) 1875,
upon the same subject. Unluckily that letter is not
in India, but laid up amongst my papers at home : —
" These lectures deal with the past, not with the future,
of religion. But I may be permitted, in conclusion, from
the point of view we now occupy, to cast a single glance
forward. As long as nations remain approximately on the
same level of social and spiritual development, so long the
continued existence of their religions, if not absolutely
assured, is at least highly probable. This is the very reason
why the problem as to the future of Christianity is so much
more serious than that which concerns either Islam or
Buddhism. This is why it is so specially serious now.

1883 PROFESSOR KUENEN 213
when so much is being superseded and is passing away, —
when a new conception of the world is spreading in ever-
wider circles, — when new social conditions are in the very
process of birth. What Paul writes of himself and his
contemporaries, we may, in a somewhat modified sense,
apply to ourselves, for in us, too, ' the ends of the ages
meet,' — the ends of the old and of the new. What has
Christianity to expect from this revolution } The need
of it is keen as ever. It is not for less but for more
Christianity that our age cries out. The question only is,
whether it will be able to take it to itself, and find in it
power for life, unbroken yet. For those who identify
Christianity with the ecclesiastical form in which they
themselves profess it, this question can hardly be said to
exist. They expect the world to conform to them.
They have no need to be re-assured or encouraged. But
those too, — and they are many, — who have no such
confidence, may be none the less at peace. The
universalism of Christianity is the sheet-anchor of their
hope. A history of eighteen centuries bears mighty
witness to it, and the contents of its evidence and the
high significance they possess are brought into the clearest
light by the comparison with other religions. We have
good courage, then. Not yet is the vital power exhausted
which manifested itself so clearly in the rise of the
Catholic Church and again at the Reformation of the
sixteenth century. To this our own experience bears
witness, and this the future will proclaim ! "

214 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1883
27. In the afternoon to the Observatory with Miss
Martin, Captain Agnew, and Mr. Webster, the Chief
Secretary. We saw the comet of 1812, not at
present a very striking object, Venus just now very
distant from us, Saturn in great splendour, and
Aldebaran. I asked Mr. Pogson how long light took
to come to us from him. " Certainly over a hundred
years," was the reply, " but how much longer, I know
not." New to me, too, was the cluster in Perseus —
a celestial rendering of my table the day Mr. Jacob
came. Still more interesting was Alcyone which may,
we understood, be the centre round which the universe
revolves. Lady Reay has sent me Fors Clavigera for
November 1883, and I quote one or two passages in
which Mr. Ruskin describes the country round
Laidlawstiel, with which I have so many pleasant
associations : —
" Towards the bottom of a dingle, here and there, a
few feet of broken bank may show what the hills consist
of; but the great waves of them rise against the horizon
without a single peak, crest, or cleft to distinguish one
from another, though, in their true scale of mountain
strength, heaved into heights of 1 500 or 2000 feet ; and

i883 LAIDLAWSTIEL 215
covering areas of three or four square leagues for each of
the surges."
" Much rain falls over the whole district ; but over a
great part of its falling time, in the softly diffused form of
Scotch mist, absorbed invisibly by the grass soil ; while
even the heavier rain, having to deal with broad surfaces
of serenely-set rock, and finding no ravines in which it can
concentrate force, nor any loose lighter soil to undermine,
threads its way down to the greater glens in gradual and
deliberate confluence, nobody can well see how ; there
are no Lodores nor Bruar waters, still less Staubbachs or
Giesbachs ; unnoticed, by million upon million of feebly
glistening streamlets, or stealthy and obscure springs, the
cloudy dew descends towards the river, and the mysterious
strength of its stately water rises or declines indeed, as the
storm impends or passes away ; yet flows for ever with a
serenity unknown to the shores of all other mountain
lands." 30. On the 28th, we transferred ourselves from
Guindy to Government House, Madras.
Next morning we went to the Central Station to
meet my wife and Clara. Breakfast was hardly over
when Dr. Mackenzie came to tell me that Davis, my
valet, was attacked with cholera, and that we must
forthwith return to Guindy. This we did. The case

2i6 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1883
ended fatally at 4 a.m. to-day. He was a negro from
the Gold Coast, and the best valet I ever had, though
I have been fortunate in that behalf. He appeared in
my room at Parell on 31st October 1881, and I have
hardly ever given him an order since. Everything I
wanted, while he was there, seemed to happen as I
wished it, without anything being said.
A red sunset — clouds half-veiling Venus and the
crescent moon. The air was cool, in the earlier
seventies, and, from time to time, we heard the
gurgling cry of the great owl, the call of the spotted
deer, and the dry rustle of the palmyra.
My second Christmas Minute, briefly recording
the principal changes which have been made in this
Presidency, during 1883, was to-day finally passed for
publication.

i884
yanuary
I. M. DE Range published in 1639, when he was
twelve years old, an edition of Anacreon, with a de
dication in Greek to Richelieu, who was his god
father. When in later life he entered into religion,
he destroyed all the copies he could, except one which
he gave to a friend, " non comme un bon livre, mais
comme un livre fort propre et bien relie." I have,
mindful of my Petronius Arbiter, just sent this fact to
its kind donor.
6. European Mail arrives.
Rutson mentions the sudden death of the elder
Doyle (son of H. B.), and adds : —
"He had become quite a great friend of mine. You
know his gentle ways and the quiet leisureliness that went
along with the humour that delighted so many thousand

2i8 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1884
people in his drawings. He seemed quite well that
evening, and was talking about the exhibition of Sir
Joshua's, which is to take place in January."
Mr. Lear writes from San Remo, with accounts of
various seeds I sent him to try : " A great many came
up, but many died. Among common Madras things,
Ipomcea pes caproe and pes tigridis found an early
grave, while Solanum trilobatum has grown 'alarm
ingly,' and has been named by his gardener Bestia
feroce ! "
He says, too — and on this subject he is a first-rate
authority — " After all, there is no more beautiful and
strange landscape than in India."
 sends me from Wiesbaden a Belgian's
account of a dinner which he had had at an English
hotel, " A soup, one fish, three plates and a desert ! "
Miss Lyall, dating from Venice, says : —
"After writing to you last, I went to your S. Giorgio
in the sea- weed, and looked, a votre intention, at the sun
setting behind the blue Euganean hills, and then at Venice
lying flooded in the rosy light. The Campanile is gone,
and the little island looks very desolate ; but there is still
the high wall and the gracious Madonna leaning forward
to bless."

i884 MISS LYALL 219
Of the neighbourhood of Florence, she says :-—
" Oh the loveliness and peace of that country ! I never
can say how much I felt its beauty : the olive-covered
hills — the broad valley of the Arno studded with red
Tuscan willows — the course of the river tracked out by
the slender poplars tipped with gold in the afternoon
sunset — and the little old-world cities on the hill, Lastra
and Beata Signa."
12. English Mail of 2ist December arrives.
Rutson writes : —
" I have been spending a few days at Duffryn. The
sunsets were glorious. The red-russet after-glow lit up
the mountain sides, and, before that, the bars of deep
colour and the seas of pale orange — pale green and violet —
were as fine as you can ever have seen them in England.
These luminous sunsets and fine dawns have made this
December unlike all others."
Lubbock, who is studying an animal of a higher
type, as he studied bees and ants, writes : " My dog
is getting on. He brings me the card with ' food ' on
it, when he wants to eat, quite nicely."
14. From Friday morning to yesterday evening
the house was in a whirlwind — Sir Donald Stewart,
Lady Stewart, Miss Stewart, and I know not how

220 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1884
many warriors, passing through to Bangalore, on their
way to the Camp of Exercise.
I heard yesterday from Captain Evans -Gordon,
who writes from Central India, that a lady, whom he
knows, was walking close to Watson's Hotel in Bombay,
and, being struck by the appearance of a building
opposite, asked an English maid whom she met what
it was. " I am not quite sure," was the reply, " but I
think it is the Indian Contingent I "
He mentions also that Miss Stewart having appeared
at a Fancy Ball as a portrait after Gainsborough, a
young Cavalry officer observed, " Gainsborough must
have been very hard-hearted not to let her catch him I "
I passed this on to the young lady's mother.
15. Last Sunday Mr. Black preached at the Cathe
dral on Esdras II. To-day and yesterday Miss Martin
has read the book through to me.
I wonder if it occurred to any one to preach a
sermon on the following text when the second Empire
fell in September 1870: —
"II Esdras, chapter xi. 45-46.
" Therefore appear no more, thou Eagle, nor thy
horrible wings, nor thy wicked feathers, nor thy malicious
heads, nor thy hurtful claws, nor all thy vain body.

i884 BARON DE HUBNER 221
" That all the earth may be refreshed, and may return,
being delivered from thy violence, and that she may hope
for the judgment and mercy of Him that made her."
18. With Colonel Herbert to inspect the military
sanitarium of Poonamallee, about which some questions
have arisen.
19. A letter from Lord Ampthill, a Mail or two
ago, announced the probable advent of the old Austrian
statesman Baron de Hiibner, and a telegram from
Arthur Gordon, who has succeeded Longden in
Ceylon, and with whom I have just been exchanging
letters, intimated in the beginning of this week his
departure from Colombo. He arrived this morning,
escorted from his vessel by Bagot, and found us at
breakfast. Conversation soon turned upon interesting
things, and he mentioned, before we had risen from
table, that the family of Prince Massimo was descended
from the Counts of Tusculum, who were themselves
sprung from the Gens Anicia. He did not seem to
have heard the reply attributed to the Prince Massimo
of that day, who, when Napoleon asked him if it was
true that he was descended from Fabius Maximus, is
reported to have said, " I cannot prove it, but it is a
rumour which has prevailed for the last thousand years

222 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1884
in my family 1 " Upstairs, in my verandah, we fell
talking of Austrian politics, and he spoke very highly,
amongst others, of Heinrich Clam Martinitz, the
great speaker in his section of the Conservative
party. Inter alia, he told me, too,that Metternich had said
to him, long before the crash of 1 848 came, " I foresee
that all this will tumble down, and bury me in its ruins."
20. English Mail arrives.
Rutson writes : —
" We drove over to Walton Hall, the house of Waterton,
and of many Watertons before him, for they were great
people once in the West Riding. Now even Walton has
been sold, but the wall that Waterton built to protect his
birds and beasts (like our friend the Rajah of Bhurtpore) ^
still towers above the other park walls. . . . Walton is a
stately house, on an island, in a lake of some little size,
down to which the land slopes from every side. Mr.
Waterton's tall crucifix still faces the front door, and
dominates the ancient landing-place, still marked by the
ruins of a sixteenth-century portal, half buried in yews
and hollies."
Hiibner's recollections go back a very long way.
He met Montalembert in Rome in 1832 when he
1 See Notes of an Indian Journey : London 1876.

1884 BARON DE HUBNER 123
went thither about the Avenir. Probably, the last
letter, which Montalembert ever wrote was to him
about his life of Sixtus V. After it was written, in a
singularly clear and beautiful hand, the Sceur who was in
attendance said, " Monsieur le Comte, it is your time
to go to sleep ; " and he died the next morning.
Baron de Hiibner gave the original letter to Madame
de Montalembert, but retains a photograph of it. He
knew Gerbet also at Rome in 1832, and visited him at
Perpignan, when he was Bishop there.
I asked him who said the happy thing about the
silver-wedding of the Empress of Austria, " Vingt cinq
ans de manege ;" but he had not heard it.
It was he himself who first observed of Napoleon
III., " II ne parle jamais mais il ment toujours," though '
this mot, like so many others, does not pass current
with the image and superscription of its real author.
His mention of Lord  , long our Minister at
Berlin, reminded me of the name given to him on
account of his admiration for the great singer Made
moiselle Sontag — " Milord Montag."
21. We had the string-band at dinner, and after
wards sat in the front verandah listening to a very
pretty selection of Scotch airs which my wife has made

224 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1884
for it. We remembered, as we breathed the soft
delicious air, Keats's description of this evening in a
northern climate : —
" St. Agnes' eve, — Ah bitter chill it was !
The owl for all his feathers was a-cold ;
The hare limped trembling through the frozen grass,
And silent was the flock in woolly fold."
I learn, by the way, that the little owl, who makes
so much noise here at nights, bears one of the proudest
names in the animal creation : Athene Brama, if you
please — nothing less !
My thoughts turned, as they often do in my present
position, to the poem of Anastasius Griin, which begins :
" Abend ist's, die Girandolen flammen im geschmiickten
Saal,
Im Crystall der hohen Spiegel quillt vertausendfacht ihr
Strahl."
" That describes a scene familiar enough to you," I
said to Hiibner. " Ah yes ! every evening of my life
at one time," he replied ; and no wonder, for he was
brought up at the feet of Metternich, whom the
remarkable poem, from which I quote, describes. It
will be found in the Spaziergdnge eines Wiener
Poetens, and is well worth turning to.

i884 DONOSO CORTES 225
After I had come back from a Legislative, followed
by the usual Executive, Council, and had finished my
last paper. Miss Martin read to me the concluding part
of the brief notice of the life of the Marquis de Valde-
gamas (Donoso Cortes), prefixed to the translation of
some of his writings published in three volumes at
Paris in 1877.
When we had got into the train and had started for
Bangalore, I said to Hiibner, " Did you ever, by any
chance, come across Donoso Cortes ? " " Oh ! yes,"
he replied, " I was with him when he died ! "
Another subject of which we talked this afternoon
was the Princess Lieven. He put far above her, and
above all women whom he had ever known, as a politi
cal intelligence, the Countess de Lebzeltern, a Russian
lady, wife of an Austrian diplomatist, and mother of
Alexandrine de Lebzeltern, who was a great friend of
Natalie Narischkin, and married the Vicomte des Cars.
23. Accompanied by Baron de Hiibner and some
of my staff, I reached early this morning the Bangalore
Residency, where we are the guests of Mr. Lyall,
brother of the Lieutenant-Governor of the North-
West, and of my travelling companion from Berlin to
Dover in November 1875. The day went mainly in
VOL. I Q

226 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1884
a visit of ceremony to the Maharajah of Mysore, and
in an inspection of the Camp of Exercise ; but I had
time also for a good deal of conversation with Hiibner.
In reply to my question how he chanced to be present
at the death of Donoso Cortes, he explained the cir
cumstances. He had gone with his Prussian colleague.
Count Hatzfeldt, to ask for Donoso Cortes, who was
then Spanish Ambassador in Paris, and known to be
very ill. They reached his house ; the concierge was
absent. They entered the hall — not a creature to be
seen. Presently a bell was rung violently and the
Sceur Rosalie, who was nursing him, came down saying,
" All the servants are gone. His Excellency is dying.
There is no one to go for the doctor." Count Hatz
feldt undertook that duty, while Baron de Hiibner
followed the Sceur, and was with the great orator
when he breathed his last.
24. We fell talking this morning about Thiers,
and Hiibner related how, when Thiers was President
of the Republic, he had gone to dine with the great
man at Versailles, in a house which he only used for
entertainments. Arriving somewhat early, and finding
no one at the door, he walked upstairs, and established
himself before the fire in the owl-light. Presently he

i884 REVIEW AT BANGALORE 227
was aware of a man approaching him quietly and with
great precautions. Knowing that his host had to be
protected against assassins, and unwilling to be the
martyr of a cause which was not his, he observed,
" I am not Monsieur Thiers." " I know," replied
the advancing stranger, " that you are not Monsieur
Thiers, but what I want to know is who you are."
" By what right do you put such a question ? " said
Hiibner. "I am Monsieur Thiers's butler," was the
reply ; " and I," rejoined the other, " am Monsieur de
Hiibner." " Ah ! Monsieur le Baron," said the other,
much relieved, "here is your nameat the head of the list."
The name of Thiers naturally led us to that of
Mignet, who had been very useful to Hiibner in
collecting materials for his Sixtus V., and of whom
he spoke with great respect and regard.
After breakfast we went by railway to Kistnaraja-
puram, whence we drove some miles before we reached
the place where we met our horses. I mounted
Renown, and rode to the saluting-point, where a long
procession was formed, which passed slowly along from
right to left — first of the Infantry, then of the Artillery
and Cavalry, which were drawn up behind the Infantry,
and at some distance,

228 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1884
I was near the end of the procession, and on my
extreme left was Sir Frederick Roberts, then Sir
Donald Stewart, while on my right were General
Hardinge (the Commander-in-Chief of the Bombay
Army), and on his right the Maharajah of Mysore.
Behind us came a large gathering of general officers
from all parts of India, and then my personal staff.
This inspection over, we cantered back to the
saluting-point, where the whole force marched past —
8733 officers and men — the Infantry coming first,
then the Cavalry and Artillery. The wind, which
was happily behind us, blew away the dust, of which
there was abundance. I stood in front, with the three
Commanders-in-Chief just behind. The effect of
keeping the eye on so large a body of men in motion,
with sufficient attention to answer salutes, was that
everything, for a little after the march-past was over,
seemed to swim before one ; but the sensation soon
went off.
The military men present were much pleased with
the appearance of our Madras troops, who are thought
to have done very well in the manoeuvres, so I was
glad to be present, and — if it be true that the three
Commanders-in-Chief met to-day for the first time in

1884 POLICY AND FORCE 229
all our annals, on an occasion of this kind — it was
fitting enough that they, the representatives of force,
should meet round the Governor of Madras, who, as
ruling the oldest and for a long time back the most
peaceful of our Presidencies, might be taken as the
symbol of that policy which is the other and even more
powerful stay of our supremacy in this country — even
more powerful I say, for a nearer inspection has only
deepened the conviction which I expressed in 1869,
when making my first Indian financial statement :
" It is impossible to keep too continually before us the
fact that India was not won, is not held, and never
will be held, by force alone. It was won, it is held, and
it always will be held, while our Empire lasts, partly by
force, but largely, much more largely, by policy."
25. Much conversation with Hiibner. He spoke
very highly of the Bohemian noblesse, amongst others
of George Lobkowitz. Altogether, the younger
generation of nobles in Austria seem to be taking
much more to serious pursuits than their fathers did.
I mentioned to him, in the course of the day, the
amusing story, true or false, of the gentleman who
appeared at the Court of Vienna wearing a superb order
which puzzled every one extremely. At length, the

230 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1884
Emperor, who had failed completely to discover what
it was by consulting various experts, had the stranger
presented to him, and congratulated him on the beauty
of his decoration. " Glad your Majesty likes it," was
the reply of the American wearer, " I invented it
myself ! " I cannot remember who was my authority
for this anecdote ; certainly well imagined, if not true.
He had not heard a story which I repeated to him
of Persigny's leaving Napoleon III. in a rage, with the
words, " Adieu, sire, vous serez vendu par Fould, juge
par Troplong, et pendu par Magnan ; " but on this he
recognised the cachet of great probability. I heard it
in Paris some twenty years ago.
He told me, in the course of our walk, the following
remarkable story with regard to a man whose name
will be found in these notes under the date of 1861.
On the 31st October 1848, Vienna surrendered to
the Imperialists. The next day there was a large
breakfast at Hetzendorf behind Schonbrunn, every one
present being of course in high spirits. When it was
over, Hiibner strolled in the garden, and, falling in
with the Auditor or Military Judge, was told by him
that six young men, who had been found attempting
to corrupt the soldiers by giving them money, were

i884 HAYMERLE 231
just about to be shot a little way off. Hiibner walked
accordingly with him in the direction indicated.
Arrived at the spot, he saw, amongst others, a youth,
more dead than alive, with a rope round his neck, the
end of which was in the hand of a savage- looking
Croat. "Who is that ?" asked Hiibner. "A Herr
von Haymerle," was the answer. Haymerle, thought
Hiibner, surely that must be some connection of such
and such, remembering an old and very respectable
official of the Vienna Foreign Office, the Hammond, in
fact, of that Institution, who had married a widow
named Haymerle. " I should like," he said, " if
possible, to save that young man's life." " Well,"
said the Auditor, " you must be quick about it, for
the Marshal is just going into the city, and they must,
according to orders, be shot two hours after their
identity has been 'constate,' which has been done."
Hiibner ran as fast as he could, and found Prince
Windischgratz getting into his carriage. He told him
the circumstances, or what he believed to be such, for
it does not seem clear that the connection existed, and
the Marshal said, " Well, well, let the scoundrels go
about their business." Years passed away, and Hay
merle, who, when I knew him, was Austrian Charge

232 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1884
d'Affaires at Dresden, had become Prime Minister.
Baron de Hiibner, who opposed his foreign policy, sat
down, in the year 1881, after making a long speech
against it in the Delegations, when, after the applause
of his own friends had subsided, a voice from behind
Haymerle was heard to say, "Baron de Hiibner is the
most inconsistent of men ; he saved the Prime
Minister in 1848, and he has killed him now."
Killed him, of course, politically, the speaker meant,
but sure enough the poor man died very soon afterwards.^
I gathered from Hiibner that the three principal
events of Austrian political history, in which he had
taken an active part, were —
( I ) The bringing of Prince Felix Schwartzenberg
from Italy to Vienna in 1848, after which
he accompanied the Emperor Ferdinand to
Olmiitz, walking most of the way on foot
with the present Emperor ;
(2) the accommodation with Hungary after
Koniggratz ;
(3) the fall of Andrassy.
' In 1887 I went to Vienna and made Hiibner take me over the
scene of this anecdote. As we walked he said, " I remember the shadow
which my figure cast as I ran across this piece of ground."

i884 LADY REAY 233
25. English Mail arrives.
John Webster of Edgehill writes : —
" I am charmed with your brief reference to Bossuet
and his grand Oraison on Conde, as noble and sustained a
composition as human lips ever uttered. Nothing was
ever more dignified than the conclusion ; and did you
recognise in the fine passage describing Conde in battle
' Semblable i ces hautes montagnes,' the germ of Gold
smith's lofty simile, 'As some tall cliff.?'"
Lady Reay writes : —
" We came here from Peckforton, Lord Tollemache's
very fine modern castle on a high-wooded hill rock com
manding the county of Cheshire, over which we took
long drives.
"When I arrived one evening late in the dimly-lighted
hall and stone corridors, I thought I was in a monastery,
and that my bed of dark carved oak pillars, with a canopy
far away in the ceiling, must have seen the last solemn
sleep of many an Abbot ! but the castle is modern in
erection, though very old in thought and association,
being Edwardian in character."
26. Talking with M. de Hiibner about wealth, I
repeated to him the happy saying that there is no
country in the world in which a poor devil of a
millionnaire is so badly off as in England ; and he

234 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1884
told me a remark made to him by the late Baron
James Rothschild : " Foyez fous, I'argent est une bonne
chose quand on ne I'a pas ! "
He mentioned also that the Prince of  at
Rome, showing him over his palace, had pointed to a
picture and said, " Ma grand'mere  , maitresse de
Robespierre " !
He mentioned also that sitting between  and
 he had one day said to the latter, " Qui est ce
vilain petit homme ? " " C'est heureux," was the
reply, " que vous avez adresse cette question a moi sa
femme, et non a la Princesse sa mere ! "
He told me, too, that the Princess Metternich was
reported to have said one day to Napoleon III., when
he complained of headaches, " I do not wonder at
your having headaches. Perhaps if you occupied
yourself with your own affairs only, and not also with
those of other people, you would have fewer."
It is to this Princess Metternich that is attributed
the happy description of the Ministers of Education,
Public Works, and War, as the Ministers of " Instruc
tion Publique," "Construction Publique," and "De
struction Publique."
We talked, too, of the beautiful Princess

i884 PRINCESS METTERNICH 235
Metternich, the wife of the statesman, who scandalised
the diplomacy of Europe, and almost brought about a
rupture of good relations between Austria and France,
by saying to M. de St. Aulaire, the Ambassador of
Louis Philippe, when, looking at her beautiful tiara,
he said, " Oh ! Princess Metternich, you are wearing
a crown ! " She repHed, " And why not .? it is my
own. If it weren't my own, I wouldn't wear it ! "
27. We left Bangalore last night after receiving
the return visit of the Maharajah, and reached Guindy
early this morning. In the course of a long walk
with Baron de Hiibner in the gardens, he mentioned
that in 1832 he had been very intimate at Rome with
an old German painter of the name of Koch. With
him he had frequently walked to the Porta Pia, and
had observed that Koch had the habit of plunging the
stick which he carried into a fountain hard by the
gate, and then turning round. " Why do you do
this ! " he asked. " Because," was the reply, " I used
to take this same walk with Goethe fifty years ago,
and he always did so."
28. I asked Baron de Hiibner whether he had been
fortunate in meeting many remarkable people in the
religious houses, of which he has visited so many in

236 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1884
distant parts of the world. " More," he said, " amongst
the women than amongst the men ; " and then went
on to give a most interesting account of a young Soeur
de la Charit^, who had nursed him through a rheumatic
fever in Paris when he was writing his Sixtus V., de
scribing her holding above him an autograph letter of
Philip IL, whose difficult hand he spelt out as he lay
flat on his back.
29. He mentioned, too, one of these days, having
gone up at the time of the last Paris Exhibition in the
Ballon Captif. It floated over the burnt unroofed
Tuileries, and looking down he saw the whole ten
years of his diplomatic life in Paris pass before him,
in the very rooms in which each of its events had
occurred !
31. Sir Donald Stewart, accompanied by Colonel
Chapman and Lord Alwyne Compton, arrive.
I had, as on the 13th, much conversation with Sir
Donald, but now, as then, it was largely of a business
character, and I pass it by.
The Viceroy, Lady Ripon, and a large staff, landing
this afternoon with appropriate ceremonies and amidst
an enormous concourse, drove with me to Guindy,
where the house and gardens were lighted up, and the

i884 ARRIVAL OF THE VICEROY 237
principal people came to meet them. We sat down
to dinner, a party of forty-three. February
I. Before Hiibner left us to-day, I was glad to be
able to show him that, although we have lived in such
different camps, the only time I ever had occasion to
mention him I did so in a very complimentary way.
The following passage occurs at page 172 of my
Studies in European Politics, published in 1866, just
before the outbreak of the war between Prussia and
Austria : —
" Bach was dismissed in August 1859, ^^^ ^^^ succeeded
by Count Goluchowski, a man of much inferior ability,
who had been Governor of Galicia, but who did not do
anything as Minister to justify the respectable reputation
which he brought into the Government. M. de Hiibner
became, at the same time. Minister of Police, and showed,
during his short tenure of office, far more consideration for
the press, and far more desire for reform than his pre
decessor. Both he and the Foreign Minister, Count
Rechberg, are believed to have seen, even at this period,
that concessions to Hungary had become absolutely neces
sary. Indeed, M. de Hubner is said to have resigned
his portfolio in consequence of the rejection of his plans
for effecting something in this direction."

238 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1884
I have gathered, from recent conversations with
Hiibner, that if Rechberg had stood firm, an accom
modation with Hungary might have been arrived at.
The Viceroy departed in state for Hyderabad,
Hubner going with him.
9. At noon on the 2nd, I left Madras, accompanied
by several members of my staff, by my colleague
Master, the Chief Secretary, the Under-Secretary in
the political department, the Chepauk Agent, the
ladies of our party, and others, en route for Bolarum
near Hyderabad, which we reached in some thirty
hours. The ceremony of investiture, which took place in
the durbar hall of the palace, on the morning of the
5th, rather disappointed me. This court has discarded,
too much for picturesqueness, the barbaric pearl and
gold, having become, if not Europeanised, at least
Stamboulised. The illumination of the city and the Hussain
Saugor Tank near it, at night, was very fine ; that
within the palace magnificent — in its way I should
think unsurpassable. It would have been difficult to
use white marble staircases, great platforms of the
same material, light, darkness, water, architecture

i884 HYDERABAD 239
outlined by lamps, to greater effect, for however great
are the resources of the West, they could not command
the accessory conditions, the February sky of South
Central India, the cocoanut palms rising into it, nor
even the masses of Arab and African soldiery.
There was a review on the morning of the 6th, to
which I accompanied the Viceroy ; but the troops on
the ground were not much more than half as numerous
as those which we had at Bangalore. The only ad
vantages which it had over that remarkable display
were — ( I ) the presence of a powerful elephant battery ;
(2) the fact that the bands being nearer, the
tones of " Bonnie Dundee " were less drowned
by the quadrupedante sonitu.
In the afternoon we went through the city on
elephants, a mode of conveyance which, now that the
streets have been widened and the lawless disposition
of the population checked, is no longer de rigueur.
In the centre of the town there is a good deal that
is striking, and many pretty little arched windows ;
but the remoter portions of it are waste and farmyardy,
like Debreczin, that advanced post of Asia in the heart
of Europe,

240 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1884
The population is interesting and varied, but looks
far less barbarous than I had expected. On the 7th
we attended at night an enormous dinner given to
the Nizam by the English residents here, which is
memorable to me as having been the occasion of my
saying good-bye to Baron de Hiibner, whose society,
although I have enjoyed many things very much since
I came to Madras, has been incomparably the greatest
pleasure I have had since I left Europe. We met
several times after we reached Hyderabad, but always
amidst the " storm and stress " of a great public occasion,
so that his words to me before he left Guindy were
only too true : —
"Die schonen Tage in Aranjuez
Sind nun zu Ende."
He left on the morning of the 7th for Poona with
Sir Donald Stewart.
On the morning of the same day the Nizam, who
had previously visited the Viceroy, came to see me,
accompanied by Salar Jung (just made Prime Minister
at three-and-twenty), the eldest son of the personage
known to Europeans as the late Sir Salar Jung, one of
whose houses we are occupying, by the old Dewan

i884 GOLCONDA 241
Peshkar, by Kurshid Jah the Amir-i-Kubir and others.
In the afternoon, I returned the visit by arrangement
at the Mir Alum Tank, about which the Viceroy,
our own party. Lady Anne Blunt (Byron's grand
daughter), and her husband — who since they dined
with us at Guindy have been travelling in Northern
India — steamed with the Nizam for some time. Far
off rose the picturesque fort of Golconda, which,
though famous in the Muhammadan annals of Southern
India, is more famous as the mart for the diamonds
which were found in Kurnool, Bellary, and various
other places, of which Golconda itself was not one.
The journey back was very hot, and did not, as
on the 2nd, take us through the picturesque valleys
of North Arcot by daylight. The wide tanks, the
intense green of the rice-fields, with the precipitous
irregular peaks and walls of the Cuddapah Quartzites
towering above them, were very striking as we
passed northwards, and we stopped on that occasion
to see at Balapally the cage in which the pointsman
is kept, reversing the usual order of things, to protect
him from the tiger, who wanders through the forests
at his own sweet will. In my journey last week
through these I was accompanied by Mr. Higgens,
VOL. I R

242 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1884
who pointed out to me Anogeissus latifolius, one of
our important trees which I have, however, not yet
seen distinctly or gained satisfactorily from the
eternal darkness. Dining at Cuddapah, we were
talking about the roots and stumps of Pterocarpus
santalinus, which our forest officers are sending into
the market.
"Where do they go to?" I asked. "Chiefly,"
replied Mr. Higgens, "to Europe." "To make red
ink ? " I innocently suggested. " No, sir," he
replied, " chiefly, I believe, to make claret ! "
Before passing from our Hyderabad expedition,
I ought to note that we paid a short visit to Mrs.
Neville, the wife of Major Neville who commands the
Nizam's reformed troops, and in whose company
Mrs. Greg (then Miss Wilson), my wife, and I spent
a singularly bright and amusing evening, in the
August of 1 87 1 at Trieste. Her father, Charles
Lever (who was then Consul-General at that place),
Henry Smith, and Greg are all now gone.
Mindful of her having told us then that she had
first shot a burglar, and thereafter nursed him through
illness, I asked her if she had shot any more burglars ?
" No," she said, " but I have arrested some ; "

i884 TENNYSON'S SUPPORTERS 243
whereon she gave an account of her husband and
herself, without arms, capturing a party of Heratees,
on whom they came one day, in the neighbourhood
of Hyderabad, robbing on the highway.
8. The English Mail reached us on the 8th, not
far from Wadi.
Pollock suggests for Tennyson's supporters " two
Muses, all proper, for he has certainly never written
a line he could have wished to blot for its im
propriety." Browning, he adds, is much pleased
by having been recently saluted as the Great
Commoner. To-day, too, came a book, privately printed by
Milnes Gaskell, called Records of an Eton Schoolboy,
and containing an account of the Eton and
Oxford life of his father. It embodies the MS. to
which I have referred, in describing my visit to
Thornes, in these Notes for 1880 ; but I had not
previously seen the Oxford part of it, which is full
of curious little bits about men who, later in life,
became very eminent.
The following story I recollect reading in the
MS. : " A Mr. Fountayne Wilson, in presenting an
anti-Catholic petition, is reputed to have said: 'Sir,

244 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1884
this House should look to the agricultural interest ;
this House should look to the commercial interest ;
this House should look to the shipping interest ; this
House should look to the moneyed interest ; this
House should look to the landed interest ; but this
House should not forget our 'oly religion.' "
The following, in a letter from Gaskell to his
mother, page 145, is noticeable: "the man who,
with the exception of Herbert, is more deservedly
popular than any one I know — Manning of Balliol.
Manning is very unassuming, and perhaps the best-
informed man in Oxford."
On page 163, in another letter from the same to
the same, are these words : " I have had a long letter
from Gladstone : he is very bitter against the Reform
Bill, and laments our difference of opinion."
On page 1 64 occurs this passage : " Herbert ^ and
I have made a very comfortable agreement. I have
undertaken to shelter him in my cellar during the
Commonwealth, on condition that he makes me a
sharer in the general amnesty after the Restoration."
On page 174, in a letter from Arthur Hallam to
Gaskell, we have the following : " In some things
' Later Lord Herbert of Lea.

i884 ARTHUR HALLAM ON GLADSTONE 245
' he,' i.e. Gladstone, is likely to be obstinate and
prejudiced ; but he has a fine fund of high chivalrous
Tory sentiment, and a tongue, moreover, to let it
loose with. I think he may do a good deal."
Lady Reay, writing from Petworth, says that a lady
having asked one of Lady Leconfield's children
"What is your name?" "Reginald William," he
replied. " Ah," said the other thoughtfully, " William
is a great name in your family ; " the allusion being,
of course, to Sir William Wyndham. "Yes,"
remarked the boy, " there is William the footman,
and William the under-coachman."
We reached Guindy somewhere about 7 o'clock
this morning, not so dilapidated as we might
have been, after a journey so rapid, and so much
locomotion over and above the actual journey ; for
the prevalence of cholera, in and around the Residency
Compound at Hyderabad, sent the Viceroy to the
Bolarum Residency, and us to the house I have
already mentioned, which was close to it.
From the 4th to the 7th inclusive, we certainly
did not cover less than from 130 to 140 miles in
driving to and fro.
14. On the evening of the 9th, the Viceroy, with

246 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1884
his suite, returned and remained with us at Guindy
till the I3th.i
From Bangalore there came to meet the Viceroy,
and to stay with us, Mr. and Mrs. Lyall with Major
Wylie, the Assistant Resident.
We had as many people at dinner as we could
manage, except on Sunday the loth, when we had
a quiet little party of twenty-eight.
On the 9th, 1 1 th, and 1 2th respectively, we sat
down fifty-one, fifty-three, and fifty-one.
A large number of persons also came to breakfast
on several of these days.
The house and gardens of Guindy were
illuminated every night, while on the nth we had
a concert directed by Dr. Macleane, and on the 12th
a ball. My wife also held a reception on the nth
in the grounds of Government House, Madras, after
^ Those who arrived and departed with Lord and Lady Ripon were —
Mr. H. W. Primrose, Private Secretary. Captain Lord William
Beresford, V.C., 9th Lancers, Military Secretary. Surgeon - Major J.
Anderson, CLE. The Rev. Father Ker, Post Captain (retired) R.N.
Captain the Honourable C. Harbord, Scots Guards, A.D.C. Lieutenant
F. S. St. 2"'ntii>. Bengal StafF Corps, A.D.C. Lieutenant C. R. Burn,
8th Hussars, A.D.C. Lieutenant Pollen, Royal Engineers, A.D.C.
Mr, Durand, C.S. I., Acting Secretary to the Government of India, in the
Foreign Department. Captain Hext, Royal Navy, Director of Indian
Marine. Lieutenant- Colonel Henderson, C.S.I., Madras Staff Corps,
Special Political Officer, remained with us a little longer.

i884 THE VICEROY'S VISIT 247
the Viceroy's levee, which took place at half-past four
in the Banqueting Hall.
On the loth, I went with the Viceroy to the
Convent, and thence to Vespers and Benediction.
On the nth, he received a variety of formal
visits ; I, those of the Maharajah of Mysore and the
Princess of Tanjore, besides which there were all
the usual accompaniments of Viceregal or gubernatorial
progresses — interviews, institutions, addresses, and the
like. The only contretemps was the illness of Lady
Ripon, who was unable to appear at all either on the
nth or 1 2th, and had to be taken on board the Clive
by Dr. Anderson early on the 13th. We had a
slight alarm about the Viceroy's health on the night
of the nth, but it came to nothing.
Yesterday, after luncheon, I drove with the Viceroy
to the pier, saying good-bye at the place where I
welcomed him to this Presidency on the 31st January.
Shortly afterwards, the Clive slipped from her moor-
insfs, and the visit to which South India had looked
forward, with so much interest, was a thing of the
past. I have added, in these last days, a good deal to

248 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1884
my knowledge of persons. Various matters of
business have been settled, or put in the way of
settlement, while another step has been taken in
the policy, on which I have all along acted, of
bringing this great province into closer relations with
the Supreme Government. I have also picked up
various facts which will all fit into their places ; but
the prayer of Lichtenberg, " O lieber Gott, etwas
auf's Zettelchen," has not been abundantly answered !
Lady Ripon told me that, immediately before the
Boulogne attempt, Louis Napoleon was occupying
her father-in-law's house in Carlton Gardens. A
housemaid, who had been left by the family, kept
writing to them that these foreigners were clearly up
to some mischief. Large quantities of arms were, she
said, being brought into the house, and they had
also got a tame eagle, who was taught to perch upon
a cocked hat, by having a piece of meat placed upon
it. This creature was usually kept below, but was
sometimes, which the housemaid considered highly
inappropriate, brought upstairs.
Her letters were treated as of no consequence, but
turned out prophetic.
Father Ker, the Viceroy's Chaplain, was in the

1 884 STEER IN 249
Navy before he became a priest and a member of
the Society of Jesus. Speaking of Ruskin and his
Catholic side, he said to me characteristically, " Ah !
I hope he will steer in before he dies."
Lord William Beresford, of whom, in the rush
and hurry, I saw less than I could have wished, gave
to some of my staff a very interesting account of his
having found the body of the Prince Imperial.
This morning Mr. Alexander Agassiz came to
breakfast. Charles Norton wrote to me some time
ago about him, and, when I saw him at Bolarum, he
led me to hope for a visit of some length ; but having
been suddenly recalled to America, he could only
spare an hour or two for Guindy. He spoke highly
of the daughter of the Emperor of Brazil, chiefly on
her father's authority, and had, like many, been much
struck with the curiously isolated position of that
monarch. Speaking of some eminent persons who want, or
are thought to want, initiative, he used a phrase which
was new to me, and is expressive, " They have no
snap in them."
He had found Ootacamund curiously like the hills
near San Francisco in which opens the Golden Gate.

250 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1884
19. This morning Mr. Hanbury Williams and Mr.
Atherton, who joined my staff as extra Aides-de-
Camp, when the Viceroy was expected, and who have
done their work very well, leave us. The first is in
the (43rd) Oxfordshire Light Infantry, and was an
A.D.C. to General Hamley at Tel-el-Kebir, where
he had a horse shot under him. The second is in the
1 2th Lancers, and is a son of Sir William Atherton,
who was for a time Attorney-General in the last
Palmerston Administration.
22. So great has been the recent "Sturm und
Drang," that I have not had a quiet half hour in the
garden for some five weeks. This and yesterday
morning, however, I walked there, and observed what
plants were most conspicuous.
Lawson, dating on the 19th, tries to make me
understand the weather they are now enjoying there,
by saying : " Imagine yourself standing with your
face to the east on the coast of Durham in March
with the wickedest of east winds blowing."
He tells me, too, that the late frosts have not only
injured the Cinchona and even the coffee, but have
" burnt " in many places the shola trees.
It is true there are alleviations, for he adds, " The

i884 UNDESIRABLE FAUNA 251
violet bed at the end of Mrs. Awdry's house is like the
blue end of the spectrum, and scents the air for yards
around." As Agnew, Cavendish, and I were riding in the
Park this evening, we came across a large Russell's
viper {Daboia elegans) coiled up close to the road.
The first-named dismounted, and, if he did not make
an end of it, must have at least produced upon it that
effect which the Queen's coachman supposed he pro
duced upon the fleas when he brushed the skye-terrier.
" You don't kill them in that way," said Sir Charles
Russell, who beheld that remarkable operation. " No,"
was the reply ; " it don't kill them, but it terrifies
them uncommon ! "
Undesirable fauna have been a little too prominent
here of late. Echis carinata was killed last week in
the very middle of the house. A bandicoot had a
fight two nights ago in Cavendish's own bedroom
with his own cat, and towards the end of the year
Agnew and I saw a wolf chasing a young antelope
close to the farm.
23. European Mail arrives.
Madame Renan writes of her husband : —
" S'il n'ecrit pas a ceux qu'il aime le plus c'est que sa

252 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1884
vie enti^re est remplie par la tache d'ecrire pour tous ceux
qui veulent entrer en communication avec son esprit.
Ses vraies lettres, ce sont ses livres. Mais ne croyez pas
qu'il n'aime pas ses amis de I'affection la plus constante ;
il leur donne avec son cceur ses frequentes pensees, toute
une part ideale qui est peut-etre ce qu'il y a de plus reel.
" Que de fois en particulier nous parlons de vous pour
qui il a une si rare estime ! Que nous voudrions etre en
ce moment aupres de vous, au Guindy, non pas au Guindy
de la Bretagne melancolique que nous connaissons, mais
a votre beau Guindy de Madras, que nous nous figurons
si lumineux, si chaud, si splendide ! Que nous aimerions
a vivre sous votre ciel merveilleux, a passer des journees
en reveries en face de la plus belle nature, interrompues
par de longues causeries sur les choses intellectuelles ;
c'est le plaisir divin par excellence, et nous avons garde
un si attachant souvenir de celles que nous faisions quand
vous veniez nous voir et de celles que nous avons recom-
mencees a Twickenham, que nous voudrions bien en jouir
dans votre royaume de I'Inde.
" Mais helas ! quel moyen d'y arriver quand on est lie
au college de France, a 1' Academie, a mille travaux
auxquels la vie ne sufHt pas ? "
He sends his Address at the Lycee Louis le Grand
last August, in which occurs a passage on pessimism
of quite supreme merit.
23. Dyer writes of Madagascar : —

i884 MADAGASCAR PLANTS 253
" English missionaries seem to have got a firm footing
in the interior, and are pouring upon us a perfect ava
lanche of materials. As the island has always been a
terra incognita to the botanist, the amount of novelty is
very great. A vast box arrived a few weeks ago, which
survived the bombardment of Tamatave.
"I have taken pleasure in stirring up my excellent
colleague, J. G. Baker, whose special department is the
Indian Ocean, to work up, with all speed, the new collec
tions for publication. The French savants advertised
long ago a flora of Mauritius. But as J. G. B. says,
rather grimly, it can only now be worked up at Kew."
Of my own South Indian envois, he says : " Seeds
have descended upon us in a perennial shower. The
fountain was mostly sealed to us till your vigorous
wand smote the rock of seclusion. We have distri
buted the residue punctually, as you wished."
28. Our drive took us this evening to a point in
the Poonamallee road, whence we wandered for half
an hour amongst the rice -fields and betel- topes, with
scant results.
The " new moon with the old moon in her arms "
was exceedingly beautiful over the after-glow, and
under the evening star.
In the cloudy skies of Scotland, this phenomenon.

254 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1884
here so familiar, is rare, and passes for a portent. I
remembered "The Grand Old Ballad of Sir Patrick
Spens."
March
I. To the Observatory, soon after sunset. The
newest object to me was Mars. I could not
distinguish the snow which my wife saw distinctly
at one of his Poles.
I looked again at Venus, but, as Mr. Proctor
happily observes, " there is an annoying glare and
much false colouring about the lovely lady."
2. English Mail arrives.
A letter from Kinglake tells me that Hayward,
whose name so often appears in these pages, passed
away very tranquilly on the morning of 2nd February.
The devotion and kindness shown towards him were
something quite extraordinary.
One evening, during his illness, but before the
time when he took to his bed, he said, and
emphatically repeated, "We know nothing." Then
after a pause, he added, " There is something great."
Lubbock writes : " Fancy their having found in

i884 GUINDY PARK 255
Lincolnshire a new species and genus of Umbellifers
{Selinum caricifolium), new at least to England ! "
3. I spent the last hour of daylight in a remote
part of the Park, where our botanical plunder was
much greater than in the excursions of last week —
too great, indeed, to be recorded here ; but I note,
amongst characteristic sights, not elsewhere mentioned,
the paddy-birds going to roost on a tree protected by
water, during the largest portion of the year, from all
ordinary dangers, the young green coming on the
Pongamia glabra, the Palmyras standing up against
the after-glow, and the pools in the now rapidly-
shrinking tanks reflecting its golden glory.
4. As we walked in the Park this evening, we
came across the harmless green snake, Passerita
mycterizans, in a bush of Acacia Sundra. He
allowed both Cavendish and myself to touch him
gently, without moving. One was caught the other
night, and doomed to be preserved in spirits as a
specimen ; but we ruled that he was far too pretty,
and he was allowed to escape into a tree.
 kept one of this species without food for
three months, and though thinner (!), he was quite
lively when he was liberated at the end of that time.

256 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1884
A few mornings ago, a man brought a fine specimen
of the large, but non-venomous, Ptyas mucosus. A
Russell's viper was slain in the Park, supposed to be
our friend of the 22nd February, and a huge cobra
with twenty eggs was dug out from under a Banyan
near the house.
7. European Mail arrives.
Mallet, who, although his name rarely appears in
these pages, has been, I think, since I left England,
the most constant of my many admirable corre
spondents, writes to me usually about Indian political
matters or about current English politics, both subjects
which I exclude, as far as possible, from these Notes.
By this Mail, however, he sends me from Antibes
some extracts from the correspondence of his grand
father. Mallet du Pan, one of which I copy : —
"The French People
" Le Cardinal Mazarin connaissait bien les Fran^ais
lorsqu'il disait, qu'ils chantent pourvu qu'ils payent.
" Aujourd'hui la Convention dit de meme. Qu'ils
pleurent et me maudissent, pourvu qu'ils n'osent pas m'attaquer.
" Simultanement cruelle et frivole (le caractere
national), servile et licencieuse, impetueuse dans ses
plaintes, et les oubliant le lendemain sans motifs. Aussi

i884 THE FRENCH PEOPLE 257
legere dans ses souffrances, que dans sa prosperite, in
capable de prevoyance et d'aucune reflexion, vendant
le matin comme les sauvages le lit oil elle doit coucher le
soir, telle fut de tout temps cette nation, telle on la revolt
en ce moment, telle elle sera jusqu'a la fin des siecles ! "
Bickersteth tells me that, as soon as the news of
the death of Cetewayo arrived at the Colonial Office,
Herbert and Meade paid a visit of condolence to
Evelyn Ashley, who inhabits, I suppose, my old
room. Finding him out, they left on his table their
cards with deep mourning borders, and drew down
his blinds !
My sister writes : —
" We are having a sort of miracle winter. The
primroses I have had brought hither from Lausanne are
in flower, and my grass is full of snowdrops. Both would
flower in the course of nature — some live weeks later.
" It is a sad fact that the winter climate of Weimar
causes one, as far as vegetation is concerned, to look back
with tender longing to Aberdeenshire !
"I have spent eight years in sorrowful experiments,
and discovered that no evergreen shrub can survive, save
Berberis aquifolia. So I make the most of that. It is a
beautiful shrub at all events. All my ivy has to be
mufiled up in fir branches. The dear Finca minor,
fetched in great quantities from the woods — is cheering
VOL. I S

258 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1884
to look at during the winter — grows well. The grass
can, by no means, be turned into anything but — hideous
grass. So I cram it full of snowdrops and Leucojum
vernum, of primroses and violets, crocuses, hyacinths, early
scarlet and late crimson tulips, single daffodils, Scilla
sibirica, winter aconite, and Gladiolus communis, thus
turning the horrible grass into a bit of southern country
to the amazement of all Weimar.
" I have planted my whole house with creepers — and
clematis at intervals all round it — glorious flowers, some
pale mauve, some white, some dark purple, come out in
the most exciting way in the end of May. Everything
one plants takes three whole years sich zu besinnen.
The beautiful standard roses of Thuringia horchen gar
lange I as the gardeners say, but they come at last ! in the
third or fourth year.
" The brilliant Azalea mollis has the blessed quality of
standing this winter, and Prunus chinensis, and the lovely
Siberian Crab.
"As to Cydonia, it does not flower for fifteen years !
" Forsythia, Deutzia, JVeigelia, Cytisus all do very well.
I am trying to ' einbiirgern ' the Gentiana acaulis and the
Cyclamen. " In short, I make myself delightfully unhappy and
happy in my garden."
Yule writes regretting that he had not seen

1884 ALEXANDER AND GURNEY 259
Malabar, and remarking that my account of it in
a letter to him tallied with that given, so long ago,
by Ibn Batuta.
Pollock sends me an account of the first meeting
of the Breakfast Club for this season, and, after treating
of various topics, adds : —
" And now followeth a story — quite new to me, and
told me by a Norfolk man. Fresh, however, as it was to
me, it must have happened, if at all, before the year 1830,
for it was then that Alexander resigned the place of Chief
Baron, to be succeeded by Lyndhurst, after his first tenure
of Chancellorship. "Alexander, C.B., and Gurney, B., were on the
Norfolk circuit together — the first, a man of the world ;
and the second, rather a precisian in religious matters.
" They had to travel from one Assize town to another,
and the question was, should they travel on a Sunday.
"Alexander saw nothing against it. Gurney thought
it would be exceedingly wrong, and setting a bad example.
" Finally, they came to the compromise that they
should travel on the Sunday, but stop to attend morning
service. Accordingly at the place selected for the purpose,
they left their carriages at the inn and walked quietly to
church. " Nothing happened, till the clerk gave out the psalm
to be sung from Sternhold and Hopkins —

26o NOTES FROM A DIARY 1884
' O ! all ye judges of the earth.
Whose hands with bribes are stained.'
" On which Alexander turned to Gurney and said : ' By
God — they've found us out ! ' "
8. I have been looking over Henry Greville's
Diary, published by Lady Enfield, and have found a
good deal that has interested me. He tells the story
of Thiers's conversation with Sir Henry Bulwer, in
1840, rather differently from Kinglake, who repeated
it to me. This is my version of it. Thiers had been
talking in a very menacing way about war. Bulwer
heard him to the end, and then said, " Very well, I
may tell my Government you said to me that if such
and such happened, you would declare war." " No,"
said Thiers, " do not say that I told you so ; say you
read it in my countenance ! "
Good, too, is the story which I repeated to
Cavendish of his grandfather. Lord Durham, who,
when he went to Canada, took with him so large a
number of musical instruments as to astonish the
town. " Don't you know," said Sydney Smith,
"that he has gone to make Overtures to the
Canadians ? "

1884 PAPER NEVER REFUSES INK 261
Mrs. Furnell, who is staying here, told us that an
Australian horse - dealer, speaking of the fighting
qualities of certain fox-terriers, said, "They fly at
each other's throats, and then they hold on quite
quietly, just like a prayer meeting ! "
12. A letter from my wife tells me that poor
Hannibal has been murdered. It is exactly two
years and five months to-day since he invaded the
Rome off the Bay of Carthage, fated like his great
namesake to die far from his native land. A dose of
poison at Libyssa ; a cat at Ootacamund — sic transit
gloria !
13. A lady, talking to me to-night, quoted her old
Irish Catholic nurse, defending her Church from some
aspersions, as having used the phrase quite new to
me, " Paper never refuses ink ; don't believe all you
read." 14. Some one asked at breakfast, "Which is the
snake of which the natives say that when it bites you,
it does not wait to ascertain the effect, but goes
straight off to the burning 1 ground, climbs a tree,
and sees the last of you ? "
The most conspicuous flower at this moment in
^ See inf'a under date of 27th November 1886,

i62 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1884
the Park is the pretty Carissa Carandas. It is
nearly related to the periwinkle, not at all to the
jessamine, of which its little white stars nevertheless
always make one think.
The jackals are exhibiting a " shocking tameness."
One stood in front of us, as we rode to-day, and shook
himself like a dog. In the interest of our fawns, their
numbers should be diminished. Have I anywhere
mentioned that, when the first were shot, the French
cook asked Evans-Gordon how " ce gibier la " was to
be cooked !
15. The sunset excursions noticed above, and
others which have not been noticed, to the waste
region near the lattice bridge, to the forsaken
bungalow at PuHkani, to the country behind Saida
pet, have had such scant botanical results, as to have
led me to the conclusion that, at least at this season,
walks in the Park, poor as is its laterite soil, are much
more profitable In it, too, one has always pleasant
sights — a group of spotted deer, a herd of the black
antelope, a mungoose crossing the road, a large owl
startled out of its tree by our approach, and so on.
The cooing of the pretty little doves belongs rather
to our morning rides than to our evening walks.

i884 VOTE OF TONSURE 263
17. To say good-bye to Lady Turner, the wife of
the Chief Justice, who is going to England in bad
health — a powerful influence for good lost to Madras
society. 20. English Mail arrives.
 sends me an account of Peel's taking the
chair as Speaker, and mentions that his beard strikes
people as inappropriate. " We must move a vote of
tonsure," said Biddulph.
25. As last year, the stars are a great pleasure.
When we walk on the terrace after dinner, Orion is
very glorious. So is the Great Bear. Jupiter and
Mars are just overhead. When I look from the
verandah of my rooms, now in the garden-block of
the house, a little after ten, the Southern Cross is
rising over the solitary Casuarina ; the False Cross is
straight opposite me and higher ; Canopus is nearer
to the garden.
Later in the night, when I return, as I often do,
to the verandah, the Scorpion has become a splendid
object in the south-east, and the Southern Cross is
standing nearly erect, where the False Cross lay
inclined. 27. The European Mail arrives.

264 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1884
My sister, writing of a German lady, who was
receiving a large party of la jeunesse, says : —
" One of her young Englishmen was telling her a story,
and sitting on the sofa beside her. Now she prides her
self on her English, and must have heard that the English,
when surprised, occasionally say, ' Oh dear ! Oh dear ! '
Wishing to encourage her young Englishman, she was
heard by all the young people to say sweetly to him as he
told her the story, ' Oh darling ! Oh darling ! ' "
Presided in the Senate House in my capacity of
Chancellor of the University of Madras, and admitted
the candidates to their degrees.
It was mentioned by the Surgeon-General, in the
course of the proceedings, that out of 1346 graduates,
899 are Brahmins — a significant fact. There are, I
think, only 7 Mahomedan graduates, but 117 native
Christians. 29. With Mr. Price, the Collector of Chingleput,
to Vellicherry, just outside one of the Park gates,
where I saw the Monegar or headman, the Karnam
or accountant, the Taliari or policeman, the Vetti or
gatherer of revenue, and watched a potter, a weaver,
a carpenter, and a jeweller working at their respective
trades.

i884 THE VELLICHERRY POTTER 265
The first made me think of Omar Khayyam : —
" For I remember stopping by the way
To watch a potter thumping his wet clay ;
And with its all-obliterated tongue.
It murmured, ' Gently, brother, gently pray.'
Listen — a moment listen ! — of the same
Poor earth from which that human whisper came ;
The luckless mould in which mankind was cast.
They did compose and called him by the name."
Later in the day I re-read the last part of the
poem, and my thoughts wandered to the window of
the Casa Paolinelli, and the watcher who sat there in
February 1836.
It was on the night between the 12th and the
13th that she wrote : —
" Nous sommes assurement vis-a-vis de Dieu moins
que la pate dont le potier fait differentes choses, ou la cire
que le sculpteur fajonne a son gre. Je suis moins devant
Dieu que le grain de poussijre qui voltige devant moi.
Ne dois-je pas lui etre tout aussi indifferente .''...
"J'avais de pensees pareilles hier assise sur la fenetre
devant cette belle vue, et alors, soufBees peut-etre par un
des anges qui s'interessent h moi, sont venues h. mon esprit
ces paroles si consolantes ' que le nombre de nos cheveux est
compte.' "

266 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1884
To-night we lingered on the terrace till Orion had
gone down, and Canopus was almost below the
horizon. Mr. Stiffe, the Port Officer at Calcutta,
pointed out the Northern Crown, with a-Coronas
showing very bright, just clear of the house, as we
stood close to the garden gate, near the great entrance.
Then came Arcturus, while beyond him high up and
towards the south were the four bright stars of
Corvus. The Southern Cross and both its pointers
were already up before we went to our rooms. Sirius
looked especially beautiful, seen through the delicate
foliage of the Casuarina.
April
2. Before breakfast to inspect the Napier battery.
All the three batteries, which I have been pressing on,
are now as good as finished. Each is armed with
two twelve-ton guns.
3. English Mail arrives.
 writes : " Have you heard a clever translation
of 'Is life worth living .? That depends on the liver.'
' La vie en vaut-elle la peine .? C'est une question de
foie(foi)!'"

i884 SIR F. POLLOCK 267
Pollock writes of Kinglake : " He was most
agreeable, and said a good thing of Gordon. ' He is
a madman, and the only danger is that he may have
a lucid interval.' "
Pollock also mentions that, on 25th February, he
went to Mr. Toole's theatre to see him in a burlesque
of Claudian, in which he makes up his face into an
exact imitation of the actor who plays that part.
After the previous piece was over, he went, as usual,
to Mr. Toole's dressing-room to talk to him, but
was told that, on this occasion, it was impossible.
" Mr. Toole is on his back," they said, " having his
nose built up ! " Pollock adds : —
" Tantae molis erat Romanum condere nasum ! "
Massey, who was Financial Member of the
Viceroy's Council, and with whom I sat in Parliament,
both before and after he went to India, was not
devoted to that country. When he was running it
down one day, a lady said, " At least, Mr. Massey,
you will admit that the flowers here are charming."
" No," he replied, " they are the only things in the
country which don't smell." What a slander !
Many people are too neglectful of " curious odours,"

268 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1884
as they are, for the matter of that, of " strange dyes,
strange flowers or work of the artist's hands, or the
face of one's friend." ^
8. We left Guindy yesterday afternoon, and
reached Ootacamund to-day.
10. Everything is terribly burnt up ; the gardens
in a sad plight.
1 1 . European Mail arrives.
Mrs. Sydney Buxton, who has been taking infinite
pains to promote emigration from the most v/retched
parts of the west of Ireland, writes : —
" This time we felt more disheartened than ever. To
start with, the Bishop of the Diocese issued a Pastoral to
be read from every altar, in which we were described as
vultures, and though I am bound to say his own flock
figured in it as carrion, still that was but poor consolation ! "
She also mentions that when some one said to 

that sending a common friend of ours to Constanti
nople would be rather like putting a bull into a china
shop, she replied, " Yes, but if one wants the china
broken ! "
Mrs. Greg, writing under date of 19th March,
from the Hotel des Avants, which stands at the foot
^ Sec Studies in t/ie Renaissance, "Conclusion,"

i884 MALLET DU PAN 269
of the Dent du Jaman, describes Mont Fleury whence
she had just moved : —
"To the left," she says, "we looked down upon
Chillon and the delta of the Rhone, with the magnificent
Dent du Midi towering above it, and to the right on the
lovely little bays of Montreux, Clarens, and Vevey.
Facing us on the opposite shore of the lake was a grand
pile of mountains, varying as mountains do with every day
and every hour of the day."
18. European Mail arrives.
Mallet writes : —
" We," i.e. he and Acton, " talked of Mallet du Pan.
Taine has written a preface, which has been published in
the Debats, and is admirable. He says four men under
stood the Revolution — Rivarol, Malouet, Gouverneur
Morris, and Mallet — the last the best. The book will be
out in a week, and I shall try on my return to send you a
copy. I am reading Rivarol, by M. de Lescure, very
interesting. I did not know he was so considerable a
man. Acton agrees with me about Amiel, but did not
know him."

writes : —

" Huxley observed to  , ' We have now to study
not the laws of dynamics, but of dynamitics.' "

270 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1884
19. I have been looking at Amiel Fragments d'un
fournal Intime, to which Mrs. Ward and Mallet have
called my attention. I have marked these, amongst
other passages : —
" La partie negative de I'oeuvre des Humanistes est
bonne, elle depouillera le Chrlstianisme de toute une
coque devenue exterieure j mais Ruge et Feuerbach ne
peuvent sauver I'humanite. II lui faut des saints et des
heros pour completer I'ceuvre des philosophes. La science
est la puissance de l'homme et l'amour sa force ; l'homme
ne devient homme que par le cceur. Savoir, aimer et
pouvoir c'est la la vie complete.
" Le Materialisme utilitaire, le bien-etre aride, I'idolatrie
de la chair et du moi, du temporel et de Mammon sont-ils
le terme de nos efforts, toute la recompense promise aux
labeurs de notre race \ Je ne le crois pas. L'ideal de
I'humanite est tout autrement haut. Mais I'animal reclame
le premier, et il faut d'abord bannir la soufFrance superflue
et d'origine sociale avant de revenir aux biens spirituels."
20. Looking at the Anecdotal History of Parliament
this morning, I lit upon a notice of Mr. Disraeli's
speech in 1872, about the "exhausted volcanoes." I
do not think I have mentioned that when some one
asked Mr. Torrens what the leader of the Opposition
meant by speaking of the Ministry as "exhausted

i884 MY WIFE STARTS FOR ENGLAND 271
volcanoes," he replied, " Used - up craturs to be
sure ! "
A far better joke than the one on which it was
founded !
Someone mentioned this evening the reply made
by a Parsee to a Bishop in England, who said, " I am
surprised that you worship the sun." " Oh you should
see him ! "
22. My wife with Clara goes off this morning to
England, accompanied by Mrs. Awdry. Clara came
down at 7 o'clock to be with me, as usual. The
last words she read to me were Clough's : —
" For while the tired waves, vainly breaking,
Seem here no painful inch to gain ;
Far back, through creeks and inlets making
Comes silent, flooding in, the main.
And not by Eastern windows only.
When daylight comes, comes in the light ;
In front, the Sun climbs slow, how slowly.
But westward, look, the land is bright."
26. Cavendish and I left Government House
about half- past three on the 22nd, and returned
thither soon after twelve to-day. We slept on the
first night at the Avalanche bungalow, on the 23rd

272 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1884
and 24th in tents at Sispara, and again last night
at Avalanche. Mr. Hollingsworth was with us
throughout ; Messrs. Lawson and Gamble, with
Mr. Wedderburn, Acting Head Assistant Collector,
during most of the time.
The views of Malabar and the Wynaad, from the
ridge that leads up to Sispara peak and other points
along our route, were beyond all praise.
Lovely, too, were three little woods near Avalanche,
as to which I copy a passage from my longer account : —
"On the morning of the 26th, we rode once more
through these lovely woods. I thought, as we did so, how
unlike they were in their beauty to those described by
Heber —
' So rich a shade, so green a sod.
Our English fairies never trod !
Yet who in Indian bowers has stood.
But thought on England's "good greenwood ;"
And blessed beneath the palmy shade,
Her hazel and her hawthorn glade ;
And breathed a prayer (how oft in vain !)
To gaze upon her oaks again ? '
"Here there were no palms — not one blade of
grass — but the most exquisite evergreen foliage of all

i884 THE AVALANCHfi WOODS 273
shades. The withered leaves along the path carried my
mind to Faber's lines on Bagley —
' But thy main glory is that winter wood,
With its dead fern and holly's Christmas green.
And mosses pale, and trees that have not strewed
Their withered leaves which yet perchance are seen.
Struggling to reach the spring, as though for them
New sap would rise from out the grateful stem.' "
Our route this morning lay across sparkling
streams, along hillsides, and through pleasant wood
land scenery, past the spot known as Mclver's Bund.
I had thrown into my despatch box, before
starting, a pamphlet which Professor Asa Gray had
sent me, containing a review of a book by De
Candolle. In it, I found yesterday afternoon the
etymology of the French word ^ for our not less
absurdly named Jerusalem (Girasole) Artichoke. The
Helianthus tuberosus is indigenous to the valleys of
the Ohio and Mississipi ; but the French imagined
that it came from the Brazils, and called it after the
Tupinamba, a tribe in that country with which
they had relations.
Mr. Wedderburn mentioned that he had heard
' Topinambour.
VOL, I T

274 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1884
Jowett say in a sermon, "A man who had lived
through the eighteen Christian centuries, would have
excommunicated himself two or three times over."
We found on our arrival the English Mail.
It had brought my wife's article on the " Investiture
of the Nizam," which appears in Macmillan for this
month ; also a very interesting letter about Balliol
from William Fremantle, who is now a lecturer
there, as well as Canon of Canterbury.
He says that he thinks the study of modern
History and Political Economy makes way, as does
also that of Law. The Theological School, in which
men can now take their degree, is still small ; but
he believes it will become more important. The
old LitercE Humaniores school still retains its pre
eminence, and the best men in it are very good.
May
I. Went to show myself, as usual, at the Wellington
Races, and saw Cavendish win very prettily on his
Arab pony Correze.
2. European Mail arrives.
Rutson writes :— ¦

i884 GUARD 275
" The spring is advancing delightfully. Every day is
lovely. The islands on the two lakes at Bretton are
covered with masses of daffodils, and the bare places
in the woods with wood-anemones, which abound there
even among the long grass. Our own distant Hambledon
Hills, one recess of which you visited with me four years
ago — that which contains the Priory of Mount Grace —
are assuming their warm-weather hues of delicate purple,
blue, and gray, — the one beautiful thing we boast of
besides our primroses and periwinkles."
John Webster of Edgehill begins his letter thus : —
" Before I say one word about human matters, let me
tell you how surely and truly you reckoned on my
sympathies in your mention of poor ' Guard ' and his
memorial locket. I carry back my first acquaintance
with him pretty far — to our first visit to Eden, I hardly
know how long ago, when he essayed to get into the
drawing-room through the door that opened to the ground.
My last sight of the ' grand old ' beast was in his decay
at York House, but with his loving devotion to you
unabated. Peace be with him ! "
Morley, who disagreed with much that the Premier
said, writes : —
" Gladstone's speech in reply to Northcote on Thursday
last, 3rd April, was one of the most marvellous scenic
performances ever beheld — the passion, the infinite

276 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1884
resources of voice, the swift alternation of sunshine,
thunder, cloud, and lightning over his face, the subtle
and vehement gestures, the tragic cast of a face haggard
by illness — all made an effect that you can hardly imagine.
I thought to myself that I should never have such a half
hour in my life again."
Pollock mentions that Browning, wishing to
build a house, took steps to find the price of a piece
of land at Kensington. On learning that it was
j^6ooo, he told the agent that that was more than he
could afford. The agent reported this to the owner,
a London tailor, who replied, " What, Mr. Browning,
the poet of whose works I am so fond ! He shall
have the land for ^^3000."
Pollock proceeds to quote Milton's lines about
"the great .^mathian conqueror," and to ask, as
getting a house built is assuredly more than getting
one spared — whether Browning is, indeed, greater
than Pindar or Euripides ?
He also tells me that he was present, the other
day, when, in the laboratory of the Royal Institution,
ozone was, for the first time, produced in a liquid
state. It is of a deep blue colour, and is a most
destructive agent, rapidly corroding almost all substances.

i884 A RETROSPECT 277
In a long letter from Kew, full of interesting
things, Mr. Morris mentions that Cicer arietinum
secrets pure oxalic acid in large quantities, and also
tells me that it was unknown in the West Indies till
our own times. He himself introduced it there.
My sister writes : —
" How delightful society would have to grow, to be as
charming as an evening with Schiller or Goethe or
Shakespeare, or even an evening of genuine laughter at a
clever Lustspiel !
" And here one can see Wallenstein's Tod, and have
the best place in the house for three shillings. The
poor pay sixpence ! "
5. It is exactly two years and a half this morning
since I took my seat as Governor. As to public
affairs, it will be for others to say, after making
themselves acquainted with the facts, whether I have
or have not remembered the saying : " L'homme d'etat
est un messager a qui le temps present est remis en
depot pour etre rendu tel qu'il est ou meilleur au
temps a venir."
The great machine has moved with less friction
than I had any right to expect. My colleagues have
been agreeable and helpful ; most of my leading

278 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1884
officials good, and some excellent. The seasons have
been plenteous, the revenue buoyant, and I have had
no difficulties either with the India Office or the
Government of India.
As for criticism, if I have my fair share of it, I
have not at fifty -five to learn the truth of the

" SoUen dich die Dohlen nicht umschrein.
Muss nicht Knopf auf den Kirchthurm seyn."
With regard to private affairs, I have thus far
not the slightest reason to complain of the Fates and
the Destinies, who, much against my own will, sent me
to India. I have seen and learned much. I have
dropped, save through death, not one important link
in my European "relations," and am more intimate
with some of my intimates than I was when I went
out of the Thames. The average health of our
household has been at least as good as in Europe. I
have pushed the fortunes of some deserving persons.
I have made, I hope and think, more than one friend,
two and four-legged ; while in my intercourse with
the less -agreeable portion of the society amongst
which my lot is cast, I have at least enjoyed the

i884 A RETROSPECT 279
proverbial blessedness of those who expecting nothing
" shall not be disappointed."
On the whole, I should be only too happy to
compound for the rest of my term of office being
neither worse nor better than that which is gone by ;
and I go forth to meet the Future in the spirit of
the toast which Yorck drank to his officers before
the Battle of the Nations : —
" Anfang Mittel und Ende
Herr Gott zum besten sende ! "

28o NOTES FROM A DIARY 1884

May {continued)
6. Miss Moxon has been reading to me some
chapters of Maxime Du Camp's Souvenirs litteraires.
The following account of his meeting with Auber,
the composer, then eighty-six, in May 1871, amidst
the horrors of the Commune, is one of the few things
which interested me much : —
" Nous parlames de I'heure pr^sente ; il levait les
epaules avec un geste oh il y avait plus encore de
degout que de decouragement ; il me disait : 'J'avais neuf
ans, je m'etais sauve du magasin de mon p^re qui etait
marchand d'estampes, et j'ai vu passer la voiture dans
laquelle etait enferme Louis XVI., le 21 Janvier 1793.
Je me rappelle bien la revolution ; nous ne mangions pas
tous les jours k notre appetit ; le pain manquait souvent i
la maison : c'etait sinistre, mais c'etait moins criminel,
c'etait moins bete que ce que Ton fait aujourd'hui.'
Longtemps nous causames ; en le quittant, je lui dis :
'Au revoir ! ' II secoua le tete : 'Non, adieu; je suis
sur mes fins j le vieux cerf est forc^ ; je mourrai mercredi
ou jeudi prochain.' II se tint parole ; le jeudi ll mai, il
6tait mort doucement, comme un homme qui s'endorr de
fatigue. 'La tache de la longue journee est finie, il est
temps d'aller dormir,' a dit Shakespeare."

i884 MADAME DE FORBIN 281
7. Colonel Winsloe dined here last night and left
with me his paper on the siege of the little fort at
Potchefstrom, twenty - five yards square, which he
defended against the Boers. It was published in
Macmillan for 1883, and gives a clear account of a
most memorable feat of arms.
9. EngHsh Mail arrives.
 sends this charming appreciation of her friend,
Madame de Forbin, whom I first met at M. de Mun's
in 1875 : —
" Remember her as one who used to be particularly
fond of you, and followed your fortunes with the greatest
interest. She went to Rome, then to Naples in January,
a living shadow. In February she came home to St.
Marcel, and the light went out on the 28th, Dr.
Dollinger's birthday. She was superior to her books,
her surroundings, her party, and her destiny, which
meant her to live and die in ideas and predjudices, most
of which she exchanged for an independence of judgment,
and intellectual superiority, which made her delightful
and suggestive in a rare degree."
Rutson sends me from Duffryn some very pretty
lines which the author of the Epic of Hades has
addressed to Aberdare.
The first eight run as follows : —

282 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1884
" What shall be written to the man,
Who, through life's mingled hopes and fears.
Attains to-day our little span
Of seventy years ;
" Who, with force undiminished still,
A Nestor stands among his peers.
Full of youth's fire and dauntless will.
At seventy years ? "
The refrain is kept up through the ten verses,
some of which show great insight into their hero's
character ; but Aberdare is happily only sixty-nine,
not seventy.
14. English Mail arrives in less than nineteen days
from London — the earliest I have yet seen.
Mrs. Bishop writes : —
" Cambo — a real Paradise. Why are we not all Basques }
They must be superior to the Aryans. Such farms and
fruit-trees and order and prosperity and respect all round.
We drove a pony-chaise to the Pas de Roland and found
ferns and flowers carpeting and curtaining the gorge made
by his spear."
Dyer, writing under date of 14th April, says that
some of the seeds I sent in March have gone to
Demerara, and adds : " You will have left your mark

i884 SEVILLE AND HYDERABAD 283
on every botanical establishment in the empire and
not a few out of it, where tropical things can be
grown." 16. When Miss Moxon was reading Bayard
Taylor's notes on the second part of Faust to
day, I came across the fact, hitherto unknown
to me, that the mysterious Cabiri of Samothrace
were the same as the Hebrew Kabirim, the mighty.
Strange that these personages, who carry one back to
the hoariest Grecian antiquity, should be so closely
connected, at once with my recollections of Seville
and my recollections of Hyderabad ! Of Seville and
Hyderabad I say, for the Guadalquiver is simply "the
great river," and my visitor of 7th February, the
Ameer-i-Kubir, is simply " the great noble."
It amused me, too, to observe that I had a link
with the classical Walpurgis - Nacht in Elie de
Beaumont, whom I can well remember as an old
gentleman in Parisian society during the winter of
1859-60. He spoke to me as slightingly of the
Abbeville discoveries — then the last new thing in
his science — as Goethe did of him !
Castelar is quite right when he says in his
Corinthian way : —

284 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1884
" As a wave passes over another wave, as a new leaf
comes forth upon the naked branch, as new stars shine
forth in the immensity of the heavens, so do new
generations awake to life and change the scene of the
world, and raise altars to the ideas for which their fathers
raised scaffolds, and convert the victims of yesterday into
priests, and open the fancy to the breath of new illusions,
the sentiments to the love of new hopes, the spirit to the
faith in new ideas.''
22. Mr. St. Loe Strachey sends me the last
Quarterly containing an excellent article by himself
on Mountstuart Elphinstone. Mr. Strachey was a
Balliol contemporary of my eldest son or nearly so —
a fact which makes one feel ancient.
24. I received this morning from my old friend,
the Rev. J. R. Byrne, who was one of our Reading
Party at Oban in 1850, an uncut copy of the first
edition of the Fortunes of Elphin by my acquaintance
of long bygone days, Mr. Peacock.
It bore the following inscription : —
Viro admodum honorato
M. E. Grant Duff
Apud Indos exsulanti
Proconsuli privatus
Quantulum quanti desiderii monumentum

i884 CHRISTOPHER NORTH 285
Hunc libellum
d. d.
J. R. B.
Ad xiii kal. Mali mdccclxxxiv.
r
Colonel Wilson dining here, a few days ago,
mentioned that he had seen a good deal of his
uncle, Christopher North, in his old age. He never
spoke of politics, but Colonel Wilson's impression was
that he had given up his old opinions.
25. Miss Moxon reads Mat Arnold's Boston
lecture on Emerson. The first few pages, which
are autobiographical, are peculiarly interesting to me,
for the Oxford therein described was the immediate
ancestor of that which I knew. I came under the
fascination of Newman's writings before my college
days — as far back as 1844-45, ^i'^ Carlyle had more
influence on me before than after I went up to Balliol
in 1847. Emerson's Essays I read then and with some
admiration, but they never, whether through their fault
or mine, said much to me.
Here is Mat Arnold's description of Newman : —
"Who could resist the charm of that spiritual
apparition, gliding in the dim afternoon light through
the aisles of St. Mary's, rising into the pulpit, and then.

286 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1884
in the most entrancing of voices, breaking the silence with
words and thoughts which were a religious music — subtile,
sweet, mournful ? I seem to hear him still, saying : 'After
the fever of life, after wearinesses and sicknesses, fightings
and despondings, languor and fretfulness, struggling and
succeeding ; after all the changes and chances of this
troubled, unhealthy state — at length comes death, at
length the white throne of God, at length the beatific

26. Hanbury Williams mentioned at breakfast
that he had known a fox hard pressed take refuge in
a badger's earth and, getting behind the badger, force
it to fight his assailants.
28. Bagot, confirmed by Cavendish, mentioned at
dinner that Mr. Gillan, a well-known master ot
hounds in Scotland, had leapt a water-jump of thirty-
nine feet.
29. English Mail arrives.
John Warren writes, with reference to an absurd
visiting-card which I had sent him, "as the first fruits
of the book-plate movement in this Presidency " : —
" The confusion between the ex-libris and the visiting-
card is not confined to India. France and England supply
abundant instances. In this country there are several of
these intermediates from the hand of Bartolozzi, pretty

i884 THISELTON DYER 287
enough, though perhaps a little woolly and effeminate.
And in France these kinds of tickets, when executed by
well-known engravers of the last century, such as Eisen,
Marillier, Boucher, are now up at famine prices. With
the best wishes in the world one can't say much for your
prince's lion rampant, for the tuft at the end of his tail
sadly exceeds all anterior leonine probability. If he went
to a native goldsmith and gave up English heraldry, he
could surely turn out something better."
Dyer writes : —
"We have sent part of the superfluity of those packets
to Fries, to Mr. Cook, and to the United States of
Columbia. What a grand mixing of the earth's flora we
are making you responsible for ! "
Rutson writes : —
" Last Tuesday I was at a spectacle which will interest
you. It was the opening of the Museum of Classical
Archaeology at Cambridge. How often you have told
me how young men ought to read their classics with coins
and statues by their side ! This last, so far as it can be
done by casts, admirable casts, is in course of accomplish
ment at Cambridge. Many have arrived ; many more are
on their way. At the inauguration, Newton (following
Sir F. Leighton and Lowell and Jebb) made a most touch
ing speech, showing how his life had been directed to
classical art, and to getting his countrymen to appreciate

288 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1884
it ; dividing his forty-two years of work into four decades
in this respect, and ending with a modest little ' nunc
dimittis.' "
My sister, writing of a young actress, to whom she
is much attached, says : —
" Yesterday towards evening I was called out from
entertaining guests, at afternoon tea, and found  in
my bedroom — her hands full of wild flowers.
" She said, ' I have been in the Goethe Garten ; I
always go there to ask Goethe's blessing before I dare to
play Gretchen — and now I have come to get yours, and
these flowers are from his garden for you.'
"I kissed her forehead and her eyes and the lips that
had so much to say to all who will hear to-night — and she
went quietly away — looking like a little child."
Bossuet's Oraison Funebre on the Duchess of
Orleans was read to me this morning. Stately as it
is with its " Madame est morte," its " Je le sais," and
much else, there is nothing in it to equal Les morts of
Lammenais " Ils ont aussi pass^ sur cette terre," or
the wonderful " cri de I'ame " which I re-read here
on the 25th, its forty-eighth anniversary, as I read it
in the original, in Paris, ten years ago :
" Seigneur autrefois je vous disais nuit et jour."

1 884 EMILE DE LAVELEYE 289
It is creditable and suggestive that even in this
genre, our age can more than hold its own with the
past.
fune
4. After Council Miss Moxon read to me the
sermon preached by Bossuet on the profession of
Madame de la Valliere, just 209 years ago this day.
The finest part of it is, after all, the text " Et dixit
qui sedebat in throno — Ecce nova facio omnia."
5.  asked last night at dinner "What is the
difference between temptation and eternity ? " " The
first is a wile of the devil ; the second is a devil of a
w'ile." English Mail arrives.
 tells me that Laveleye, who was in London
when he wrote, speaking of Mallet, said " il me semble
qu'il pousse des soupirs moins profonds qu'a I'ordi-
naire." My sister writes : —
" Those who have never assisted at these Faust evenings
are far from being able to conceive what an event in life
they are ; and the oftener one has passed through them,
VOL. I, U

290 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1884
the grander the impression from year to year. I think I
must have been fifteen times now through Faust.
" Wohlverstanden ! The second part is the greater,
and Otto Devrient, whose Bearbeitung has made the per
formance possible, is himself Mephisto, Mephisto incar
nate — the incarnation of the mischievous man of the
world, sans ideals, as Faust becomes the man of the world
and of action with ideals.
" The second evening of Faust is one of the greatest
of all intellectual gymnastics, and of poetical bewitchments
surely the greatest in the world."
8. A day or two ago, Miss Moxon read to me the
following very striking passage from Sainte-Beuve's
account of Horace Vernet : —
"On etait au mardi 22 fevrier; il avait audience du
roi Louis Philippe aux Tuileries. Horace dit au roi, en
lui parlant de ce depart qu'il desirait retarder : ' Mais il
y a de I'emotion dans Paris ; je suis officier de I'etat major
de la garde nationale ; je desirerais ne pas quitter au mo
ment oh il pent y avoir des troubles a reprimer.' ' Quoi !
des troubles! mon cher Horace,' rdpondit le roi; 'y
pensez-vous } ' Au meme moment quelque chose d'inusite
appela I'attention du roi ; debout a I'une des fenetres de
son cabinet, un binocle sur les yeux, Louis Philippe cher-
chait k se rendre compte d'un mouvement de troupes,
d'une esp^ce de charge de cavalerie qui se faisait autour

1884 FAUST 291
du palais Bourbon. II fit appeler un Aide-de-Camp et
demanda ce que c'etait ; il lui fut repondu que ce n'etait
rien, quelques polissons qu'on dissipait. ' Vous voyez
bien, mon cher Horace,' lui dit le roi en se remettant a
marcher, 'je suis plus fort que tous les rois d'Europe ; je
tiens Lord Palmerston dans ma main, je I'ecraserais au
besoin ; aucun roi en Europe ne pent bouger sans ma per
mission.' Ces paroles ou leur equivalent se retrouvent
dans I' Histoire de M. Gamier-Pages ; le roi, soufflant sur
de la poudre repandue sur une feuille de papier, avait dit
en se tournant vers Horace : 'Quand je voudrais (et d'un
geste il montrait le quai), cela se dispersera comme ceci. ' "
" Nescia mens hominum fati sortisque futurae."
I received a letter this morning from my excellent
friend  , in which he says : " If I were to make
shoes of my skin for your Excellency in exchange for
these favours, I would think that I had not trespassed
the limits of my' gratitude."
7. Captain Bagot leaves us for England, intending
to be absent for six months. His place will be filled
by Hanbury Williams, who has been living here,
as a guest, for some time.
My sister writes : —
" Goethe meant us to suppose Faust to bp one hundred

292 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1884
years old when he sinks into the grave, and the Engel-
schaaren sing —
'Wer immer strebend sich bemiiht.
Den konnen wir erlosen.'
"I think you must be 'strebend dich bemiihend ' more
than Faust ever did, out there among your thirty millions."
This was written on 20th May. While it was
finding its way hither I was saying in my Queen's
birthday speech : —
" I am quite aware that although our administration
becomes ever more intelligent, the most anxious study, at
once of the facts of India, past as well as present, and of
the conclusions of the wisest statesmen and political philo
sophers, in the most advanced countries of the world, is
absolutely indispensable. We must never rest, never — as
rulers — say to the moment, ' Stay, thou art so fair.' "
A curious coincidence or rather, considering our
relations to each other, not a curious one.
12. Lady Reay writes: — "We go next week to
Ophemert for ten days' seclusion and the enjoyment
of Waal lights — the effects of sunlight, cloud-light,
cloud reflections on that beautiful river."
18. Mr. Davison, one of the best Indian orni
thologists, breakfasted with us. He thinks that the

1884 LISZT 293
Indian birds may number about 2000 species, that
there may be on these hills 500 species, or at least as
many as in all Europe, while on the Nilgiri plateau
there may be over 300.
Only two species are peculiar to these hills — the
so-called laughing-thrush, which is no thrush but
Trochilopteron cachinnans and the pretty little pipet
[Pipastes montanus), which has hitherto only been
found close to Ootacamund. Its nearest ally is an
African pipet.
My sister writes : —
" Last night I saw old old Liszt direct his own Salve
Polonia. " Little as I love his music, I did admit that this
composition is a poem. One does hear and see a spectral
nation — frantically resisting annihilation, in one's mind's
eye, whilst the music is going on.
" And the old man — the ghost of himself, feebly direct
ing with the right hand that once had such cunning — the
long black hair of the past now snow-white, and the
ungovernable mouth now feebly smiling ! "
24. Miss Moxon has finished reading to me Le
Petit Careme.
Sainte-Beuve says of Massillon : " II plaira a ceux

294 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1884
qui n'ont pas les impatiences d'un goiit trop superbe
ou trop d^licat, ni les promptes fievres des admirations
ardentes ; qui n'ont point surtout la soif de la surprise
ni de la decouverte."
I suppose I have one or other of these — probably
the last, for Massillon gives me no pleasure.
For that matter the "amplificare rem ornando"
which Cicero calls "summa laus eloquentiae" never
does. My taste in scenery is very different from my taste
in hterature, for I can enjoy not only the " Rhone
imp^tueux," but the " cours tranquille du fleuve fran-
^ais, de la royale Seine baignant les rives de plus en
plus elargies d'une Normandie florissante," to which
last the great critic I have just cited, very properly
compares the style of the good Bishop of Clermont.
Some one quoted at dinner to-day a Scotchman's
account of himself: "I'm open to conveection but
I'm a dour deevil to conveence."
25. Yesterday and to-day have been surpassingly
beautiful. I wish some poet, with the kind of eye for
scenery that Faber had, would describe these hills and
their marvellous cloud pictures. Agnew and I stood
the other day under a clear sky when, as Lawson

i884 NINTH TOUR OF INSPECTION 295
described it, the two winds (the north-east and south
west) were butting against each other, seeing as many
as four widely separated storms raging round the hori
zon. From one came, faint with long journeying,
the mufHed roar of the thunder.
The official report made at Council to-day told of
thirteen inches of rain at Cannanore, but up to this
time the south-west monsoon is light as well as late.
On the morning of 28th June I left Ootacamund
with several of my staff and did not return for nearly
four weeks, having in the meantime visited Madras,
whence, striking northward, we traversed a large part
of the districts of Cuddapah and North Arcot to
Kuppam. From that place we went to Bangalore,
where Captain Awdry left us, for a time, and Mr. Rees
of the Civil Service took his place as Private Secretary.
From Bangalore we transferred ourselves to Erode
and the Palanis, whence, again passing by Erode, we
returned to the Nilgiris.
All this is, as usual, detailed in a Tour Minute (the
ninth of its kind), and I introduce here only a few
items of non-business interest.
29. We reached Guindy this morning.
Hardly any rain has fallen, and the lawns are sandy

296 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1884
deserts dotted with Dipteracantha dejecta and Evolvulus
alsinoides. We drove straight to the swimming bath and
admired, on the way back to the house, the grand
Cassia fistula, which is loaded with its faintly fragrant
clusters of great yellow flowers. Ten days ago the
spectacle would have been even more delightful, for on
some trees many of the clusters are partly withered —
primrose instead of laburnum-coloured.
In the afternoon I opened the new drainage works
for Black Town, received an address and spoke in reply.
Later I gave a small dinner at the Madras Club.
Mr. Whiteside, who was one of the guests, mentioned
that his uncle, of the same name, with whom I sat long
in the House of Commons, was driving on one occasion
with Mr. Justice Keogh, after he had become un
popular. They passed the monument of an early
friend of that versatile politician. " Ah ! I wonder,"
he said, " what kind of a stone they will give me ? "
" Brimstone," was the encouraging reply.
July
2. The European Mail meets us at Kondipuram.

i884 AN EPITAPH 297
My wife, writing to me from London, tells me
that of Longfellow's three daughters, mentioned in the
lines which I have so often repeated —
" Grave Alice and laughing AUegra
And Edith with golden hair,"
the last is dead, but the two others are at Newnham
in Cambridge, over which I went, with the Arthur
Russells, in 1879.
Clara says that Pixie, one of the pair of ponies who,
long before she was born, came to Eden from Shetland
in 1866 — too unsophisticated to know that oats were
good ! and who is still alive at Winwick Warren
in Northamptonshire (after having lived with us at
Hampden, Knebworth, and York House) — followed
her all about as an old friend.
My sister sends me from Weimar an epitaph new
to me : —
"Ci-git qui fut toujours sensible, doux, fidMe,
Et jusqu'au tombeau des amis le module.
II ne me quitta pas quand je perdis mon bien ;
— C'etait un homme unique .'' Helas! c'etait mon chien."
In another letter by this mail she says :
" I have got my writing-table in a corner now.

298 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1884
"It is covered with dark -red silk plush. At this
Pfingst-tide it has a bank of splendid crimson peonies (the
Pfingstrosen of Germany) and yellow iris — behind it, rising
against a background of the beautiful Maien.
" The Maien is a small birch-tree, which is planted in
the rooms on the morning of Pfingsten, whilst other Maien
are planted before the door of the houses.
" About the room I have huge posies of iris and dark-
red double hawthorn and groups of roses de Meaux and of
blue cornflowers."
Dyer, writing about some Brahmin beads made of
Ocimum sanctum I had sent to Kew, says : " Do you
know Gubernatis's book on Plant Mythology ? The
Tulasi cuts a great figure in it. The Basil plant is
the centre of a perfect web of myths running down to
Keats's Pot of Basil in Europe of our own time."
4. In camp at Rayachoti this afternoon I read in
Gleig's Life of Sir T. Munro two letters, dated from
this place, which is however rather wildly spelt.
To his brother, on the 1 2th February 1 804, Munro
writes : "We are now complete masters of India, and
nothing can shake our power if we take proper
measures to confirm it."
This was just after Assaye, as to which, writing on
6th February, to General Wellesley, he says : " I will

i884 GURAMKONDA 299
not say that you might have been defeated at Assaye ;
but you will allow that we have sometimes had, and
may have again, generals who might have lost such a
battle." 5. To-day, in the old Fort of Guramkonda, Agnew
finished reading to me a novel which we began at
Guindy on the 29th ultimo. It was written by Sir
Henry Pottinger, the son of one of my predecessors,
some thirty years ago, in the Government of Madras,
and who thirty years before that was attached, along
with my father, to Mr. Elphinstone's Mission to the
Court of the Peishwa. It is called Blue and Green, and
was published in 1879. I never heard of it, till it was
casually mentioned to me by Mr. Lawson, I think the
day we went to look for Mesua ferrea, but it is the
most striking book, hitherto unknown to me by name,
which I have read since I came to India.
Colonel Rolland, Deputy Inspector -General of
Police for the Northern Division, told me to-day that
he attempted, along with a friend, to climb the Golden
Rock near Trichinopoly. A kite, who had, I presume,
her nest hard by, disgusted by their intrusion, soared
into the air and nearly succeeded in dropping a stone
of some size upon their heads. More fortunate than

300 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1884
iEschylus, they both survive to tell the tale, which,
in the mouth of a less - reliable narrator, might have
provoked the caution which I heard given the other
day with reference to an equally true, but equally
startling, statement : " I think he should not tell that
story west of Suez I "
7. We found, as we walked, a small snake which
looked like Hypnale nepa and was slain ; but Mr.
Gamble found on examination the loreal shield, which
is the certificate of ophidian respectability.
Mr. Theobald, said to be a first-rate authority,
observes : " On a snake being brought in, the first
point to ascertain is whether or no it has a loreal shield,
for the rule is absolute, and without exception, that every
snake possessing a loreal shield is harmless."
As, however, it requires some practice to handle a
snake and some quickness of eye to determine, with
perfect certainty, whether the loreal shield (that is, the
shield behind the nasal shield or shields) be present, it
is hardly surprising if most persons, when they see an
unknown snake, act upon the Cromwellian maxim
"Stone dead hath no fellow," or adopt the practice
which my old friend Colonel Jago formulated to me
in the words " When I see a snake I make tracks ! "

i884 MONTE GENEROSO 301
10. English Mail arrives.
J. Warren, who is Clara's godfather, mentions that
my predecessor in this Government, Lord Harris, was
his godfather — a curious circuitous link. He tells me,
too, that Franks has inherited, in the British Museum,
the whole kingdom of the beasts, birds, and shells
which have migrated to South Kensington.
Mrs. Greg writes from Monte Generoso, whither
she went to meet Lubbock and his bride : —
" I wonder if you know this place ? You must, and yet
I do not remember when you were here. We are in the
midst of hills all fresh and green with early summer woods
and meadows, which roll and toss themselves into every
conceivable shape, as if to tell of the delight with which
they hold the lovely blue lakes in their embrace. Beyond
rise the more distant purple ranges, soft and calm and
beautiful — and the whole is clasped by that wonderful
circle of snowy ramparts beginning to the south-east with
the great walls of the Engadine and ranging through the
peaks of the Oberland round to the Matterhorn and Monte
Rosa. The circle is only broken to the south where the
plain of Lombardy spreads itself out with Milan in the
mid-distance, while far away the snows of the Apennines
mingle with the clouds. These last I have to take a little
on trust, but all the rest is clear even to my vision, and on
a morning like the present t think it is the most beautiful

302 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1884
scene I have ever beheld. I am writing out of doors, and
have only to lift my eyes to see a large portion of this
wonderful panorama."
George Boyle, who has spent some time this spring
at Pau, tells me, on the authority of Madame Gaillard,
that, with reference to the Salisbury circular of a few
years back, Gambetta had said to her, with a sigh, " I
should like to have written it, for it has been a power
for a quarter of an hour ! "
He writes too at length about Hayward, and adds :
" I would give many a sugar-cane
Mat Lewis were alive again."
Speaking of Frere, he says, " He told me that he
had known moments, at the Mutiny time, when he
thought all was over, and had to face the question of
the excuse for men who end their lives."
With reference to Frederick Maurice's Life, lately
published by his son, he says : " It brought back to
me a certain hot evening in Red Lion Square when
the Working College scheme was launched, and when
Maurice after a long speech ended with ' my Father
worketh hitherto and I work ' — wonderfully. I was

1884 SCENERY AND ASSOCIATIONS 303
your guest in Seymour Street for some days ; alas, it
is just thirty years ago."
He mentions further that he went to Gabas in the
Pyrenees solely for Stanley's sake, for Stanley once
said to him and Pearson of Sonning, who rallied him
on only caring for places with associations, "There is
one place I have no association with, and would like
to see again — Gabas in the Pyrenees." Then he
dwelt on the snow, the pinewood, and the Pic du
Midi, but Pearson said, " After all it is only because
the Pic looks on one side on Spain and reminds you of
the Cid and Charles V. and on the other on Navarre,
and makes you think of Ivry, that you care for it."
I am a little of Stanley's way of thinking.
How he would have pined for some association
worth recalling amidst even the most beautiful scenery
of Southern India I
15. In an article on Yrofessor ^ehh's Sophocles, hy
Professor Butcher, which was read to me to-day, I
observe that the writer complains that Jowett suggests
that in the days of Thucydides and Sophocles language
was in so fluid a state that words might mean almost
anything. That reminds me of a joke made by poor Dutton,

304 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1884
the elder brother of the present Lord Sherborne, who
was killed soon after leaving Oxford by an accident on
the Wengern Alp.
He declared, after listening to one of Jowett's New
Testament Lectures when we were at Balliol together,
that Jowett maintained that St. Paul used the word
vo/ios in seven senses ; in the first it meant God, and
in the last the Devil !
17. The European Mail reached me at Ammaya-
nayakamir in the early morning.
My sister returns to the subject of her garden, and
writing on 23rd June, says : " One of its great
interests just now is the family of clematis. One
gets excited about this family, it is so varied and so
lovely in its Erscheinungen since it has been developed
by education. There must be a clematis Girton
somewhere ; these flowers are so going ahead. I have,
in this bedevilled climate, already managed a verandah
covered with great things as lovely as passion flowers
nearly. Some are dark, some lighter violet, some
palest lilac, some white and violet, some pinkish, some
pinkish white, and some, like white camellias almost
— double, and all lovely."
19. By last mail came several pamphlets from Asa

iSS4 KODAIKANAL 505
Gra\', to whom I have been sending Nilgiri and
other seeds. I see he reckons the Phanerogamic
species of North America as probably between eleven
and twelve thousand.
At Kod.iikanal, wiiich we reached on the evening
of the I 7th, we stayed for four days with Mr. Levinge.
At his house I met Father St. Cyr, an old French
Jesuit who had in c.irlv life known Ravignan ; but
has been settled on the Palanis for many ye.irs.
The vegetation resembles that of Ootacamund, but
with some curious diftcrences. Eiigcnid Arnottiana
(of which the well-known " Umbrella-tree " near
Marlimund is a tolerably favourable specimen for the
Nilgiris) is here a gi.uit. One specimen is amongst
the largest trees I c\'cr beheld, and affects most
curiously that peculiar buttressed growth which is so
characteristic of some of the genus Terminalia.
23. The English Mail reaches us at Erode, on our
vv.iv from the Palanis to Ootacamund.
 writes :
" I have lost a dear friend lately, if I may say so, in
 , Reverend Mother of the Convent of the Sacred

Heart at  . Well-born and bred — a beauty and a
general favourite in her day at Rome, where her family
VOL. I X

3o6 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1884
lived, she gave up all to settle down to the humdrum
teaching of poor children, for such it is. I have seldom
known a person who moved so exactly and easily as she
did in obedience to the Moral Law, as a planet to the
Physical. Such an uneventful life, but she was to be
rated, like S. Theresa, for what she zvas, and not for what
she did. May I quote from memory the epigram of
Schiller's I am so fond of :
'Adel ist auch in der sittlichen Welt ; gemeine Naturen
Zahlen mit dem, was sie thun, edle mit dem, was sie sind.'
" She died in the full belief that I was on the high road
to conversion, and I had not the heart to undeceive her.
But as I said to  , this involves the enormous assump
tion of an authority conferred by whom ? by a member
of the Godhead ; on whom ? on some Syrian peasants,
who transmitted it to certain ecclesiastics of the Dark and
Middle Ages. ' Barbati infantes ! ' knowing so little as
they did of the mode of nature's operations, how and
what could they know of the infinitely more abstruse
mysteries of the position and destiny of man, and the
relations between him and God ? And then pass the
threshold, and you are confronted with a cycle of ' miracles.'
Nothing like running these things to earth, to their incep
tion ; nothing like a Dogmengeschichte for a solvent of
one's faith in dogmas. They did not drop down from
heaven to us in their present shape. Forgive my making
you ' hear sermons.' But as one grows older and the

i884 FORESTRY 307
inevitable end approaches, life becomes ' more and more a
meditatio mortis^ and these claims to know all about it, get
— perhaps for the first time — a serious hearing."
24. We returned to-day to Ootacamund to find
the dry weather, so unusual at this season, still con
tinuing. The tour I have just concluded has been one of the
most varied I have made in this Presidency, and took
us through a strange succession of climates. The
subject most in my mind during its continuance was
Forestry. 29. Another walk with Mr. Davison, but without
much result. He mentioned incidentally that the
only bulbul who has a song is the Persian one, and
cited the name of an African bird which certainly
beats in difficulty the name of any plant I have met
with — ^Jacamarhalcyonoides Galborynchus I
Rutson writes : " Is there anything in India more
beautiful than the view of Warwick Castle from the
bridge, and the stately willows of enormous height
that border the Avon between the bridge and the
castle ? "
Certainly nothing in its own kind.
Clara tells me of a girl who, asked in an examina-

3o8 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1884
tion who Dante was, replied " A god in the infernal
regions." G. Bunsen, writing of my sister, whom he had
seen at Weimar, says " she is queenly in her beauty."
As she was born on 27th April 1834, time may
be said to have dealt kindly with her (see these Notes
for 1857. ^ wonder if our Venus Victrix of those days
is as well preserved I )
Of the Emperor, he tells me that his " physicians
had used their eloquence in vain to induce him to
abandon for once and all the idea of attending the two
great parades of 29th and 30th May on horseback.
' Let me try in the Park.' He rode his best horse
in Bellevue Gardens ; but the effect was disastrous.
' Well, now, your Majesty will consent to employ a
carriage ? ' says the doctor. ' Won't your Majesty
remember that Frederick the Great did the same ? '
' I know perfectly that he did ; but only " in seinen
allerletzten Lehensjahren " .' .' ' "
Mrs. Boyle (nee Gordon of Ellon) sends me her
Days and Honrs in a Garden — an extremely pleasant
book, which Mrs. Awdry read to me at Guindy this
spring. The following passage relates to the month of July

1 884 THE VINE 309
— in which she despatched it from Huntercombe near
Maidenhead — the site of the garden described. I
select it on account of the reference to the clematis : —
" Purple draperies of clematis (Virgin's Bower) in
many shades, from the deepest violet softening into gray,
make the old brick walls beautiful ; or the same clematis
droops from trellises, or clambers up the trees in many
parts of the garden. Almost always it so happens that
the tender green of vines mingles with the purple. There
is something almost unpleasing in the arrangement of the
four petals of Clematis Jackmanni 1 but much must be
forgiven for the sake of such grand colouring. No
climbing plant comes near the vine perhaps in perfect
grace and beauty of line. The fruitful vine gives delight
to the eye in far larger measure than Virginia creeper, or
any other of our green hangings upon the walls of a house.
The vine is more obedient and yet more free, and its
intelligence is greater. Thinking of the vine as of a
person, one would say that her foliage shows all the
variety of genius. Scarcely will you find two leaves
alike in shape or size or colour. The youngest leaves are
half transparent and golden -green, or reddened by the
sun ; on some the light lies cold and gray. If the vine
is trained round the window, the leaves, seen from within
outspread against the light, glow like green fires. The
very shadiest recesses of the vine are full of light. And
then the tenderness and strength of her slender beautiful

310 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1884
tendrils ! How they reach out like sentient hands I And
when they have found, how strong and firm their clasp !
Then, who does not know and love the curious aroma of
her small green flowers, bringing back to memory the
smell of a Southern vineyard ? Very soon now, autumn
suns will swell the clustered fruit, and purple bloom will
begin to show between the leaves. A vine is one of the
only plants whose every leaf well nigh may be painted
with care in a picture and yet not seem too much made
out. Yet rarely indeed can human hand give the fine
thinness and yielding texture of a vine leaf."

August
5. I do not think I have noted the fact that over
the place where poor Hannibal lies I have put the
lines, adapted from Ovid : —
" Hannibal, hue Libycis ales deductus ab oris,
Occidit ; exsequias ite frequenter aves ! "
Three more months of my Indian life gone by —
six months less to pass here than I have passed — even
if I stay out my time !

1 884 A FINAL CAUSE 311
" Pereunt et imputantur " — " The hours perish and
are counted against us."
I am having the Letters of the Princess Alice
read to me — a book well calculated to suggest that
reflection which comes — sooth to say — so often of
itself. There have been no changes in our mode of life
during this quarter except that we have used the band
much more than formerly, and that, when on the hills,
it has played many more national airs, especially Scotch
ones. 7. English Mail arrives.
Pollock tells me, under the heading of quisquiliae
quaedam, that the son of Mr. Justice  , being
asked at Cambridge what was the jurisdiction of the
Amphictyonic Council, replied, " It resembled that of
a judge in chambers 1 "
He mentions, too, that a young man at Oxford
replied to the question, " What is a final cause ? "
" It is the last straw that breaks the camel's back " !
This second answer, although he vouches for it the
high authority of the Corpus Professor of Juris
prudence, seems to me a little too good to be true,
reminding me of a story of my undergraduate days, to

312 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1884
the effect that some one, asked in a scholarship
examination what speeches produced the most re
markable results in ancient and in modern times,
answered, " In ancient times ' Let there be light,' in
modern times ' Up, guards, and at them ' " ! 1
A. Russell writes : " We breakfasted with Glad
stone this morning. Millais, who was there, classed
the five following heads under the same type :
"Seneca, Savonarola, Dante, Cardinal Newman,
George Eliot."
My sister, writing of her cottage in the Thiiringer-
wald, says : —
" From every window we see the hills and the forest
and the green meadows. Morning and evening the cows
go by to the upland pastures with the cowherds and dear
friendly dogs. We feed the dogs at our gate under the
weeping ashes. The cowbells tinkle and clang derweilen ;
we close the gate when the bulls march by."
II. I continue to purchase Indian coins, and have
just acquired a very handsome gold coin of Shir Shah
— the Afghan king of Delhi, before whom Humayun
fled. He reigned from 1540 to 1545 a.d., and is said
^ It is true, nevertheless. It was told to the Corpus Professor by the
Examiner himself. — 1898.

i884 GLADSTONE 313
to have received his name from having killed a tiger
with one sword-cut.
22. English Mail arrives.
A letter also came to me to-day from the State
House of Massachusetts. I did not know the motto —
" Ense petit placidam sub libertate quietem."
John Webster of Edgehill writes from the House,
under date 21st July : —
"Let me say of Gladstone what he well deserves. He
is master of the situation ; he could with 1 word or two
have opened the flood-gates of agitation and sent the stream
full against the Peers. He did no such thing, and his
whole speech and attitude, ever since the Lords did their
work, have been in the highest degree statesmanlike and
conciliatory. It may be said that he could not have done
otherwise. But a significant aside from him would have
been caught up at once, as much as open speech : and he
has done everything that even he, with his unequalled
influence over the people, their unrestricted, unmoved
confidence in him (which I have always insisted on, in
writing to you, as the chief guide in estimating our
immediate future), that even he, with all his eloquence
and sympathies and command of the nation, could and
should have done, to keep the unavoidable agitation in a
safe channel.

314 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1884
"One sees blemishes in him as a tactician and very,
very great mistakes in Eastern policy (that, of course, is
only my opinion), but the power and charm of the man
are wonderful.
" I never had a finer opportunity of watching him than
at his Foreign Office speech last week. I was directly in
front of him, and the expression of his face, of his
marvellous eyes, of his whole countenance, the dignity,
calmness of manner, the grace and command of every
fitting phrase as it came spontaneously from him was
catching, irresistible. Truly there is but one Gladstone
and he has no prophet.
" He is working with fiery materials and with some
workmen not easy to keep firm in hand. But they all
know, we all know, that the people are with him and with
nobody else, and that conviction keeps us all straight. I
am not sure that he is one who attaches any clientele of
personal friends from attachment to himself individually,
as some men have done, but with the Liberal people of the
nation he is absolutely and more entirely their idol than
even in 1880."
Dyer writes : "I am glad to hear the Arracacha
arrived safely and, I hope, in good order. It is a
historic feat to transfer a product of one world to
the other, even if it is no more than a humble
esculent."

1884 EVEN THEIR WEDDING RINGS 315
Arracacha esculenta is an Umbellifer allied to the
parsnip, which was introduced into Jamaica in 1822
from the neighbourhood of Santa F6 de Bogota.
23. Glanced through a notebook of 1875-76.
Who was it who, when she was told that a certain
Belgravian clergyman made his penitents lay aside
their rings in Lent, said : " What, my dear, even their
wedding rings I "
It was Emly, I think, who told me the story of a
Catholic friend of his, before the Stanleyan period,
being interrupted at his devotions in Westminster
Abbey by a verger, who said, " Come, come, we can't
have you praying about here ! "
Who described the Duke of Cumberland as one
" qui timet omnia praeter Deum " ?
Who remarked when Abdul Aziz disappeared from
the scene : " Autrefois on assassinait les Sultans,
maintenant on les suicide " ?
In a newspaper notice of the life of the Mother-
Superior of the House of Mercy at Clewer (Harriet
Monsell), whose husband died at Naples, I came on
the following sentence : " Thanks for the rose from
my home, the only spot on earth which I ever call or
shall call home. I build up, as God permits me.

3i6 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1884
homes for His children ; but mine is within those rails
and that bright sunny land."
' Sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt.'
24. Mr. Rees has been reading Hypatia, and I
asked him to copy for me the lines which I recollect
quoting in October 1857 fiom memory nearly right.
I have never happened to see the book since ; but I
have learned to believe that he was one of the wisest
of men who, in dying, left as his advice to mankind,
" Verify quotations." The passage runs as follows,
and still seems to me very admirable : —
" That last drear mood
Of envious sloth, and proud decrepitude ;
No faith, no art, no king, no priest, no God ;
While round the freezing founts of life in snarling ring.
Crouched on the bareworn sod.
Babbling about the unreturning spring.
And whining for dead gods, who cannot save.
The toothless systems shiver to their grave."
26. Renter telegraphs the terribly sad and, to me,
altogether unexpected news of Ampthill's death.
27. Mr. Rees read to me the other day an amusing
passage from a book by Mr. Monier Williams with
regard to two of our Vishnuvite sects — the men of

i884 VADA-GALAI AND TEN-GALAI 317
the northern and the men of the southern school — the
Vada-galai and the Ten-galai : —
"After Ramanuja's death, his numerous followers
corrupted his teaching in the usual manner, introducing
doctrines and practices which the founder of the sect had
not enjoined and would not have sanctioned. Then,
about six hundred years ago, a learned Brahman of
Kanjivaram, named Vedantacarya, put himself forward
as a reformer, giving out that he was commissioned by the
god Vishnu himself to purify the faith — to sweep away
corrupt incrustations, and restore the doctrines of the
original founder. These doctrines, he affirmed, had been
more carefully preserved by the Northern Brahmans than
by those in the South. Hence rose irreconcilable
differences of opinion, which resulted in two great
antagonistic parties of Ramanujas — one called the
northern school, Vada - galai (for Vada - kalai, Sanskrit
Kala), the other the southern school. Ten - galai (for
Ten-kalai). They are," he observes, "far more opposed
to each other than both parties are to Saivas. The
northern school accept the Sanskrit Veda. The southern
have compiled a Veda of their own, called ' the four
thousand verses ' (Nalayira), written in Tamil, and held
to be older than the Sanskrit Veda, but really based on
its Upanishad portion. In all their worship they repeat
selections from these Tamil verses.
" An important difference of doctrine, caused by

3i8 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1884
different views of the nature of the soul's dependence
on Vishnu, separates the two parties. The view taken
by the Vada-galais corresponds, in a manner, to the
Arminian doctrine of ' free-will.' The soul, say they,
lays hold of the Supreme Being by its own will, act, and
effort, just as the young monkey clings to its mother.
This is called the monkey-theory (Markatanyaya). The
view of the Ten-galais is a counterpart of that of the
Calvinists. It is technically styled ' the cat-hold theory '
(Marjaranyaya). The human soul, they argue, remains
passive and helpless until acted on by the Supreme Spirit,
just as the kitten remains passive and helpless until seized
and transported, nolens volens, from place to place by the
mother-cat." 29. English Mail arrives.
John Webster writes : —
" I find my love of dogs quite broad and deep enough
to have embraced three pets ; but an imperious member
of a family always gets his way, and the Dachshund gets
his here. He does repay my abnegation by a good deal of
affection, especially at meal-times. Does Cicero, by the
way, reckon the charm of the society of dogs among the
pleasures of old age .? I shall rummage over my beautiful
copy of the de Senectute, the Variorum edition of
Graevius, bound by H. Bedford ! when I have done.
Did I boast to you — I suppose I must have boasted, of
my acquisitions this spring at the sale of that renowned

,884 MARK PATTISON 319
bookbinder's own private library ; the copies all picked
for himself and specially bound for himself and mostly in
red morocco, chiefly Dutch classics } I only got three
volumes, of which this copy, including the smaller treatises
usually going with the de Senectute, is one. Would I could
have you to survey them with me, where, as here, no ants
eviscerate and no damps decay."
Bagot tells me that his mother, being recently in
the National Gallery, saw an old woman come in with
two girls. "That," she heard her say, pointing to
a picture, " is the Virgin Mary and her son ;
that," pointing to another, " is the Virgin Mary and
her daughter." September
2. Cavendish read last week to me a biography
of the late rector of Lincoln in the Times. The last
words ran as follows : —
"It would be presumptuous, of course, to compare
Pattison with Scaliger, and he himself would have been
the last man to allow the comparison. But on the
morrow of his death, his sorrowing friends may not
unfitly be reminded of the words which he wrote in 1 860
in describing the death of Scaliger : —

320 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1884
" ' On the 2lst of January 1609, at four in the morning,
he fell asleep in Heinsius's arms. The aspiring spirit
ascended before the Infinite. The most richly stored
intellect which ever spent itself in acquiring knowledge
was in the presence of the Omniscient.'"
I received by last mail from Mr. Bywater a letter
in which he mentions that : " Shortly before the end
her husband intimated to Mrs. Pattison that she was
to read ' Te mensorem ' to him. She divined what
he meant, and read him Horace's ode to Archytas
('Te maris ac terrae')."
I have just read it in the quaint old Horace,
which my grand-uncle gave to my grandfather when
he left Scotland for Leyden in 1786, and which,
going with him to Madras in 1788, returned, after
twenty-seven years, to Europe, and eventually found
its way back to this Presidency in my possession.
6. Mrs. Laffan lent me some days ago a book by
F. W. Faber on the Blessed Sacrament. Much of
it says nothing to me ; but here and there one
recognises the sort of charm that there is in his poetry.
Here, for example, is a sentence about the feast
of Corpus Christi : —
" The world over, the summer air is filled with the

i884 THE MARQUIS D'ARGENSON 321
voice of song. The gardens are shorn of their fairest
blossoms. The steeples are reeling with the clang of
bells ; the cannon are booming in the gorges of the
Andes and the Apennines ; the pomp of royal or
republican armies salutes the King of Kings."
and this about Our Lady : —
" There is hardly a feast in the year so gay and bright
as this of her Nativity, right in the heart of the happy
harvest, as though she were, as indeed she was, earth's
heavenliest growth, whose cradle was to rock to the
measure of the whole world's vintage songs."
7. Re-read in the Causeries de Lundi a happy
phrase of the Marquis d'Argenson : " II faut plaire
pour r^ussir ; les hommes sont plus dificiles que les
affaires." It was he who, speaking of the first half of the
eighteenth century in France, said : —
"Le coeur est une faculty dont nous nous privons
chaque jour faute d'exercice, au lieu que I'esprit s'anime
chaque jour. On court h. I'esprit, on le cultive, on
devient tout spirituel. C'est I'esprit joint au cceur qui
forme I'heroisme, le courage, le sublime, et d'oti resulte
le genie. Faute d'affection et de la faculte cordiale, ce
royaume -ci perira — je le predis. On n'a plus d'amis,
VOL. I Y

322 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1884
on n'aime plus sa maitresse ; comment aimerait on sa
patrie ?"
10. The following very striking passage is quoted
by Sainte-Beuve from a novel called U Emigre by
M. Senac de Meilhan. It refers to the day on which
the Royal Family was brought from Versailles : —
"Je me rendis dans une maison voisine oh se
rassemblait ordinairement I'elite de la societe ; mon coeur
etait navre, mon esprit obscurci des plus sombres nuages,
et je croyais trouver tout le monde affecte des memes
sentiments ; mais ecoutez les dialogues interrompus des
personnes que j'y trouvai, ou qui arriverent successive-
ment : 'Avez-vous vu passer leroi.?' disait I'un. 'Non,
j'ai ete a la Comedie.' ' Mole a-t-il joue .' Pour moi
j'ai ete oblige de rester aux Tuileries, il n'y a pas eu
moyen d'en sortir avant neuf heures.' ' Vous avez done
vu passer le roi.?' 'Je n'ai pas bien distingue, il faisait
nuit.' Un autre : ' II faut qu'il ait mis plus de six
heures pour venir de Versailles.' D'autres racontaient
froidement quelques circonstances. Ensuite : ' Jouez-
vous au whist V 'Je jouerai apres souper, on va servir.'
Quelques chuchotages, un air de tristesse passager. On
entendit du canon. 'Le roi sort de l'H6tel-de-Ville ;
ils doivent etre bien las.' On soupe ; propos interrompus.
On joue au trente-et-quarante, et tout en se promenant, en
attendant le coup et surveillant sa carte, on dit quelques
mots . ' Comme c'est aflreux ! ' et quelques-uns causent

1884 THE BREAKFAST CLUB 323
k voix basse brievement. Deux heures sonnent, chacun
defile et va se coucher. De telles gens vous paraissent bien
insensibles ; eh bien ! il n'en est pas un qui ne se fut
fait tuer aux pieds du roi."
II. Lord Ripon telegraphed to me last night
that Dufferin is to succeed him. Well done the
Breakfast Club ! Since it was founded in 1866 —
( I ) Sir John Acton has been made Lord Acton ;
(2) May has been made a Privy Councillor ;
(3) Sir James Lacaita has been made a Senator
of the kingdom of Italy ;
(4) Henry Bruce has been made, first. Home
Secretary ; secondly, a Peer ; thirdly. Lord President
of the Council ; and might have been, had he so
pleased, Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland or Viceroy of the
Dominion ;
(5) Lord Reay has added an English peerage to
his Scotch peerage.
(6) Lord Lansdowne has become, first. Under
Secretary of State for India ; secondly. Viceroy of the
Dominion ; thirdly, a G.C.M.G ;
(7) I have become successively Under Secretary
for India, Under Secretary for the Colonies, a Privy
Councillor, and Governor of Madras ; while

324 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1884
(8) Lord Dufferin has become, amongst other
things. Chancellor of the Duchy, Viceroy of the
Dominion, an Earl, Ambassador at St. Petersburg,
Ambassador at Constantinople, and now Viceroy
elect of India.
Of the five other members. Pollock has been
always purely a legal official and a man of letters,
never having anything to do with political life ;
Venables took his immense ability to the silver,
not the gold, table, contenting himself with making
a large fortune, while the other three — Frederick
Leveson Gower, Arthur Russell, and Henry Cowper —
although in pubHc life, belong essentially to the class
of men for whom private life has done too much to
allow them to be ambitious. They have contented
themselves with being spectators.
That is a very curious record of the fortunes of
one very small society gathered together for merely
social purposes. In it, every one who ever was a
member of the Club is represented, except four men
who are dead — Simeon, Sir Edmund Head, Stirling-
Maxwell, and Sir John Lefevre, all of whom, when
elected, were near the end of their careers ; Froude
the historian, who retired, and three men who were

1884 A TRUE LIBERAL 325
elected when Dufferin, Lansdowne, and I became
absent members. Of these, Goschen, before he became
a member, refused the Viceroyalty of India, Carlingford
is now Lord President of the Council, while the third,
Trevelyan, is now Secretary for Ireland.
English Mail arrives.
Mrs. Bishop writes : " I had a delicious three days
in Paris almost altogether with Mrs. Craven. Never
was she more super-angelic. She looked thin and
grave, but
' Sweeter, sweeter than anything on earth.' "
After describing a dinner at Richmond, she
continues : —
" Florence's little dog got clandestinely under the
table and, after some very strong sentiment from
Mr.  , suddenly barked approval. ' Hear, hear,'
cried Mr. Mundella in a House of Commons voice,
and after that the dog was handed from lap to lap, as
a true Liberal — finally running off with a whole quail.
Strengthened by the spoil, he proceeded to engage
in his first fight, on the terrace, with a Blenheim —
representative of an effete aristocracy. It was all
amusing, and the drive home under a sultry moon
very pleasant, for Diana herself has been sultry. A

326 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1884
man from Ecuador says London heat is worse than his
particular brand of caloric."
Renan's new volume of Etudes £ Histoire Religieuse,
announced in his wife's letter, mentioned above,
reached me before I went on tour, and Miss Moxon
has read a good deal of it to me at various times
since I returned.
It is full of interesting things. On the very first
page is the excellent story of Buloz "le moins
Bouddhiste des hommes," to whom a Buddhist in
flesh and blood " parut chose inadmissible." " A
toutes mes preuves il repondit inflexiblement, ' II
n'est pas possible qu'il y ait des gens aussi betes que
cela.' "
A couple of paragraphs lower down is mentioned
the Capuchin who said that the author of the Vie de
yhus would be saved by St. Francis ; but the terms
in which Renan told me the anecdote are slightly
varied. As I remember them the words were, " II a
parle tres bien de St. Francois, et St. Francois arrangera
tout cela," not " St. Francois le sauvera."
Miss Moxon has also recently read through to me
Schiller's Wallenstein. I was devoted as a boy to the
two last parts of the trilogy in Coleridge's version.

i884 SCHILLER'S WALLENSTEIN 327
and his glorious mis-rendering of " Die alten Fabel-
Wesen sind nicht mehr," suggested some of the
earliest verses I ever wrote. The Lager I only knew
by having dipped into its pages, and by a most
vigorous translation of a part of it in some old annual.
The charm of the Piccolomini and of Wallenstein s
Tod is to me as great at fifty-five as at fifteen.
How time rushes on ! Nearly as many years have
gone by, since I read them, as had passed between
1844 and 1798, when the Prologue was spoken at
the re-opening of the Weimar theatre : —
"  an des Jahrhundert's ernsten Ende,

Wo selbst die Wirklichkeit zur Dichtung wird."
" Ce grand vaisseau dont la proue est dans I'Ocean
Atlantique et la poupc dans la mer des Indes."
What a fine description of seventeenth century
Spain !
It is by Voiture writing of Olivarez.
17. On the 17th I left Ootacamund accompanied
by Mr. Rees, Dr. Mackenzie, Captain Hanbury
Williams, Mr. Gamble, Mr. Lawson, and Mr.
Davison.

328 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1884
We travelled via Coimbatore and Pothanore to
Pollachi, whence we rode to a group of forest huts in
the Anamalais, which have been christened Mount
stuart. Thence we returned to the railway and ran down
to Shoranore, from which place we drove to Trichore,
and went on by the Backwaters to Balghatty, where
we remained several days and then retraced our steps
to Trichore and Ootacamund, where we arrived on
3rd October.
All this is detailed in a Tour Minute, the tenth of
its kind ; but I record here, as usual, some matters
which did not find their natural place in it.
We did not meet with the flying lizard, Draco
volans — not uncommon on the lower part of the
road ; but, while we were talking of it, Mr. Davison
told me that they had secured at the Zoological
Gardens in London a specimen of Heloderma horridum
— the only poisonous lizard known.
I asked him about the little wagtail which I
observed when riding yesterday. It is a migratory
bird which arrived from Central Asia only a week ago
— on the 9th.
Mr. Rees, while reading to me an address from

i884 TENTH TOUR OF INSPECTION 329
some Syrian Christians, asked me why their bishops
took the title of Mar. When explaining this to him
I quoted St. Paul's well-known expression, " Let him
be anathema — Maranatha ; " that is to say. Let him
be accursed — the Lord is at hand !
Mrs. Bishop writes, by desire of Mrs. Craven, to
tell me that her husband had a paralytic stroke on
22nd August at Monabri, near Lausanne, where they
were staying with Princess Wittgenstein. I had
written on 28th August to wish them joy on their
Golden Wedding. He is seventy-eight.
My sister writes : " I can indeed this summer say :
'Was man in Jugend sich wiinscht, hat man im Alter die
Fulle.'
"Luther-Fest in Jena I Parsifal in Bayreuth ! a per
fect summer in the Thiiringerwald ! That is all
very beautiful."
20. We penetrated to-day into a far more beautiful
portion of the forest than that which we had visited
yesterday. Terminalia tomentosa rose to the height of
some 150 feet, and we saw one teak which was 28
feet round, and had probably lived through some five
centuries.

3 30 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1884
The bear has been rather to the front since
we came here. We saw this morning the marks
of his paws on a Cassia fistula which he had been
climbing, with a view to converting to his own
uses the sweet contents of its pods. One of Mr.
Davison's men saw a couple yesterday very near our
camp. 21. We walked down the ghat in the early
morning. Air. Davison called our attention to the
large holes made in a tree by the greater wood
pecker, Thriponax Hodgsoni, and mentioned that he
never attacked trees which were in a sound state, but
only those which had already been injured by the
beetles on whose larvae he fed. A little later we
heard him at his operations, tapping a tree to find
where it was hollow. Mr. Davison thinks that he
is very useful.
He told us that another species — the Southern
chestnut woodpecker — cuts a hole in the nest of the
very vicious little red ant and lives there, apparently on
perfectly good terms with his neighbours.
After dinner, last night, Mr. Davison showed us
the skins of various birds which his men had brought
in during the day, almost all of them very brilliant in

i884 THE ANAMALAIS 331
colour, and making me sigh to think by how many
beautiful creatures we are surrounded, which want of
quickness of sight prevents my distinguishing.
We heard nothing of tigers, but a panther had
been playing in the night on the ghat which we
descended, and the day before yesterday we saw the
recent tracks of the wild elephants which give the
Anamalais their name.
In fact the whole region evidently deserves the
character which Herodotus gave, if I remember, to
Africa, of being " a wild-beastish country."
One of our people, whose function it was to pre
side over the transport of the party, and who by
no means hked the wild beasts, remarked to Dr.
Mackenzie this morning, " Well ! if the garden of
Heden was like this 'ere primaeval forest, I don't
wonder that Heve left it."
At breakfast in Pollachi the conversation turned
on the story of Colonel RoUand's experiences at the
Golden Rock already noted, and Mr. Davison men
tioned that the lammergeier is in the habit of
carrying what it proposes to eat up into the air, and
dropping it with a view to make it more manageable.
The range of this bird extends as far south as Sicily,

332 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1884
and it may quite possibly have dropped a tortoise upon
the bald head of ./Eschylus.
The lammergeier does not occur here, but is
abundant in the Himalaya.
23. Where did I light upon the story of the
Maharajah of Travancore (not the present one), who,
fond of jujubes as of bonbons, and seeing an adver
tisement to the effect that a large consignment of
jupons had arrived at Madras, jumped to the con
clusion that they belonged to the same category, and
became the owner of I know not how many dozen
steel crinolines ?
I looked for it this morning in Day's Land of the
Permauls, but lit neither upon it nor upon the
Malayali proverb which I also connected with that
book : " He who has seen a dead monkey ; he
who has found the nest of a paddy bird ; he who
has come upon a straight cocoa-nut tree, or has
fathomed the deceitful heart of woman, will live for
ever ! "
It was to-day that we were obliged, very reluct
antly, to give up our journey to Peermade, on
account of an outbreak of cholera in the neighbour
hood, but, as it happened, the fresh burst of the south-

i884 MRS. SYDNEY BUXTON 333
west monsoon, which immediately followed, would
have made our journey thither quite unprofitable, if
not impossible.
Mrs. Sydney Buxton gives an amusing account of
some books prepared for certain Infant Schools in the
United States : —
"One of the exercises consisted of sentences with a
word left out to be supplied by the imagination of the
infant, and the sentence at which Louis opened the book
was 'Bill says it is so  cold to-day.' Louis has
another friend, a clergyman. This clergyman has a small
dog, which would delight your soul. It is accustomed to
sleep with his children, but never knows in whose bed, as
they fight for it every night. One evening all the house
hold had gone out to some function, leaving their supper
(consisting of meat pies and little cakes) on the kitchen
table, and on getting home these had all disappeared.
When the children went to bed, each child found under its
counterpane a meat pie and a little cake, placed there, in
its uncertainty, by the dog, so as to be prepared for all
emergencies." We also came suddenly into an enclosure sacred to
serpent-worship, in which Mr. Hannyngton saw
certainly one and probably two cobras.
On landing again at Balghatty Mr. Gamble took

334 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1884
me to see Hydnocarpus inebrians, now Wightiana,
which was growing near the house. When I asked
Lawson, the other day, whether the Hydnocarpus we
found on the Droog was inebrians. Cavendish, who
was present, said, "To judge by the number of broken
bottles we found under it, at the place where we
lunched, I should say ' yes ' ! "
25. We started at a very early hour and, landing
at Ernacolum, drove out to breakfast in the Rajah's
bungalow beyond Tripoonterah, which stands on a low
hill of laterite.
It is a lovely land ; everywhere the cocoa-nut above
and great sheets of rice below. Through these last
gleam the well -named Nymphaea stellata, Villarsia
Indica, and the far lovelier Villarsia cristata, with its
fimbriated petals and golden-centred flowers.
26. English Mail arrives.
Dyer writes : " I have been very much interested
in the proposed Afghan boundary expedition. Afghan
istan in its botany reflects its politics. It is the most
interesting meeting ground of Eastern, Western, and
Northern influences and elements."
All night it rained furiously — 3*97 inches at
Ernacolum, and I presume at least as much here.

i884 SURVEY MINUTE— PART I 335
27. The night was again desperately wet, but the
rain had moderated, when soon after 3 a.m. we left
the Balghatty Residency.
A day of slow progression along the Backwaters
brought us to Trichore.
It was there that the first complete copy of a
Minute, which occupied much of my time at Ootaca
mund from 3rd August to i6th September, reached
my hands. Its object is explained in the first two of
its 313 paragraphs, which I may quote here : —
"In the month of October last, I completed, by a
visit to South Canara, my general survey of the twenty-
two districts of this Presidency, and, as some nine months
have now passed, it may be time to review that survey, with
the object of seeing what desirable changes have been
made in consequence of it, what remain to be made, and,
above all, how far it has been possible to meet the requests
of the people preferred to the head of the Government in
person. " The machine of administration, in all civilised
countries, is now so complicated that it is necessary for
those who preside over it, perpetually to revise and re-
revise, if important things are not to be allowed to slip out
of sight. The impossibility of doing this, amidst the
conditions under which a statesman's life is now passed in
Western Europe, is a grave misfortune. In a country

336 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1884
governed as this is and must long continue to be, it is
highly desirable that the European rulers of every degree
should come as much as possible into contact with the
ruled. Thanks to the improvement of communications,
the absence of famine and other causes, it has been my
good fortune to see more of the Presidency than any
of my predecessors have done in an equally short time.
In nearly a hundred addresses, which have been collected
into a volume, I have secured a perfect photograph
of what the most articulate portion of the people were
asking from the chiefs of the administration in 1882 and
1883. " In my replies, -while recognising the good sense of a
very large proportion of the requests made, I took the
greatest possible care not to commit my colleagues or my
self to almost anything, and I am particularly glad to be
able to show by this paper, to the persons who came to
see me, with what scrupulous care every one of their
wishes has been examined, and how very largely perform
ance has surpassed promise."
29. The rain-record was brought to me this morn
ing — 7 -2 inches in the last twenty-four hours and
small prospect of improvement I
A friend writes : " I had not known of the centi
pede mot. It is very good, being really a mot which
carries a whole argument with it."

i884 THE BRITISH LION

337

That refers to a wonderfully happy phrase, I suppose
of Morley's, in a recent Macmillan, to which I had
called my correspondent's attention: "But England
cannot put her foot down firmly in a dozen places
at once. The British lion is not a centipede."
30. We took advantage of an interval between the
heavy showers to drive a mile or two from the town,
and struck across a piece of land, which was being
converted into a park, to the open pastures. The lark
sang above ; the turf, grazed by herds of the small
Malabar cattle, was smooth, and we enjoyed a perfect
botanical debauch.
As we advanced, I found that what I had taken for
a piece of exposed rock, on the edge of a rising ground,
was really a couple of acres of Impatiens balsamina
in full flower. We have become quite hardened to
plunging through the sensitive plant which is here not
less decried as a pest than is Gloriosa superba I in some
parts of the Wynaad, but, arrived at the edge of this
lovely garden, I felt the scruples of Landor when he
tossed his cook out of the window and penitently
exclaimed, " Good God, I had forgotten the violets."

VOL. I

338 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1884
October
I. The morning dawned brightly, and I started,
accompanied by Mr. Gamble and Captain Hanbury
Williams, to resume our ramble, where we left it off
yesterday, with not less brilliant results.
The European Mail met us at Palghat, and I had
pretty well finished my letters, before we had got to
the Walliar station, where the tiger was not "jumping
about upon the platform," though doubtless in the
woods hard by, which looked enchantingly green and
beautiful. Captain Hanbury Williams has been reading
Wilhelm Meister to me during our tour. The
following passage from my sister came in therefore
very appropriately — :
"We left the Thiiringerwald, looking impossibly
beautiful, on the 1st of September. 'All the hay was
down ' — a second crop. The woods, the hills, the splen
did meadows durchsonnt ; the air a bliss to breathe — all
perfume and all clearness. We were silent as we drove
through our happy woods, all feeling that a rare time ot
pleasantness was over.
" The fourth in our family party was my young friend

i884 LAUBE'S "KARLSCHtJLER " 339
Hildegarde Jenicke, who was returning to play Leonora
San Vitale in Goethe's Tasso.
" Her new great part in Fitzer's Hexe was all created
upon the rock-tops, lying or roaming about under the
enormous Edeltannen looking over the Thiiringerwald
to the Venus-Berg. It is exceedingly interesting to live
with a true artist whilst she is creating a new part — one
who is at other moments so full of frolicsome fun, and so
like a child."

And

again :

" I saw Laube's Karlschiiler acted for the first time
last week. I read it with wild enthusiasm with Hollander
in 185 1 ; never saw it since. How one remembered the
bounding delight of one's soul at so much of the Fort-
schritt therein fore-shadowed, and how entirely one's
young sympathies are one's grown-up ones !
" That evening Hildegarde went behind the scenes ;
she was, that night, only a spectator, and meeting the head
man of our actors, who is also r'egisseur, she said to him :
' It was Laube's Karlschiiler, at twelve years old, that sent
me on the stage.' ' Was it ? ' this gentleman replied mus
ingly. ' It was Laube's Karlschiiler that decided my life
and sent me on the stage also.' "
Madame de Riaiio sends from Madrid her privately
printed book, Viaje de Espana por un anonimo, 1446-48.
A. Russell, writing from Surrey, says : " Dear

340 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1884
Odo combined in so wonderful a manner rare qualities,
necessary for success in Berlin during a difficult
period." 6. Mr. Davison brought some of his spoils, the
orange minivet, the golden oriole, the fairy blue
bird being amongst the most beautiful. He has ascer
tained that the birds of the Anamalais are similar to
those of the Palanis. Neither he nor his men have
up to this time met with any new species.
7. A telegram from Culverden tells me that
Augustus Craven is gone.
In an extract from a letter to Mrs. Bishop, sent on
to me by last mail, his wife said : —
" He is hardly rejoiced when he is told that he will
recover from his attack. It is a greater effort of courage
to bear this sudden passage from what looked still like
vigorous health to the most painful infirmities of old age,
than was required when he thought he could not survive
it." Writing to Mrs. Craven on this subject to-day, I
chanced to open her book precisely at the words
(volume ii. page 360) : —
" Elle me laissa pleurer, me regardant longtemps sans
rien dire. Oh ! quelle expression je vis alors dans son

i884 STUART RENDEL 341
regard ! C'etait plus que du courage, plus que de la sc-
renite. C'etait presque de la joie. Enfin elle me dit : Tu
pleures parceque notre Olga va aller au ciel, et main-
tenant qu'elle est presque hors de ce monde, tu voudrais
I'y ramener. Dis-moi done quelle bonheur tu as h lui
assurer sur terre."
Warren, writing of Rendel, says very happily :
" He is singularly apt in his mots ; it is not wit, not
epigram, but a power of hitting the conversational
nail exactly on the head, which he possesses."
This mail also brought an extremely agreeable
letter from the author of Blue and Green, to whom
I had written, expressing the pleasure with which I
had read his book. He writes from " The Hermitage "
near Chester-le-Street.
My sister writes : —
" I am very much attached already to ' our Grand
Duke's country.' The Dorfer, with the invariable great
Dorf-Linde, the pretty old church, the vines trained on
the house-walls, the wealth of Remontant roses, the walnut
trees, the red-tiled roofs and gables are so freundlich, so
human, the Tannenwalder, the Laubholzwalder, so poetic.
It is, in a word, just the heart of Germany this Thuringia.
One lives in an atmosphere of affectionateness.
" After such a long sunshiny progress through the land.

342 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1884
one goes in the evening to the dear little Hof-theater and
hears Goethe's Tasso."
And again :
"I came this week upon a curious household.
" By a village some hour-and-a-half's drive from Wei
mar lies a small estate with a Schloss, old courts, old
gardens lying by the Ilm. Wieland bought it, and spent
many of the last years of his life there. There the
love of his youth, she who became Sophie Laroche, came
to visit him ; there her daughter became dear to him as
though his own ; and there, in a quiet shady nook in his
park of Osmannstedt, by the winding, murmuring Ilm, he,
his wife, and this young girl, who died in his house, lie
buried under one and the same monument, a lonely and
most touching spot."
She then proceeds to give a long account of the
present owner, a Scotchman of the name of Grant,
nearly related to the Glenmoriston family, married to
a Thuringian lady.
12. Agnew to-day slew, only about 1500 feet
below Ootacamund, a large Russell's viper. I had no
idea that they came so high up.
15. I found to-day, near the beginning of the
Spanish Gypsy, a passage in which I had a special

1884 THE MAHARAJAH OF TRAVANCORE 343
interest from the fact of Greg having repeated it to
me, and which I had failed to find before : —
" So trust the men whose best hope for the world
Is ever that the world is near its end ;
Impatient of the stars that keep their course
And make no pathway for the coming judge."
20. A correspondent, to whom I wrote lately to
ask about his health, replied to-day that he might give
the same account of himself, which a sailor coming out
of hospital had given in reply to a similar inquiry
from a benevolent clergyman : " Pretty damned miser
able, thank God, sir, pretty damned miserable."
Mrs. Godfrey Clerk mentioned this evening a
saying new to me : —
" Plus je connais les homnes plus j'admire les chiens."
23. I had a week or two ago a letter from the
Maharajah of Travancore, in which he enclosed a
portion of a diary kept by him during a tour in 1870.
The following passage occurs in it : —
"While amidst the awful sublimity of these great
mountain ranges,^ increased tenfold by the great storm and
mist, came the following telegram : —
^ See note on the following page.

344 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1884
" ' French Emperor and whole army surrendered
prisoners. King Prussia appoints residence.'
" Can there be a fitter place and time than those in
which I was to receive intelligence of the fate of a
Napoleon ? The same hand which reared up these majestic
mountains 1 and commands these fearful storms disposes of
the destinies of Napoleons and Caesars. Louis Napoleon's
travestying of his uncle's career has been but too close.
" His coup d'etat has been at last deservedly rewarded."
The climate, this year, although not so good for
the flowers, has been far more agreeable for the
ordinary purposes of life than either 1882 or 1883.
There have been a sufficient number of people
whom I like, in the place, to make our evenings pass
pleasantly. My small acquaintance with the flora, at about
2000 feet below this, accounts for the fact that I
knovv? only three-fourths of the species figured in
Wight's Nilgiri Plants. Of the species easily acces
sible from Ootacamund, I know nearly all.
During the last fortnight we have had an immense
amount of rain, the Marlimund reservoir going up
some ten feet in as many days. There have been
^ His Highness was on or near Mahendragiri, sometimes called
" The Sailor's Cape Comorin," when he wrote these sentences.

i884 LEAVE OOTACAMUND 345
landslips all around, but little or no serious damage.
The fall in the temperature which preceded the storms
caused a good deal of illness. All the children were
successively confined to bed, but I leave them quite
re-established. 24. This morning we left Ootacamund, and met
the English Mail at Mettupalaiyam.
My sister writes : —
" Mrs. Boyle and I both appreciate the clematis. All
she says of the vine and its ' Vornehmes Wesen ' is very
true ; she is a fortunate woman to live in a climate which
permits her to cover her house with the true vine.
" Yet at this season — late September, early October —
I am glad that our climate settles the question for us, and
gives us permission only to embower ourselves in Virginia
creeper, in the hardy sweet-smelling vine which bears no
grapes, but takes lovely colours in autumn and is infinitely
graceful all the summer through, and the clematis and
climbing roses, for every window is now framed in scarlet
leaves ; the whole house flames in its garment of scarlet
leaves and tendrils, and great blue and great white
clematis flowers look out of this splendour. Later on,
when this is over, the soft palc-ycllow vine leaves will
prolong the autumn-colouring on the walls."
Rutson writes : —

346 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1884
"I spent the post-day at Basle. I think, for a quiet
kind of beauty, that old city of the empire, so picturesque,
so ancient, and at the same time so prosperous with all the
elements of modern prosperity, cut in two by its noble
river so broad and swift, and with quiet woods and gentle
hills to be seen not far off, is one of the most charming
in Europe." Mrs. Craven writes, under date of 26th September,
from Monabri : —
"I received yesterday your letter dated 28th August,
the day of my Golden Wedding. How I passed that day
you already know. I asked Mrs. Bishop to tell you what
had happened on the 22nd of August, and I feel sure of
your sympathy. Indeed, I have no friend in the world
on whose sympathy I rely more entirely than upon yours."

And

again :

" I thought of you very much when I heard of the
death of poor Odo Russell, and I felt myself so grieved
for you, for them all, and also for England."
25. We reached Madras this morning.
The Park of Government House is as green as
eye could wish, our friend the Plumeria alba is in full
flower, and the lovely Millingtonia hortensis showing
its white blossoms along the avenues.

i884 THE TINNEVELLY TREES 347
There is much water about, and the charming
little egrets {Herodias egrettoides) are very happy.
26. I do not think I have anywhere noted the
fact, which came into my head to-day, that, as I was
travelling in Tinnevelly in 1882, I observed the
trunks of many of the trees whitewashed. " What
is that done for," I asked. "It is done in your
honour, sir," was the reply. Presently we came to a
little devil-temple also whitewashed. " Is that white
washed in my honour also ? " I said. " Oh no ! sir,"
was the answer, " that is whitewashed in honour of
the cholera ! "
One remembers Lyall's lines : —
" Is it a God or a king that comes.
Both are evil and both are strong."
28. A gentleman from whom I have been buying
coins sends me a Dirham (corrupted, by the way,
from Drachma, as Dinar from Denarius) of much
interest ; for, as the Sovereign who struck it reigned
from 786 to 809 A.D., and as it belongs to 797
A.D., I may safely say that it has found its way
to me "  from the golden prime
Of good Haroun al Raschid."

348 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1884
November
3. A lady who dined here told me that her
youngest daughter, who professes to be neither clever
nor pretty, says : " I am, you know, only the Amen
of the family."
5. The second half of my big Survey Minute
passed out of my hands on the 31st October, the
anniversary of my last landing at Bombay, was
officially signed by me yesterday, and issues to-day.
It contains 552 paragraphs, the first part having
contained 313, 865 in all. The whole is equal in
size to an ordinary octavo volume of about 176
pages. I may quote the last four paragraphs.
" I believe this Minute and the addresses with which
it deals will be useful to the administrator at home ;
and I have a right to say so, for, having been for
more than five years at the India Oflice, I know
well how useful such a paper would have been to me.
" I believe that it and they will not be wholly useless
even to the Iwstorian, for, as I have observed elsewhere,
although we are only a ' Provincial Government,' we
rule a land larger than the British Isles, and com-

1 884 SURVEY MINUTE— PART II 3+9
pared to which the France of Richelieu — what do I
say? — even the France of Turgot — was thinly peopled.
"Many things that are now familiar as household
words will soon be forgotten even in India. We shall
in our turn be ancients, and much that is now 'Life's
dullest prose ' will ' fade in the land of dreams.'
" I had often in my mind, while drawing up this
document, an incident of my early life. Shortly
before I went into Parliament, Mr. Elphinstone, then
in extreme old age, came to London and questioned
me, as I believe he questioned others, about the
manner in which the Romans governed their Pro
vinces. His whole mind was full of that question.
If only, I have frequently said, one had been able to
put into his hands such a paper as this, even by the
least distinguished of proconsuls, and presenting like
this a mere bald record, its very dryness and practi
cality would have made it infinitely more useful to the
aged administrator, accustomed to go to the heart of
things, than any amount of vague and ornate writing
"¦ about and about ' the subject in which he was
interested." 10. At II o'clock Cavendish came down from
the top of the house, and told me that a large steamer,

350 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1884
presumably the Kaiser-i- Hind, was visible on the
southern horizon. By twenty -five minutes past
twelve the two guns, which denote Su-ez, were fired,
and soon afterwards we drove to the harbour. Before
two my wife, with Evelyn, Lily, and Mrs. Awdry,
had returned with us to Government House.
With them came to stay here Mr. Eliot, a young
Oxford man of twenty- two, who won the Balliol,
the Hertford, the Ireland, the Craven, and the Boden
Sanskrit Scholarships, as well as a Classical First and
a Trinity Fellowship.
The weather, which has been alarmingly bad —
some twenty- five inches of rain falling in Madras
since 3rd November — has to-day become again fine.
Since my arrival in Madras I have made twelve
visits to the Museum in the early morning.
12. I wrote by this mail to Mrs. Bishop, from
whom I had received last week a copy of the greater
part of a very long letter from Mrs. Craven at
Monabri, as to which she most truly said : " Ah what
beauty ! ' Let me die the death of the righteous and
let my last end be like his.' I know how you will
feel this letter as from one already among the shining
ones."

i884 MRS. GREG 351
13. European Mail arrives.
Mrs. Greg writes from Davos-Platz : —
" The scenery of the Engadine gave me much more
pleasure this time than it had done on previous visits.
When we first went up, we certainly missed the variety
and richness of the Italian lake district. The Engadine
is a little hard, but it has a beauty of its own. The
chain of little lakes that fill this valley are so dainty in
their colour — a delicate semi-opaque bluish green — that
I have never seen elsewhere ; and they are so prettily set
in sombre woods of Cembra pines and green mountain
slopes surmounted by snowy peaks, which gleam with
dazzling white against the full blue of the summer sky !
There is a sparkle — a crispness about it all that is very
pleasant and refreshing to the eye, and is in keeping with
the exhilarating effect of the climate on health and spirits.
Then I confess that the side valleys, with their foaming
glacier torrents, exercise an effect upon my imagina
tion, — all leading up, as they do, to that vast silent
region of snow, — the 240 miles of ice-girt mountains
and valleys which form the great Bernina Range. The
peeps into Italy, too, are very lovely — the view down
the Maloja Pass, and, still better, the view from the
bridle-path on the Bernina Pass, whence you look
straight down for three thousand feet into the beautiful
little lake of Poschiavo and see the road, below that,
winding among the chestnut trees till it loses itself in

352 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1884
the rich warm purple shadows of the Valteline. We
had glorious weather — a hot summer sun and brisk
sparkling air and a cloudless sky — with now and then a
thunderstorm and a fresh fall of snow to renew the
beauty of the mountains."
18. Mr. Eliot called my attention to a passage in
Petronius Arbiter, in which the speaker, describing
the figures on certain cups, says, " Pueri mortui
jacent sic uti vivere putes." An Irishman could hardly
have made a better bull I
In my copy, mentioned above, vere is the reading,
making pure nonsense. Biicheler, I am told, has it
right. 19. Mr. Eliot mentioned that he had heard an
orator in a Balliol Debating Club, when denouncing
pessimism, speak of those who think of man as "a
vain shadow which to-day is and to-morrow is cast
into the oven ! " He had been present, too, when
an Irishman at the Union alluded to " those currents
of opinion which grease the wheels of time ! "
21. Early this morning a short but violent cyclone
burst over Madras, doing frightful damage. It was
much more furious than that of November 1881,
but in this neighbourhood blew chiefly off the land.

i884 A CYCLONE 353
Mr. Pogson makes the velocity of the wind, at
7 o'clock, forty-nine miles an hour. In the cyclone
of May 1872 it rose to fifty-three. In the cyclone
which so damaged our harbour three years ago, the
force of the wind in Madras had no relation, so far
as could be traced, to the fury of the sea.
The Millingtonia suberosa, of which I am so fond,
does not send its roots deep into the ground, and we
have lost a great many beautiful specimens of it.
22. My wife and I were yesterday reading the
Paradise, and when I turned to it to-day in the
edition of the Divina Commedia, which I used in
Rome thirty-three years ago, I found many more
passages marked than I recollected, — I know not at
what period of my life, — amongst them one in Canto
XIIL, which came to me with all the freshness of the
unknown : —
Ch' io ho veduto tutto il verno prima
II prun mostrarsi rigido e feroce,
Poscia portar la rosa in su la cima :
E legno vidi gia dritto e veloce
Correr lo mar per tutto suo cammino
Perir al fine all' entrar della foce.
24. Out early to the great Red Hills tank, which
VOL. I 2 A

354 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1884
breached on Friday morning, accompanied by Mr.
Price the collector, my wife and others also going
with me.
While dictating a letter to-day, I remembered
that J. R. Green, the historian, had, one day, asked
me which of all the inventions of our day had done
most for the working classes ? I guessed this or
that ; but his answer was " Beyond all doubt sixpenny
photographs." 26. European Mail arrives.
John Warren writes : —
" You ask me in your letter of the z3rd ultimo what was
the real name of 2J2THP MEFAS. Ah, that's the exact
point ! Nobody knows his name now, and it has perished.
In his own time he was so great a man that such a
detail as his own personal name was wholly superfluous,
so he put on his coins ' King of Kings, the great Saviour.'
If one asks a child at Putney the name of the river there,
your answer is, 'Why the river to be sure.' So on a
highly interesting book-plate of the sixteenth century
a certain Ehrardus Voigt is recorded as the Abbot ' hujus
monasterii ; ' but the engraver thought it unnecessary to
give the monastery's name, and now it cannot be
identified." 28. I have bought lately a few Indian engraved

1884 THE SCOTCH DINNER 355
gems. Among them are several in Kufic, which,
as I understand, is the character in which the first
copies of the Koran were written, taking its name
from Kufa in the Pachalic of Bagdad, where the
best copyists lived. It was introduced shortly before
Mahommed, and fell into disuse about 1000 a.d.
29. St. Andrew's Eve — The Scotch dinner, for which
I lent the Banqueting Hall, and at which I presided,
making a long speech in proposing the toast of the
evening — " St Andrew for Bonny Scotland." The
accident of the headquarters of the 21st Regiment,
being on its way through Madras to Burmah, gave us
no less than six pipers I I will not deny that when
they were all behind my chair, I thought of the
answer of a musical German merchant to my father,
at Eden, when cross - questioned as to his feelings
when he first heard the bagpipes, he said, "Mr.
Grant Duff, I did feel myself upon the brink of
ruin." Cavendish, who is in the 74th, told us the other
day that no man could possibly be inclined to run
away when the pipers were playing "the point of
war." "Certainly not if they were behind him,"
remarked some Southron who was present.

356 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1884
30. I have been glancing through the Life of Mr.
Hope-Scott — a book interesting to me in various ways.
George Boyle used to talk to me about him more
than thirty years ago, and, though I never knew him
personally, I can remember his appearing before me,
when I was sitting on a private Bill Committee, and
being struck with his fine presence.
I note one or two things which have specially
attracted my attention.
In volume i. a letter to Gladstone, dated in
August 1838, is given, in which Mr. Hope-Scott
mentions a charter of King John's for constituting a
High Priest of the Jews !
" It is in the appendix," he says, " to Collier's
Ecclesiastical History, volume i. page 72. I have
also read it in Tovey's Anglia fudaica. It grants
a certain 'Jacobo Judaeo de London, presbytero
Judaeorum, presbyteratum omnium Judaeorum totius
Angliae ; ' and he was to be considered ' Dominicus
Judaeus noster, quem specialiter in servitio nostro
retinuimus.' Further, he was to have the privilege
'ne de aliquo ad se pertinente ponatur in placitum,
nisi coram nobis, aut coram capitali judiciario nostro ;
sicut charta Regis Ricardi Fratris Nostri testatur.'

i884 NEWMAN AND HOPE-SCOTT 357
Here then you have a specimen in the twelfth century
of a royal supremacy over the Jews, and of a concession
of civil privileges to their high priest as such."
In a diary kept in Germany in 1840-41, Mr.
Hope -Scott mentions that DoUinger said that he
thought the confessional gave a better rather than a
worse view of human nature.
At page 300 of volume i. there is the following
passage in a letter from Newman to Mr. Hope-
Scott : —
"I think, then, that we must be very much on our
guard against what Cowper calls ' desperate steps.' Do
you recollect the sheep in the ' Needless Alarm ' ?
' Beware of desperate steps — the darkest day,
Live till to-morrow, will have passed away.'
"We are apt to engross ourselves with the present.
Think what ups and downs any course of action has ;
think how many hills and valleys lie in our way in a
journey. One event blots out another."
In the second volume there occurs, in a letter from
Manzoni to Mr. Hope-Scott, what strikes me as a
singularly pretty turn of expression : —
"Je n'ai craint pas non plus de vous choquer en vous
ecrivant avec un ton si familier, et comme il conviendrait

3 58 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1884
a un ancien ami ; car il me semble que nous le sommes ;
I'affection et V estime de ma part et une grande bont'e de la
votre ont bien pu supplier le temps."
There is, at page 131, a remarkable letter from
Mr. Hope-Scott to Newman, in which, writing on
30th December 1857, he says: "Brace yourself up
and work on, not as if you must do some particular
work before you die, but as if you must do your best
//// you die."
In page 232, it is mentioned that Mr. Hope-Scott,
in reply to a friend who asked him, " Why don't you
go out ? " replied, " Don't you think that the work in
Committee gives a man sufficient exercise \ Cicero
considered making a speech was exercise."
I remember once, in July i860, talking to Disraeli
about riding. He said that he used to ride in the
mornings, but had given it up, because it made him
sleepy for the rest of the day. "What do you do
now," I said, "in the way of exercise?" "What
better exercise can there be than oratory ? " was his
answer. Writing in 1852 Newman says, "I have ever had
the extremest sympathy for Walter Scott. When he
was dying I was saying prayers (whatever they were

1884 JOWETT 359
worth) for him continually, thinking of Keble's words,
" Think on the minstrel as ye kneel ; " and he returns
to the same subject in a letter of 1871 (page 243).
On 1st October i860, Newman writes: "The
march of time is very solemn now : the year seems
strewn with losses ; and to hear from you is like
hearing the voice of a friend on a field of battle."
Mr. Hope-Scott died in 1873, and was buried in
the vaults of St. Margaret's Convent, Bruntsfield,
Edinburgh — the first Catholic religious house, by the
way, which I ever saw, and that when I was young
enough to be taken all over it by one of the nuns, in
the winter of 1836-37.
Mr. Eliot told me that just after getting the
Ireland, he dined alone with Jowett. It was the day
on which Henry Smith died, and his host did not
utter one word till near the end of the evening, when
he said, " It is very nice to be young, and to gain
University Scholarships." Deceinber
2. To-day I finished looking through the "Typical
Birds " at the Museum. While thus engaged, I came

36o NOTES FROM A DIARY 1884
across a bird, well -named the magpie robin, and
common in Madras, who was treated as badly by
Linnaeus as the Countess of Chinchon.
He is commonly known here as the "Dayal."
Latham called him the " Dial," and the great Swede,
jumping to the conclusion that his name had some
thing to do with the sun, christened him Copsychus
Solaris, or meant so to do ; but he or his amanuensis
or his printer made a mistake in the last word, and the
poor creature has been known to science ever since as
Copsychus saularis.
4. European Mail arrives. Rutson writes : " At
Coutts's yesterday a not old-looking clerk told me he
remembered Lord Dalhousie coming there to make
his financial arrangements before he went to India.
So much has happened in India since, it seems like a
century ! "
6. My wife gave an afternoon entertainment to
native ladies in the Banqueting Hall, which seems to
have given much pleasure. Of course, no gentlemen
were present.
I have had Lord Malmesbury's Memoirs of an Ex-
Minister read to me.
Amongst the good things in it none interested

i884 LORD MALMESBURY'S MEMOIRS 361
me more than the saying attributed to the Princess
Clotilde during the Savoy affair :
" Ouand on a vendu I'enfant on peut bien vendre le
berceau."
Perhaps the most amusing non-political anecdote is
one which  sent me before the book reached these
distant regions, of a French Attache who asked
whether " la chasse du renard " was not " bien
dangereuse." "Mais oui," replied Lord Malmesbury, "on peut
se casser le cou ! " " Oh, ce n'est pas cela que je veux
dire," rejoined the other, " car on peut aller doucement.
Mais n'est-ce pas que le renard se defend quelquefois et
saute a la figure ? "
Under the date of 12th May 1838, we hear of a
very bad dinner at the Tuileries. That reminds me
of a story told by my old friend Bremner (see these
Notes for 1854), who, arriving one day at the Hotel
Bristol with one of his pupils, and asking what was
the charge for dinner, received the reply, "Monsieur,
pour dix francs vous aurez un diner, pour vingt francs
vous aurez un bon diner, mais pour quarante francs
vous aurez un diner tel que le roi Louis Philippe a
quelquefois, mais la Reine Victoria  jamais ! "

362 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1884
Some charming lines were given to me to-day by
Mr. Eliot, before he left us for a tour in the South.
They are printed, he told me, on the fly-leaf of a
Newdigate on Ifiez de Castro : —
" Could song repass the portal
Where silent feet are led.
Or loving lips of mortal
Praise duly loves long dead.
Or catch that golden glory
The mists of time make dim.
No sweeter sadder story
Than this were told by him.
Love wrought her life and shattered.
Love found and left her fair :
Five hundred years have scattered
The marvel of her hair.
Such gifts to them that know him
Love gives at last to keep,
Remembranc'e in a poem
Forgetfulness in sleep."
Mr. Eliot told me, as an illustration of the change
in the way of looking at things amongst the youth of
the next generation, that in the first draft of this New
digate by Mr. Nichol, a contemporary and friend of
my nephew, there was not any allusion whatever to

i884 iReZ de CASTRO 363
the famous coronation, of which Mrs. Hemans made
such good use : —
" Why passed a faint cold shuddering
Over each martial frame.
As one by one to touch that hand
Noble and leader came.
Was not the settled aspect fair ;
Did not a queenly grace
Under the parted ebon hair
Sit on the pale still face ?
Death, death canst thou be lovely
Unto the eye of life ;
Is not each pulse of the quick high breast
With thy cold mien at strife ?
It was a strange and fearful sight —
The crown upon the head
The glorious robes and the blaze of light
All gathered round the dead."
9. On the 4th, 5th, 6th, 8th, and to-day I looked
through the Indian Mammals, of which we have in
the Museum only a very imperfect collection.
I note that the jungle sheep, of which we hear so
much at Ootacamund, is no sheep but a deer [Cervulus
aureus), otherwise the Muntjac. The so-called ravine
deer or Chikara, of which we had a specimen at

364 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1884
Guindy, is no deer, but a gazelle {^Gazella Bennetti).
The Sambur, of which we are all so fond as a pet, is
Rusa Aristotelis. The Ibex of Sispara, more properly
called the Nilgiri wild goat, is Hemitragus Holycrius.
The useful and most unjustly abused musk-rat is not
a rat but a shrew [Sorex caerulescens). The bandicoot,
Pandi-koku or rat-pig, which I have seen about the
stables, is Nesokia gigantea.
Agnew and I ascertained yesterday that the lovely
butterfly, so abundant in the Park here, and so fond of
the flowers of Stachytarpheta jamaicensis, is Menelaides
Hector I
The extent to which " the tale of Troy divine "
has been turned to account for the naming of Indian
butterflies is very amusing !
15. Reuter telegraphs that Reay succeeds Fergusson.
(See this Diary for 4th December 1862.) What were
the chances then against my hearing, as Governor of
Madras, that he, being at that time a young Dutch
Attach^, was appointed Governor of Bombay ?
18. European Mail arrives.
Madame Renan writes of her husband : —
" Son histoire du peuple d'lsracl avance rapidement ;
il y a deux volumes qui sont presque prets a imprimer.

i884 MADAME RENAN 365
"L'annee prochaine, nous passerons I'ete en Bretagne.
Au mois d'aout dernier, mon mari est alle dans son pays
natal de Treguier, qu'il n'avait pas revu depuis pres de
quarante ans. On I'a re9u si bien, avec tant de cordialite,
qu'il veut desormais y passer une partie de l'annee ; aussi
nous avons loue une maison pour six ans au bord de la
mer, pres de Lannion. Nous serons pres du Guindy,
mais pas du votre, dont je conserve une si jolie photo-
graphie. " Vous apprendrez certainement avec interet que mon
mari vient d'etre elu President de la Societe Asiatique,
apres la mort de M. Adolphe Regnier, qui lui-meme
succedait a notre ami M. Mohl. Vous souvient-il des
soirees si interessantes que nous avons passees dans ce salon,
le premier de tous a certains egards, et comme nous n'en
reverrons plus dans notre societe divisee et democratisee a
I'exces?" My sister writes : —
"Talking of colours ! The other day the Grand Duke
having a great desire to see a piece called Der Richter von
Zalamea — it was to be given.
"The costume of the heroine, a beautiful and wealthy
Spanish peasant girl, was a sad puzzle. It had to be
evolved out of Fraulein Jenicke's inner consciousness.
" She came to me in despair, and we concocted a too-
too- peasant dress ! out of a black Thuringian petticoat
and one of your Madras table-covers.

366 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1884
" One of your sofa cushion-pieces, an embroidery in
colours, became a beautiful bodice. The other, a superb
bit of golden embroidery, was converted into a superber
gold cap.
" And when liiez appeared. Ah I ran through the
house." At the Council luncheon to-day,  mentioned
the case of an eccentric gentleman who had changed
the spelling of his patronymic. " He has," said some
one, " taken the B out of his name and put it in his
bonnet." My wife, with Evelyn, Lily and Agnew, leaves us
for Ootacamund. After seeing them off, I dined
with the Bishop and slept at Guindy.
25. European Mail arrives.
My sister sends a description of the night of the
26th November at the Weimar Theatre : —
"A long train of sledges from Jena dash up bringing
the Jenenser Burschenschaften over to Schiller's Rauber —
just as on that day one hundred years ago. As the piece
was about to begin, the ringleader of the Burschenschaften
jumped up, as they all sat round him in the parterre,
commanding ' Silentium ! ' and the splendid young voices
burst out — ' Stosst An ! ! !
Jena soil leben ! ! '

1884 THE JENA STUDENTS 367
Each verse ending with ' Frei ist der Bursch I '
Immediately after, they and all who could sing, burst out into
' Deutschland, Deutschland iiber alles —
Uber alles in der Welt ! '
The Primus ending with
' Silentium !
Das Spiel kann beginnen ! '
When the Robbers sang their famous
' Ein freies Leben fiihren wir
Ein Leben voller Wonne '
The Studenten answered with the
' Gaudeamus igitur ! '
ending with ' Silentium !
Das Spiel kann welter gehn ! '
" All these interruptions are the ancient privileges of
the Jenenser Burschenschaften during the performance of
Schiller's Rauber.
" Exactly the same scene took place one hundred years
ago when the piece was performed before Karl August,
and Schiller was presented to him."
Baxter writes: "Surely at last there is something
new under the sun. These conferences in Downing
Street, I imagine, are unexampled in any country."
John Warren writes : —

368 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1884
" How odd it sounds here to hear you talking (like a
rather despondent Bucks farmer does of his turnips) of 'a
very fair crop of castor oil.' I am sorry the new bird of
the Anamalais turned out only a young one with unde
veloped plumage. When I was making a list of Cheshire
birds, I had four or five similar disappointments, notably in
the difficult family of the willow wrens. Your Madras St.
George, Colonel Davies, certainly had a larger audience
than his predecessor, when he slew the elephant who was
' under the ban of the Empire.' Could not some Madras
Pistrucci numismatically commemorate the deliverance
of the district .? "
and again :
" I told Thomas you were getting quite an Indian
collection, which pleased him much. Of course, you have
the King of Kings. He is a sort of Anacharis that clings
round all hoards from India, and his coins are in every
numismatic pie. There is a good paper in our new
journal on the coins of Hannibal struck in Italy. I dare
say you did not know there were coins of Hannibal ?
(well, no more did I.) Then a good solidus of Lewis the
D6bonnair has been found in the Isle of Man, where it
had no kind of business to ' eventuate ' any more than
your Valens in the Vaigai river."
I am keeping a separate record of what people
write to me about my Administrative Minute. The

i884 C^SAR AND CICERO 369
following, however, from the same letter is sufficiently
amusing to find a place in these non-business pages : —
" Seriously, these records of yours must be of the
greatest use to the India Office and to your successors^
Cassar would have written an admirable Minute, barring,
I fear, the physical Science ! But it was not in Cicero to
do it : he would have gone too much into flowery gener
alities. As to Pontius Pilate, we have unfortunately no
means of estimating his literary ability, still his quod scripsi
scripsi, is not bad as far as it goes."
Walpole writes from the Isle of Man on a very
different subject : —
" Insularity, I notice, does not produce the same com
parative consequence with the poorer as with the richer
classes. The reason I imagine to be that the poorer
classes are (everywhere almost) insular in the sense that
they travel little and see little ; while our poorer classes,
being largely seafaring, travel more and see more than the
poor of other countries."
Speaking of India, he says : —
"What wants bringing out is (i) the diffierent policies
which the chief Governors-General wished to pursue, e.g.,
Cornwallis, Wellesley, Minto, and Lord G. Bentinck,
these four about illustrate all the kinds of policy ; (2) the
reasons, stronger than men, which forced all Governors-
General or nearly all Governors-General up to Canning
VOL. I 2 B

370 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1884
into the same policy ; and (3) the effects of British rule in
India. Surely this could be done in a form which would
be intelligible to English readers within the compass of an
octavo volume."
26. Captain Bagot repeated the other day a story
which he had heard, when lately in London, of a
Frenchman saying to a German, with reference to the
Iron Cross : " I wonder at your wearing a decoration
which is worth only a few centimes." " I thought,"
replied the German, "that it had cost you two
Napoleons." Dufferin writes from Calcutta, under date of 2ist
December : " I left the Breakfast Club in anything
but a weak state. They had acquired quite an
Imperial Roman mien from the consciousness of
sending forth so many kings to govern the world."
27. I have been turning over the pages of the
Diaries of a Lady of Quality which Hayward edited.
I observe that Mr Thomas Grenville thought the
monument to Munro, which we have on the island at
Madras, the finest equestrian statue in the world. I
will bear that in my mind when I next see my dis
tinguished predecessor with a kite sitting on his head,
which is his usual fate — Milvus Govinda evidently

i884 SIR THOMAS MUNRO 371
considering that he was put there as a sort of perch I
Miss Wynn's criticism is far saner, and she recalls the
great horse of the Capitol to which Michael Angelo
said Cammina I
The following inscription is said to be one of three
(all of which are given) on an obelisk in the cemetery
at Arnheim : " CiVIBUS EXTERIS
SUMMIS INFIMIS
QUOCUNQUE RiTU DeUM COLENTIBUS
Omnibus vita functis
Hang placidae Ouietis Sedem
Communis Multorum voluntas
Destinavit."
This on a column sent by the Emperor Leopold
to the Field of Blenheim is also new to me :
Agnoscat tandem Ludovicus XIV
neminem ante obitum
Debere aut felicem aut magnum vocari.
I remember being much interested forty years ago
by seeing the place where Poniatowski was drowned
in trying to cross the Elster at Leipsic ; but I was not
aware that a fortune-teller had said to him Hiiten Sie
sich vor der Elster. Beware of the Magpie ! The
statement is made on page 348 of Miss Wynn's book.

372 NOTES FROM A DIARY 1884
29. My wife, writing from Ootacamund, says,
" Such heavenly weather — just frappe," and speaking
of Lily, who, since we left England, has been brought
up at Smithhills in Lancashire and at Winwick in
Northamptonshire, adds : " Poor thing, her joy at
finding a dandelion was quite touching, as if some
thing familiar had been reached at last."
30. Prince Rene de Faucigny Lucinge, his nephew
Prince Aymon, and Baron Louis de la Grange, who
came to stay with us on the afternoon of Christmas
Day, left Guindy this morning.
The first -named is a man of forty-three. He
served in the Italian Navy at Lissa, and saw the
Palestro blow up. Later he took part in the Franco-
German War.
He told me that at Custozza a son of Cesare
Balbo's, who was an A.D.C, met a body of troops in
full flight headed by their commanding oflicer. He
rebuked this man, and was told to mind his own
business, whereupon he gave the runaway a sabre-cut
across the face. The hero was, however, afterwards
decorated for " a wound received before the enemy " !
He mentioned also that Cavour had been literally
killed by the folly of Garibaldi. On leaving the

1 884 THE MADRAS AFTER-GLOW 373
Chamber after having been exposed to a furious attack
from that quarter, he said to M. de Faucigny's brother-
in-law, " lis me tueront, Pallavicini. C'est trop
d'ingratitude ;" and his words were but too prophetic.
Many of the Left in Paris were, he avers, very
hard hit when the Due de Chambord refused the
crown. They had speculated, and heavily, for the
Hausse. 31. I rode with Mr. Webster and Captain Hanbury-
Williams towards the sea, turning in time to enjoy
all the beauty of the after-glow in front and of the
full moon behind. The former was not quite so
lovely as that of yesterday, when Castelar's quite un
translatable phrase about the Virgins of Murillo amidst
the " Arreboles de increada luz " kept coming back
and back to me.

END OF VOL. I

Printed by R. & R. Clark, Limited, Edinburgh

8113

W-'' ¦¦!

¦ «:'.' 'y.

. eL'

. =«lif.

m.

Sf-

SKi'^i-f ;

mm^