foundations. Unrecognized, it may be, and little honoured in England, their names are household words in the greatest Province of her Empire. They illustrate in their persons the best traditions of the service, the worthiest ambition of the country to which they belong. For it is through such as they were that the natives are convinced among much which is dark and discouraging, of the goodwill and the honest purpose of their alien and unseen rulers. The air is clearer where they have passed. Their actions blossom in the dust. Yet the legacy of their lives is to be found in their character even more than in the tale of their achievements.
When the news of Mr. Colvin's death reached Lord Canning, he sat down, says Lady Canning[1], and wrote the notification which ensues. The recurrence three times in those few lines of the word 'high' betrays the haste with which, among the pressure of the writer's labours, it was composed. It indicates none the less clearly, perhaps the more clearly, the idea which, in connexion with Mr. Colvin, predominated in the mind of the Governor-General.
'It is the melancholy duty of the Eight Honourable the Governor-General in Council to announce the death of the Honourable John Russell Colvin, the Lieutenant-Governor of the North-West Provinces.
'Worn out by the unceasing anxieties and labours of his charge, which placed him in the very front of the dangers by which of late India has been threatened, health and strength
- ↑ The Story of two Noble Lives, vol. ii. p. 305.
