him a pension of £4,000 for twenty-eight years and a half from the date of his return home, with a loan of £50,000 free of interest. Their bounty enabled him to live on at Daylesford in dignified ease, amid such happiness as good health, a good conscience, a loving wife, the company of books and old friends, regular exercise, and the varied pursuits of a country squire could bestow. Congratulatory letters and addresses from nearly all parts of India, from people of all ranks, classes, creeds, and colours belied the persistent calumnies of his impeachers, and consoled him, as he declared, 'for the want of money to throw away on the luxuries of a farm and a greenhouse, and on the tax of a town residence[1].'
The quiet tenour of life at Daylesford was varied by yearly trips to London with his wife, and by visits to the Impeys at Newick or to some other of his old friends, who in their turn became his guests. At home he busied himself with breeding horses, trying new kinds of food upon his cattle and new methods of growing barley, with laying out and cultivating his gardens, and with many attempts to raise fruits and vegetables from Indian seeds. He kept up his old Indian habits of early rising and cold bathing. After an hour spent in his library he would breakfast there by himself on bread and butter and tea which was never watered twice. When Mrs. Hastings and her guests had sat down later to their breakfast, he would read them some of his own verses, or a passage from
- ↑ Gleig.
