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212 ments as to Burma and the territory now known as the Central Provinces, each of which had acquired sufficient importance to be placed under an administration of its own. Public opinion in Calcutta had lost its bitterness; the English community were learning to take a juster and more rational view of the ruler, whom, in the hour of excitement, they had so fiercely criticised. The Press honestly admitted the transcendent services which the departing Viceroy had rendered to his country. Farewell addresses breathed a tone of sincere regret, Europeans and natives vied with each other in testifying affection and respect. 'Safe may you return to your native land' — such was the burden of one of these addresses: — 'the good wishes of all attend you. In that land of the West, if justice and humanity be ever honoured, you cannot but hold a distinguished place.' Little did the framers of these kindly phrases anticipate how vain were their good wishes, or in how few months the object of their too tardy appreciation would be beyond the reach of human praise or blame.

On March 12th Lord Elgin arrived, and a week later Lord Canning took his departure. He was in great depression of spirits — 'pale, wan, toil-worn and grief-stricken,' as an onlooker observed. Like Dalhousie he left India a widower; like him, too, though he knew it not, a dying man. Like Dalhousie he had devoted himself with almost fanatical self-devotion to a task too grand, too weighty for human infirmity, the task of ruling India as the highest ideal of government