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Rh spondence with the Governor-General is still extant, and shows how fully he enjoyed the confidence of his Chief.

In the spring of 1842, his sister Frances (Mrs. Montgomery, who was adorned with all the matronly graces of her mother and sisters) died at Allahábád of small-pox. The twelfth chapter of Hebrews was read at her bedside — 'we are compassed by so great a cloud of witnesses' — and he prayed with her. Later in the year, while on a journey, he writes to Montgomery: —

'I thought of you yesterday when our Church directed the attention of all her followers to the 20th Psalm — "the Lord hear thee in the day of trouble — send thee help from the sanctuary."'

Towards the close of 1843 he was, after the retirement of Mr. Robertson, appointed to be Lieutenant-Governor of the North-Western Provinces, by Lord Ellenborough, who on this account deserves the public gratitude. He was a young man for so high an office as this, being thirty-nine years of age and having twenty years' service. He proceeded from Calcutta to Agra in November and found that Mr. (afterwards Sir George) Clerk, who was then in charge, would not make over the government till early in December. He employed the interval profitably in visiting the sites of the proposed Canal works on the Ganges near Hard war. In the language of the Gazette, the Honourable James Thomason assumed charge of the Government of the North- Western Provinces as Lieutenant-Governor on Dec. 12, 1843.