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 CHAPTER VI

Furlough: Nepál: Maulmain: Sadr Court, Calcutta, 1842-53

Mr. Colvin arrived in England with Lord Auckland in August, his family having preceded him in January. Sixteen years had passed in the East; and the ensuing three and a half years were to give him the only leisure of his lifetime. They passed, like all pleasure, too rapidly. During the earlier part of this time he was much engaged in helping Lord Auckland with material to be used by his friends in Afghán debates in the Lower House, or by the late Governor-General in his own defence in the Lords. He wrote on the same subject in the Whig organ, the Morning Chronicle. Of the East India Company Directors he saw much; of John Stuart Mill, then at work in Leadenhall Street, not a little. Lord Auckland presented him to many of his political friends. The names of eminent men of the moment, now dropped into obscurity, are frequent in his Diary. He renewed his acquaintance with Macaulay, his friendship with Trevelyan. He read voraciously, adding largely to the stock of information which he had laboriously brought together in India. His two elder sons were