Page:John Russell Colvin.djvu/20

12 public life of thirty-two years was spent in Bengal. He had found himself in Haidarábád and the Deccan as an Assistant to the Resident at the Court of the Nizám; in the Upper Provinces with the Governor-General; at Nepál as Resident; at Maulmain as head of the Administration; in the Upper Provinces again as Lieutenant-Governor. His experience had been large and varied; and except during three and a half years' furlough from 1842 to the latter part of 1845 he had literally known no rest. Like other eminent Indian officers of his time, it is mainly as a public man that we must think of him. With whatever tenderness their thoughts may have turned homewards — and few could have given more tender care throughout life than Mr. Colvin to the welfare of his children — such men saw little of their families. Their children were brought up far away from them. Their wives, under stress of ill-health, or similar necessity, were frequently separated from them. They themselves remained absorbed in affairs, and in the varying public interests which, as they were drawn nearer to the heart of the administration, crowded in increasing importance round them. Nor was there much in their Indian life to lessen the pressure of their labour. Mr. Colvin found rest in the atmosphere of his home, the society of his friends, and in his books. He read unceasingly; in the full hours of his labours as Private Secretary, in the intervals of his work on the Calcutta Bench, in the leisure of a long furlough, in the brief moments which present