Page:John Russell Colvin.djvu/60

52 The tale of Mr. Colvin's earlier years in India draws to a close. In 1835 he had been advanced to the post of Secretary of the Land Revenue Board. The late years had been pleasant. His wife had returned in 1833 from England, restored to health, after two and a half years' absence. He was surrounded by friends. His work was congenial. He had made for himself a foremost place in the junior ranks of the Civil Service. He had gained good experience. His active mind had thrown itself eagerly into all the discussions of his day. If his 'topics, even in courtship' had not been, as Macaulay wrote of his brother-in-law Trevelyan, 'steam navigation, the education of the natives, the equalization of the sugar duties, the substitution of the Roman for the Arabic alphabet in the Oriental languages,' his mind, like his friend's, was 'full of schemes of moral and political improvement.' He was prominent among the most keen reformers; always forward on the side of all that was liberal. The hour of comparative leisure, too, such as it was, for which he had prayed the gods, had been granted him. He had made full use of it, and fortune had helped him to equip his mind by an opportunity unique in India. For his intimacy with Macaulay must have been fruitful, stimulating his love of reading, and quickening his mental vigour. To have been one in whose conversation Macaulay took pleasure may have been only on the part of that great man a more generous way of saying of an acquaintance, that he was one who took pleasure in Macaulay's conversation. But to