Page:The Earl of Auckland.djvu/20

14 deep regret at the loss for India of its best officer, and for himself of his best help-mate.

Bidding farewell in December to his sorrowing friends at Agra, and exchanging some last words with the Governor-General at Cawnpur, Metcalfe went down to Calcutta, where he encountered a daily, almost hourly storm of farewells from residents of all classes and colours, during the fortnight before he sailed home. No Indian ruler since Warren Hastings had been honoured with so full-voiced a manifestation of popular sympathy. At the age of fifty-three — he had gone out to India a boy of fifteen — Metcalfe exchanged the service of which he had long been the pride and ornament for a career not less distinguished under the Crown, a career cut short by the disease which killed him in 1846, As his biographer truly said of him, 'there are few examples on record of men in whom the finest moral qualities have been united with so healthy an intellect — so sound an understanding.' Lord William Bentinck spoke of him as a colleague whoso behaviour was 'of the noblest kind,' who 'never cavilled on a trifle, and never yielded to me on a point of importance.' His genial temper created — in Marshman's words — 'a perpetual sunshine around him;' and none who knew him. however slightly, can forget that winning charm of manner, that sweet, unstudied courtesy, which placed all who approached him at their ease, and captured without seeming effort the goodwill of rivals and opponents.