Page:The Marquess of Dalhousie.djvu/40

32 spread a universal conviction that there was a veritable king of men in India, and that that king was Dalhousie.

'Those who were most intimate with him,' says the man who knew him best, his private surgeon and honoured friend, Dr. Alexander Grant, 'accorded to his ability and sagacity something scarcely short of absolute worship. Sir James Outram told me that he had had intercourse with the Duke of Wellington, Sir Robert Peel, and other leading statesmen in England, but never felt so awed, so stricken by his own inferiority, as in his interviews with Lord Dalhousie, who had always treated him most kindly.' This, too, in spite of the smallness of his stature, and of the fact that Dalhousie was a much younger man than the veteran soldiers and administrators on whom he so firmly impressed his will. The following description of his appearance when he entered on his duties at Calcutta, I take from Captain Trotter, who apparently derived it from personal communication with Dr. Grant: —

'Youthful looking even for his years, erect in gait, with a slim well-knit figure crowned by a noble, handsome, Titanesque head, lighted up by a pair of large, bright, blue eyes — "really quick, clear, honest eyes" — to the frank courtesy of his manner he added "an air of authority that commanded respect and even awe." ... His forehead was broad and deep; the nose slightly aquiline, with fine,