Page:The Marquess of Dalhousie.djvu/43

Rh and pagri. Whether in camp or at Government House he was to be found for his long allotted hours pen in hand, his papers before him, and his despatch boxes piled up on either side.

'To those around him,' wrote his personal surgeon, Dr. Grant, 'he seemed enamoured of his task. Even in that hot and depressing climate, the intellectual exertion which he liked, brought relief rather than lassitude; for business seemed not only easy, but delightful to him. He went with heart and soul into details, and to the driest subjects he gave vitality.' 'Everyone who had business with him,' says Sir Richard Temple, 'felt that intercourse to be a pleasure: the harder the affair the greater the satisfaction: so completely trained was his capacity for administration.'

How thoroughly he mastered details, may be realized from a few well-known facts. The Foreign Department in the Government of India is usually reserved for the Governor-General's immediate control. In the modern phraseology of Indian official life, the Viceroy is his own Foreign Minister — that is to say, he has no Member of Council to aid him in that department, as he has in the others, but transacts all business directly with the Foreign Secretary. During Lord Dalhousie's administration the Foreign Department was by far the most important and most severely worked of any of the branches of the Government. For it included not