his first serious illness, a violent fever which rapidly reduced him to the verge of death. By an effort of nature he shook it off and rallied for a while. Then in the autumn of 1839 he glided, as an invalid in river-boats, down the Jumna and the Ganges to Calcutta. There he had a relapse of fever, and decided in the beginning of 1840 to proceed to England, being entitled to furlough after his active service of ten years. He arrived in England during June of that year. The first act in the drama of his public life was thus concluded. He had done well, he had mastered the details of a difficult profession, in his own words he “had learnt his business.” He was esteemed by his comrades and his superiors as a competent officer in all respects; beyond this, however, nothing more was said or thought of him at that time. All this has been and yet will be recorded of hundreds of British officers in India, before or after him, whose names are nevertheless not written in the roll of fame. _Vixere fortes ante Agamemnona multi_: indeed many men as good as he then was are now living and will still live. Furthermore, many officers have, in the course of their first ten years, shown more signs of genius, or talent, or statesmanlike accomplishments, than he had displayed up to this time. When he sailed from Calcutta for England in 1840 neither he himself nor his friends had, on a retrospect of his first ten years, formed any idea of the career which he was to run during his second ten years, and had never, even in day-dreams, caught a vision of the destiny which awaited him during his third ten years. The elements of his character were being gradually fused into granitic consistency. To him was applicable that British metaphor, which though familiar is never trite because the proofs of its truth are oft-recurring: the sturdy oak grows slowly, but in proportion to that slowness is the ultimate strength to bear the weight, withstand the strain and resist the storm.