me a grand chance to rally him, since I was already in possession of the
honours of Oxford and Cambridge. Those of the former I received after my
first administration of New Zealand, those of the latter when I was re-
called from South Africa. At Oxford, the students, with riotous zest,
sang the "King of the Cannibal Isles," which, more or less, I had been.
Froude had forgotten all that, but he agreed that no man could hope to
have such a treat twice in a lifetime.'

It would have been curious if Sir George, a maker of British Parliaments,
had not found his way to their cradle at Westminster. He had himself been
a candidate for membership, but the House of Commons was only to know him
as a visitor. 'Why,' he said, 'I met Adderley, now in the Lords, who once
wanted to impeach me. Perhaps I deserved to be impeached--I don't
remember!--but anyhow we had a very agreeable chat about old days.' Sir
George, as a Privy Councillor, had been escorted to the steps of the
throne in the House of Lords. There he met again the Marquis of
Salisbury, who, as Lord Robert Cecil, had stood up for him, years and
years before, in the Commons, even to the extent of criticising the
English of Bulwer Lytton's despatches. When he went to Australasia, to
fortify his health and study the New World, he was the guest, for a
period, of Sir George in New Zealand.

'Some of his friends,' said the latter, 'were great friends of mine; for
example, Beresford Hope, who founded the "Saturday Review," and Cook, who
edited it. Lord Robert was tall and slight, and, when he came to New
Zealand, not at all strong. While he was with me, he saw a good deal of
the manner in which a Colony was conducted, and of the relationships
between it and the Mother Country. He would read the despatches that I
wrote and received, and generally made a study which may have proved
useful to him in his subsequent career.