'As I recollect Lord Robert Cecil in New Zealand, he was not more fond of
exercise than Lord Salisbury appears to be to-day, always being studious.
He did not care to take long walks, but once I persuaded him, with
another young Englishman, to go and see the beautiful Wairarapa Valley.
They walked there and back, and on the last evening, while returning,
were caught in a terrific rain-storm. They sought the shelter of some
rocks, contrived to make a fire, and over it dried their shirts.'

Nothing afforded Sir George more genial occupation than a talk about
books or politics, the latter always on the lofty ground to which,
somehow, he could at once lift them. He had a knack of taking a question
and shaking it on to your lap. You had it, as you never quite had it
before, and to your fascinated ear the version seemed the only possible
one. The secret was that Sir George laid hold of the kernel of a subject,
and worked outwards--an expositor, not a controversialist. When evening
waned he would turn to Epictetus, and then to a well-thumbed New
Testament. It was the hour of meditation.

'I have studied the New Testament in various languages,' he said, 'thus
getting more insight of it than I could have got through a single
language. Never, during my early exploring work, was I without my New
Testament to comfort and sustain me. The Sermon on the Mount is the great
charter of mankind, its teachings the highest wisdom for all times and
all climes. It and other pieces, which I might select, are of exceeding
beauty and full of guidance and counsel. They inculcate in the human
heart a love of one's fellows, irrespective of colour.'

He read that teaching into the happier London which greeted him, after an
absence of more than twenty-five years. At last, the museums and art