A GREAT PRO-CONSUL.

Auckland Star, Volume XXIV, Issue 138, 13 June 1893, Page 8

A GREAT PRO-CONSUL.

Under the heading " A Great Pro-consul " the " Review of Reviews " says: " Tha Life and Times of Sir George Grey " has been issued in London, and has called forth a tropical shower of reviews, almost all of them highly favourable, both to tho subjecb and the author of the biography. Sir George Grey's remoteness from London has almost the effect of remoteneaa in time on the imagination of London critics, and when hie figure ia bhua set in historical perspective its greatness of scale becomes apparent. All the reviewers agree that Sir Geo. Grey, in tho natural order of deserved promotion, should have gono from tho Cape to Canada and from Canada to India tta Governer-General. He would thus have taken his place in the gallery of great pro-consuls which atretches from Wollesley and Cornwallia to Laurence and Dulferin j and Sir George Grey's would nob have beon the least in that) procession of great namea. His second appointment to Now Zealand altered the complexion of Sir George Grey's tifo. The reviews all admit, too, tnat, Sir G6orge Grey, at the time of the Mutiny, helped to savo India, by tho Bwift resolve and the all-compelling onergy with which, on his own responsibility, he diverted the troops on their road to Chiaa, and despatched them, with every man and rifle to be collected at the Cape, to Calcutta. A weaker man would have shrunk from thab bold, act, and so added months to the horror and bloodshed of the Mutiny. "'That wo volumes of Mr Rees, saysMrGrant Allon in the' Daily News' are more than a history of a mau, they are in great parb the history of an empire? Sir George Grey's biography is no doubt an important contribution fco Australasian lioeralure,"