A GREAT PRO-CONSUL.

Auckland Star, Volume XXV, Issue 69, 21 March 1894, Page 3

A GREAT PRO-CONSUL.

US-DEB.the heading •« A Greab Pro-consul " I the ' Review of Reviews " says : «• The Life and Times of Sir George Grey " has been issued in London, and has called forth a tropical shower ot reviews, almosb all of them highly favourable, both to tbe subjecb and the author of the biography. Sir George Grey's remoteness from London has almosb the effecb of remoteness in time on the imagination of London critics, and when his figure is thus set in historical perspective its greatness of scale becomes apparent. All the reviewers agree that Sir Geo. Grey, in the natural order of deserved prumotion, should have gone from the Cape to Canada and from Canada to India as Governer-General. He' would thus have taken his place in the gallery of greab pro-consuls which stretches from Wellesley and Cornwallis to Laurence and Dufferin ; and Sir George Grey's would not have been the least in thab procession of great names, His second appointment to New Zealand altered the complexion of Sir George Grey's life. The reviews all admib, too, that, Sir George Grey, ab the time of the Mutiny, helped to save India, by the swift resolve and the all-compelling energy wibh which, on his own responsibiliby, he diverted the troops on their road to China, and despatched them, with every man and rifle to be collected ab the Cape, to Calcutta. A weaker man would have shrunk from that bold act, and bo added months to bhe horror and bloodshed of the Mutiny. "Thetwovolumes ofMrßees, says MrGranb Allen in the 'Daily News' are more than ft history of a man, they are in greab parb the history of an empire? Sir George Grey'B biography is no doubb an important contribution to Australasian literature."