A GREAT PRO-CONSUL.

Auckland Star, Volume XXV, Issue 146, 20 June 1894, Page 2

A GREAT PRO-CONSUL.

Under the heading M A Greab Pro-consul" the " Review of Reviews " saya: " The Life and Times of Sir Georgo Grey " has been issued in London, and has called forth a tropical shower of reviews, almosb all of them highly favourable, both to tbe subject and the author of the biography. Sir George Grey's remoteness from London has almost the effecb of remoteness in bime on the imagination of London critics,, and when his figure is thus set in historical perspective its greatness of scale becomes apparent. All bhe reviewers agree tbat Sir Geo. Grey, in the natural order of deserved promotion, should have gone from the Cape bo Canada and from Canada to India as Governor-General. He would thus have taken bis place in tbe, gallery of greab pro-consuls which stretches from Wellesley and Cornwallis bo Laurence and Dufferin ; and Sir George Grey's would nob have been bhe leasb in bhab procession of greab names. His second appointment to New Zealand albered bhe complexion of Sir George Grey's life. The reviews all admit, too, that, Sir George Grey, at the time of tbe Mutiny, helped to save India, by the swift resolve and bhe all-compelling energy Wibh which, on his own responsibility, he diverted the troops on their road to China, and despatched them, with every man and rifle to be collected at the Cape, to Calcutta. A weaker man would have shrunk from that bold act, and so added months to bhe horror-and bloodshed of the Mutiny. ¥ Tfie two volumes of Mr Sees, says MrGrant Allen in tho 'Daily News' are more than A history of a man, they are in greab parb the history of an empire? Sir George Grey's biography is no doubt an imporbanb tontribution to Australasian literature."