Page 5 Advertisements Column 1

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 11986, 7 June 1902, Page 5 (Supplement)

I Every letter Lord Salisbury writes from ' Downing-street perpetuates, says a writer, the name of a clever man from Massachusetts. Those were the days before the Fourth of July had any significance in American annals, and George Downing, the first scholar in the first public school in Massachusetts, and the first gradute sent out by Harvard College, came to England arid became a chaplain in Cromwell's army. By a remarkable stroke of fortune he was , sent to represent England at The Hague when Europe was trembling before Oliver, and during three distinct eras in England's history he held the office of British Ambassador at the Dutch Court. He was as popular— as clever— the Merry Monarch as under the Protector and the ' Commonwealth, and it came to pass, in the reign of' Charles 11., that the man from ■ Massachusetts was granted a great tract of land at Westminster, where he built huge mansions and laid out Downing-street. To I this day Downing-street is Downing-street still, and, though George Downing is forffOtten, there is no name in the British umpire which is more familiar to us than his.