SIGHTS AND SCENES.

New Zealand Graphic, 27 June 1906, Page 34

SIGHTS AND SCENES.

Space fails us to recount the strange and varied experiences that the Premier crowded into those eight momentous weeks. He visited his birth-place, St. Helens, and received an enthusiastic welcome from his fellow townsmen. He visited Cambridge, and received from that ancient University, the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws. ' He appeared at Westminster, and was introduced to Mr. Balfour and various other leading politicians of the day. He visited Hawarden, and took tea with Mr, and Mrs. Gladstone. Imagination would fain dwell upon the meeting between the greatest of colonial Liberals and the aged statesftian who had so long represented and typified the Liberal cause at Home; and even more striking must have been the contrast between the square, strong, rough-hewn, self-made man of the people and the fastidious, cultured, somewhat irresolute Conservative, unconvincing and unconvinced, who was destined to wteek the fortunes of his party and make way for such a Liberalism as Mr. Seddon himself might have approved. Visits to Windsor Castle, to Edinburgh and Glasgow, Manchester and Birmingham, prepared the way for th* great State functions that centred round the Queen —the Naval Review at Spilhead, the Military Review at Aldershot, the State Ball at Buckingham Palaee. the Stat* Banquet at Windsor. And when the Jubilee eeremoniala were ever, there wert

fawnn»rahie minor festivities, from the dinners given by the Speaker of the House •f Commons and Mr. Chamberlain, to the garden party at Devonshire House and the Lord Mayor’s Ball. Everywhere Mr. Seddon was to be seen, and everywhere he was “the eynosure of neighbouring eyes.’’ Surely in the whole range of the Empire’s history we can find no more startling contrast than this, between “Digger Diek- of the moleskins and hobnails at Kumara, and the Right Hon. R. J. Seddon, P. 0., I.LD., the guest of Royalty, greeted as friend and equal by British statesmen and British peers. And the ehief charm of the contrast —and indeed the only excuse for dwelling at such length on these details —is the recollection that through it all the man remained unchanged. Feted and banqueted, and received at Court, ho eame back to his own country the same generous, outspoken, unconventional man that his friends had always known, readier than ever to plunge into the vortex of public duty, and to overwhelm himself with a load of responsibilities too heavy for any one man to bear.