isit as it really affected Lowe
has been told by his biographer. We are left to imagine a good deal,
and therefore must conclude that he would be less than human if he did
not realise that the shadow of retribution was pursuing him. If his
thoughts of himself were otherwise, he was soon to be disillusioned.

He spent three days on the Rock, and had a good reception and
send-off, and ere long made his appearance in London and presented
himself to his quasi-friend, Bathurst, who, with an eye to his own and
his colleagues' interests, discouraged the idea of publishing an
answer to Sir Walter Scott's book. Bathurst, in fact (with unconscious
drollery), advised Lowe to hurry back to Ceylon without delay, lest
meanwhile a vacancy of the governorship should occur and he might lose
his opportunity. He was assured of the Government's appreciation of
him as their most trusted and loyal public servant, while as a matter
of fact it was ludicrously obvious that his presence was quite as
objectionable to them in England as it was to the exiles in St.
Helena. He was fully alive to, and did not underestimate, the amount
of dirty work he had done for them, and very properly expected to be
amply rewarded. It never occurred to him that retribution was
over-shadowing them as well as himself, and that they could not openly
avow their displeasure at the odium he was the cause of bringing on
the Government and on the British name by reason of his having so
rigidly carried out their perfidious regulations. Had public opinion
supported them, their action would have been claimed as a sagacious
policy, but it didn't, so this poor, wretched, tactless, incompetent
tool became almost as much their aversion as the great prisoner
himself. In fact, things went so ill with them that they would have
preferred it had Lowe indulged every whim of his prisoner, granted him
full liberty to roam wherever he liked, recognised him as Emperor, and
even been not too zealous in preventing his escape; and they must have
wished that, in the first instance, they had not thought of St.
Helena, but wisely and generously granted him hospitality in our own
land. This last would have been the best thing that could have
happened for everybody concerned.

Ill-treatment of the most humble prisoner or assassination of the most
exalted can never be popular with the British people. Sir Hudson got a
cold douche when he obtained an interview with the Duke of
Wellington. His Grac