thout rest or
intermission, and they get hardened and toughened into a sort of
defiant, eager temper which is very impressive.... I am continually
reminded of the old saying that it is a society in which there are no
old people and no young people. It certainly is the most masculine
middle-aged, busy society that ever I saw, and, as you may imagine, I
don't like to fall behind the rest in that particular.' He laboured,
therefore, hard from the first--even harder as time went on; and came to
feel the strongest sympathy with the energetic spirit of the body of
which he was a member. He made some valued friends in India; chief among
whom, I think, was Sir John Strachey, of whom he always speaks in the
warmest terms, and whose friendship he especially valued in later years.
Another great pleasure was the renewed intercourse with the Cunninghams,
who were able, in one way or another, to be a good deal with him. But he
had neither time nor inclination for much indulgence in social
pleasures.

It will be seen, therefore, that the Indian part of my story must be
almost exclusively a record of such events as can take place within the
four walls of an office. I shall have nothing to say about
tiger-shooting, though Fitzjames was present, as a spectator, at one or
two of Lord Mayo's hunting parties; nor of such social functions as the
visit of the Duke of Edinburgh, though there, too, he was a looker-on;
nor of Indian scenery, though he describes the distant view of the
Himalayas from Simla, by way of tantalising an old Alpine scrambler. He
visited one or two places of interest, and was especially impressed by
his view of the shattered wall of Delhi, and of the places where his
second cousin, Hodson, had seized the king and shot the princes. He
wrote a description of these scenes to Carlyle; but I do not think that
he was especially strong in descriptive writing, and I may leave such
matters to others. What I have to do is to give some account of his
legislative work. I recognise my incompetence to speak as one possessing
even a right to any opinion upon the subject. My brother, however, has
left in various forms a very full account of his own performances,[103]
and my aim will be simply to condense his statements into the necessary
shape for general readers. I shall succeed sufficiently for the purpose
if, in what follows, I can present a quasi-autobiographical narrative. I
will only add that I shall endeavour to observe one cond