and strictest dictates of conscience would prescribe. But Dalhousie's labours, great and beneficent as they were, had been performed in the exhilarating atmosphere of success and popularity. Lord Canning had, not less heroically, confronted unexampled difficulties and disasters amidst storms of obloquy. Each played his part nobly. England may well be proud of both.
On Lord Canning's return to England, good hopes were at first entertained of his restoration to health. Alarming symptoms, however, soon developed themselves. The physician who had been his medical attendant in India was summoned, and recognised at once that the end was near at hand. On Lady Clanricarde devolved the painful duty of informing her brother that his days were numbered. Lord Canning received the intelligence with characteristic stoicism: 'What! so soon?' he exclaimed, and forthwith prepared himself for death.
During the few weeks which remained he received farewell visits from Lord Granville, Lord Harris, Lord de Tabley, and others of his kinsmen and friends. On January 1 7th he died. It was discovered after death that his constitution had been far more completely undermined than there had seemed reason to suppose to be the case, and that toil, anxiety and the tremendous strain on nerve and brain had pronounced his doom while he was still labouring, with no apparent diminution of energy, at the completion of his arduous task.
He was buried in Westminster Abbey, close to the
