he writes — remembering the joyous circle that once surrounded him — that he is 'to be the sole inhabitant.' He has to fill it with the furniture which he and they had left behind them just a year previously. But the sight of this furniture brings sadness: 'The same chairs on which we sat, the same tables round which we clustered, the same pictures on which we gazed, the bookshelves, even the footstools the same. What is the principle which makes one cling so tenaciously to objects that cannot but inflict pain? I would not for any sum part with one article, and yet can I look upon them, and be otherwise than sad?'
He finds that Sir Charles Metcalfe had retired at the end of 1837, that Lord Auckland, though Governor-General, had assumed for a while the direct administration of these Provinces, and that afterwards Mr. Robertson had been appointed Lieutenant-Governor. He served in the Agra Secretariat till the close of 1841, when he became a Member of the Revenue Board in succession to Robert Merttins Bird; and it was a red-letter day in the calendar of northern India when these two eminent persons met at the Board's headquarters, at Allahábád.
His intercourse indeed with Bird, which had long been intimate, was at this time noteworthy as supplying a special example to the public service. He writes thus in a private letter at Agra: —
'Mr. Bird stayed with me nearly a week. I enjoyed his visit greatly, and I trust it was for the good of both. I never found him so instructive or communicative on those
