his private life — is attested by those who had watched around the stricken man, helpless to assuage his great sorrow.
Why lengthen out the story of the remaining years of sickness and toil? In 1853, during his months of desolation, Lord Dalhousie saw his projects for railways and telegraphs for India become accomplished facts. In 1854, he put the cornerstone to the legislative edifice which was to exercise so great an influence upon the destinies of the country. In May, 1854, a year after his wife's death, the new Legislative Council met for the first time; and during the same year the great Despatch was penned by the Secretary of State which laid the foundation of a national system of Indian public instruction.
Before the end of the rains, however. Lord Dalhousie's health was so broken that it seemed impossible for him to continue longer at his work. 'He suppressed,' says Sir Richard Temple, 'as much as possible any manifestation of his distress or suffering; and the public was scarcely aware that his strength and life were gradually but surely ebbing away[1].' A voyage along the Orissa coast recruited his strength for a moment; but his surgeon found it necessary to call into consultation another leading Indian physician. The two advisers
- ↑ Men and Events of my Time in India, p. 124, ed. 1882.
