She Was A Devoted
Wife, And The Soul Of Kindness To Every One She Liked Or Respected.
Peace And Honor To Her Memory.
In the sad years which followed my misfortune of 1846, previously
alluded to, it was enough for me, wearily,
To get through the work of
the day, and then to return to a home where there has always been
sympathy, kindness, and cheerfulness in the darkest and most anxious
hours of laborious and self-denying lives. In those years I rarely saw
any of my old friends of prominence and station. My wife and I lived
the lives of recluses until clouds ceased to lower. Health became
restored, a moderate and augmenting fortune, laid in the foundations of
carefulness, came to us; and we at last emerged into daylight, again.
When in Parliament, in 1857, I made a speech in the House of Commons,
which some thought timely, upon the then pressing question of Indian
railways. Mr. Disraeli did me the honor to listen to what I had to say.
After his lamented death, one of his executors handed back to me, in an
envelope, endorsed in his own hand, the letters which I had written to
him in the years of the Manchester Athenaeum.
I may add, that Mr. Disraeli's ear was always open to me during the
struggles for the Intercolonial Railway as a means, and the
Confederation of the British Provinces in America as the great end, of
our efforts. He was strongly in favour of Confederation; and, just as
we owe the establishment of a Crown Colony in British Columbia to the
sagacity of Bulwer Lytton, so we owe the final realization of
Confederation, through the passing of an Act by the Queen, Lords, and
Commons of Great Britain and Ireland, to the Government, no less
sagacious on this question, of Lord Beaconsfield.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 459 of 492
Words from 127227 to 127536
of 136421
