[Sidenote:  Arrival of Lady Elgin.]

A few weeks later the long dreary months of separation from all that he most loved were happily ended by the arrival of Lady Elgin, who with his youngest daughter, Lady Louisa Bruce, reached Calcutta on the 8th of January 1863.

[Sidenote:  State of India.]

In passing from the personal narrative of these months, to their public history, it is necessary to bear in mind what was the state of the Indian Empire at the moment when Lord Elgin undertook its government.

[Sidenote:  Peace.]

‘India,’ to use his own words, ’was at peace; at peace in a sense of the term more emphatic and comprehensive than it had ever before borne in India.  The occurrences which had taken place during the period of Lord Dalhousie’s government had established the prestige of the British arms as against external foes.  Lord Canning’s Vice-royalty had taught the same lesson to domestic enemies.  No military operations of magnitude were in progress, to call for prompt and vigorous action on the part of the ruling authority, or to furnish matter for narrations of thrilling interest.  On the contrary, a hearty acquiescence in the belief that no such opportunities existed, and that it was incumbent upon him, by all practicable means, to prevent their recurrence, was the first duty which the situation of affairs prescribed to a new Governor-General.’

[Sidenote:  Questions to be solved.]

There were indeed grave questions awaiting solution; questions of great perplexity and embarrassment, though of a domestic and peaceful character; some of them the more perplexing because they bore upon ’those jealousies of race which are the sources of almost all our difficulties in India.’  But as regards such questions his habitual caution, as well as the philosophic turn of his mind, led him to study very carefully all the conditions of each problem before attempting to propound any solution of his own; and in the meantime he felt that his duty was to employ any personal influence which he could acquire in smoothing the course of such measures as had been set in operation by the authority of others.  ‘The first virtue,’ he said to one of his colleagues, ’which you and I have to practise here at present is Self-denial.  We must, for a time at least, walk in paths traced out by others.’

But though, for the reasons above stated, it would be a mistake to look in the records of the time for any great measures, executive or administrative, on which he had set his mark, his various speeches and letters, more especially the full and frank communications which he addressed from time to time to the Secretary of State for India, Sir Charles Wood, show with what keenness of interest, as well as with what sagacity, he approached the study of Indian questions.  A few extracts from his correspondence are here given to illustrate this; and as affording some indication of the unremitting industry with which he laboured at this period, searching into and maturing his views upon one difficult subject after another, as well as the whole plan of Indian government.