At Oxford, the students, with riotous zest,
sang the "King of the Cannibal Isles," which, more or less, I had been.
Froude had forgotten all that, but he agreed that no man could hope to
have such a treat twice in a lifetime.'
It would have been curious if Sir George, a maker of British Parliaments,
had not found his way to their cradle at Westminster. He had himself been
a candidate for membership, but the House of Commons was only to know him
as a visitor. 'Why,' he said, 'I met Adderley, now in the Lords, who once
wanted to impeach me. Perhaps I deserved to be impeached--I don't
remember!--but anyhow we had a very agreeable chat about old days.' Sir
George, as a Privy Councillor, had been escorted to the steps of the
throne in the House of Lords. There he met again the Marquis of
Salisbury, who, as Lord Robert Cecil, had stood up for him, years and
years before, in the Commons, even to the extent of criticising the
English of Bulwer Lytton's despatches. When he went to Australasia, to
fortify his health and study the New World, he was the guest, for a
period, of Sir George in New Zealand.
'Some of his friends,' said the latter, 'were great friends of mine; for
example, Beresford Hope, who founded the "Saturday Review," and Cook, who
edited it.
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