Yes Sir George Grey heard,
from afar, the 'tumult and the shouting,' and they rounded off his own
career as the True Briton and True Imperialist.
He heard also, amid the glorious rumble, of another royal progress made
by the Queen. It was at her Highland home, the spectators the eternal
hills which lie about it. For caparisoning there was a donkey-chaise, and
for escort a Highlander, carrying the shawls. The Queen was bound for the
manse, across the fields by the river-side, to pray with the minister's
wife that he, being ill, might be made whole.
That was the royal progress Sir George Grey would best have liked to see,
because it held the key to the other. From it, he sent, by his friend the
Prime Minister of New Zealand, a last message to Greater Britain. 'Give
the people of New Zealand my love,' it ran, 'and may God have you in His
keeping? It was the closing of the book, save for the blank pages which
occur at the end.
'It's all light,' was Selwyn's dying exclamation in Maori. None knew the
Maori words that Sir George Grey murmured, and none doubted what they
were. To us, the island race of two worlds,
Under the Cross of Gold,
That shines over city and river,
There he shall rest for ever,
Among the wise and the bold.
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