mastery of the Oudh question and to the re-organisation of the government of the North-Western Provinces, many parts of which had lapsed into something like anarchy. Colonel Stuart, who was Military Secretary to the Governor-General during these eventful months, gives in his diary a vivid idea of the anxious and dispiriting circumstances under which Lord Canning assumed the functions of the Lieutenant-Governor, and addressed himself to this serious enhancement of his already heavy task.
In February Mr. (Sir W.) Muir, the Secretary to the Government of the North-Western Provinces, arrived from Agra with a staff of fifty clerks, awaiting inspiration from his new Chief and adding hourly to his toils. The tremendous strain of the past year was beginning to tell upon the Governor-General's health. In January, Lady Canning, herself bearing sad evidence of the anxieties which her Indian life had involved, learnt with apprehension that a respite at Simla was out of the question for her husband. She began to feel doubtful of his physical ability to bear the burthen, and to wish for his resignation. Lord Canning, however, was in no mood to shirk his task, or spare nerve or muscle in its accomplishment. Again and again Colonel Stuart's diary records feats of long continued effort, such as no man can accomplish with impunity — entire nights passed at the desk — long days without an instant's intermission devoted to despatches for which an English mail was waiting. On the 10th January, Colonel Stuart records that, after labouring
