726
LYTTON.
more than a month from the last named date> on Feb. 29, 1868, when he sucoessf tilly concluded the nego- tiation of a Commercial Treaty be- tween Great Britain and Austria, he was transferred to Madrid. Six months later he was promoted to the Secretaryship of Embassy at Vienna. There he acted once more from Oct. 30 to Dec. 29, 1869, as Charg^ d'Aifaires, and was thence trans- ferred on Oct. 5, 1872, as Secretary of Embassy to Paris. Scarcely three months afterwards (Jan. 18, 1873), upon his illustrious father's death, he succeeded to the title as the second Baron Lytton. Twice during that same year^ from April 13 to May 17, and again from Sept. 14 to Oct. 22^ he acted at Paris as Charge d'Aifaires, and to the close of Ms career in the French capital as Secretary of Embassy, he was always, during the absence of the ambassador, accredited there as Minister Plenipotentiary. His lord- ship, having previously declined the Governorship of Madras, was ap- pointed Her Britannic Majesty^s Ambassador at Lisbon in the De- cember of 1874 ; and, after occupy- ing that post for a year, was sud- denly informed by telegram, in the January of 1876, of his nomination as the Viceroy of India. Hastening to London to complete his arrange- ments for assuming this high office, his Excellency, on the 1st of March, took his departure for Hindostan. Midway on his journey Lord Lytton met by pre-arrangement in Eg^ypt H.B.H. the Prince of Wales, then on his way home from his tour through India. Immediately on his arrivid at Calcutta, his Excellency was sworn in as Govemor-G^eneral and Viceroy on the 12th April, 1876; and on the 1st Jan., 1877, surrounded by all the princes of Hindostan, presided at the gorgeous ceremonial which marked on the plains of Delhi the Proclamation of Her Majesty Queen Victoria as Empress of India. In Dec., 1877, the Queen conferred upon him the
honour of the Grand Cross of civil* division of the Order of ^j, Bath. On the 12th of BeoemY^m,
1879, an attempt was made ^Jj^ sassinate Lord Lytton. His ex^Jie/- lency had just arrived in CalcuMts that evening by railway, and v?^ys being conveyed from the station to Government house in one of the viceregal carriages, when two shots were &ed at him by a man named Busa, happily without any ill-effect whatever. A third shot was fired immediately afterwards by the in- tended assassin at the Viceroy's Private Secretary, who was seated in the next carriage. Colonel Colley, at once alighting, seized the assailant, who proved to be a half-intoxicated Eurasian who had been recently discharged from the lunatic asylum at Allahabad. On the 28th of April, 1880, the noble lord was raised to the dignity of an earldom, being created Earl of Lytton, of Lytton in the county of Derby, and Visooimt Knebworth of Knebworth, in the county of Herts. The noble lord had previously gfiven in his resignation as Viceroy of India, his friend, the Earl of Bea- consfield, placing it in the hands of Her Majesty simultaneously with his own resignation, in the April of
1880, of the Premiership. Lord Lvtton's first work was published when he was twenty-four, and was at once warmly w^comed by the critics. It proved quite independ- ently his ii^eritance of great lite- rary genius, for it appeared under a pseudonym. This was in 1855, the work being entitled "Clytem- nestra, the Earl's Betum, the Artist, and other Poems," by " Owen Meredith." Another work appeared from his hand in 1859, called " The Wanderer, a Collecti<m of Poems in many Lands," evi- dencing a singularly graceful fan<rf , and a surprising facUity of versifi- cation. This was followed, in 1860, by a novel in sprightly verse, called " Lucile," which was afterwitfds re- published in 4to, in 1868, with Ulus-
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