756 Lieut-General The Hon. Sir Andrew Clarke [May 27, 



she was the paragon of all a wife should be. She gained the esteem 

 and respect of the Earl of Minto, who wrote of her as " the great 

 lady," and of Dr. Leyden, who addressed one of the happiest efiforts 

 of his muse to Olivia. She fascinated her husband's staff, and even 

 the Malay clerk Abdulla probably revealed the truth when he said 

 " it was she that taught him." 



On arrival at Penang, or really before arrival, while at sea, 

 Eaffles showed that his pertinacity and assiduity were not abated by 

 the rise in his fortunes, by turning his attention to the study of the 

 Malay language. He worked hard at it, employed on his own account 

 a staff of native teachers and translators, and was soon a qualified 

 interpreter. But he became much more than a mere interpreter. 

 He mastered Malay history, laws, and the great principles of naviga- 

 tion by which the commerce of the Archipelago had been controlled. 

 He grasped the importance of Malacca, and by a timely remonstrance 

 he saved it from the fate which the Government had decreed. He 

 read much of Singapura, " the lion city " and metropolis of the old 

 Malay empire, and he probably thought of reviving its departed glory 

 before he knew that it would make an unrivalled maritime station. 

 Malay studies strengthened by a common pursuit his friendship with 

 Leyden, and the importance of this fact was that Leyden was then 

 resident at Calcutta, and that he had gained the confidence of the 

 Governor-General, Lord Minto. If Raffles had been an ordinary man, 

 the appointment to Penang would never have possessed any greater 

 significance than a good, well-paid post, and his name would never 

 have been handed down to posterity as one of our greatest Pro-Consuls. 

 At Penang there never was the least chance of any special distinction. 

 There is no need to disguise the fact that Raffles was ambitious. He 

 broke through the barriers of local insignificance that would have held 

 him confined in a vegetating existence until he added his own to the 

 numerous graves of his colleagues on the islaud, or returned to pass 

 his closing years in England with an impaired constitution and not 

 one of all his dreams achieved. He looked beyond Penang, he saw 

 the opportunity of freeing the Straits and the Spice Islands from the 

 jealous control of the Dutch which arose out of the temporary asser- 

 tion of French authority through Napoleon's incorporation of Hol- 

 land. These events were of public notoriety ; they formed the topic 

 of conversation both at home and abroad, but Eaffles alone, with a 

 singular prescience and forethought, at once saw how they could be 

 turned to Imperial advantage. 



He left Penang on leave, and he went to Calcutta. He was 

 received by Lord Minto, on whom he made a most favourable impres- 

 sion, and in a few weeks he won the Governor-General round to his 

 policy of conquering Java as the sure way to secure for ever the 

 predominance of British commerce in the waters of the Far East. At 

 that moment Raffles was exactly twenty-nine years of age. Yet for 

 some inscrutable reason this half-forgotten and unappreciated public 

 servant is even to-day slighted, judging by the inadequate reception 



