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CHAPTEH XX. 



DEATH OF LORD GEORGE BENTINCK. 



It is with a lively sense of pain and grief, which 

 the lapse of more than forty years has not yet 

 extinguished, that I approach the closing scene 

 of a life so prematurely ended at a moment when 

 it was fullest of promise. Mr Disraeli remarks that 

 the labours of Lord George Bentinck had been 

 so superhuman from the day when, in 1845, he 

 had been trying to find a lawyer to compose a 

 speech for him to deliver in Parliament, until 

 the end of the session of 1848, that every one 

 ought to have prognosticated at the latter period 

 that it was impossible for them to be continued 

 much longer upon such an exhausting scale. '■' No 

 friend," adds the future Prime Minister, " could, 

 however, control his eager spirit. He obeyed the 

 law of his fiery and vehement nature, being one 

 of those men who, in whatever they undertake, 

 know no medium, but will succeed or die, come 

 what may." The two friends parted for the last 

 time on the steps of Harcourt House — the last of 



