154 THE PA8T0BAL AGE IN AUSTBALASIA 



exile, he felt a strong j^earning to visit once more the 

 land that was virtually his birth-land. He was received 

 like a returning monarch. For some months he con- 

 descended to hold the high office of President of the 

 Legislative Council in New South Wales ; but feeling 

 that he was no longer of that time or that place, he again 

 left the shores of Australia. He was never to see them 

 again. Ten years later he died. But Australia, in one 

 of whose political constitutions was embodied his im- 

 mortal part, was also to possess all of him that was 

 mortal. He lies buried in his own estate at Vaucluse, 

 near Sydney, where he "v\'as laid with a solemnity and 

 pomp befitting the occasion. We might sing with the 

 poet of " The Return of the Emperor " ; 



" The clouds shall pass away from thy great glory ; 

 Nothing to trouble it for aye shall come ; 

 It shall expand itself o'er all our story, 

 Like a vast azure dome." 



According to Mr. Rusden, he had a classic Roman 

 head and a massive figure, but a slouching gait and a 

 cast in the eye. His voice, his son tells me, was extra- 

 ordinarily powerful and could be heard at a great dis- 

 tance. In his lifetime opinions differed about his rank 

 as an orator. He was compared and contrasted with 

 Robert Lowe. The speeches of Lowe were the " abler " 

 of the two : they shone with greater literary brilliancy ; 

 they were more redolent of culture ; but they were cold 

 with a purelj^ intellectual passion, while Wentworth's 

 burned with elemental fire and fused facts, citations, 

 and ideas in a molten stream. From the passages cited 

 by Rusden one would infer that they might be compared 

 with the speeches of the great orators of our race — with 

 Pitt and Gladstone, if not with Fox and Bright, with 

 Daniel Webster, if not with Wendell Phillips ; but 

 either comparison would do him far too much honour. 

 Their elevation, their passion, their invective are not 

 always sustained ; there are commonplace passages 

 and conventional language ; in construction and diction 

 they are often careless and sometimes slovenly. His 



