Mr. Grant Duff took lea-re of his constituents on Friday
week, in one of those speeches in which he reviews the situa- tion, after a fashion which we hope he will keep up in India. There would be a distinct intellectual interest in an annual review from his pen of British progress in politics, as it appears to him at that distance. It would be as if Posterity were publishing its judgment. We cannot condense the speech, but must notice an illustration of the odd way in which fate sometimes deals with a man. A particular town, person, or subject is always turning up in his biography, without any initiative of his own. Mr. Grant Duff, for instance, is not Indian in his tastes at all, but he was born of an Indian family, quite without his own vote ; he was offered and rejected a nomina- tion to Hayleybnry ; his first speech was on Lord Palmer- ston's Indian Bill ; he was six years Under-Secretary for India, not having sought that appointment; he travelled in India, no doubt of his own choice, but With so little idea of ever seeing it again that, as he quitted it he wrote "Encore nn reve de la vie fini!" and now, entirely against his own expectation, he is going out as Governor to Madras. Almost every man who reflects has some story of himself to tell like that, and the beat explanation of the persistent drift is un- conscious volition. There is, however, an element of pure luck in such matters, too, and why one man's luck should be connected with clubs, while another is somehow interlaced with spades— which is certainly the case, as witness the biographies of half the heroes —is a perplexity to the mind. Mr. Grant Duff's uninvited friend is a country ; Napoleon's was a date.
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