His Island of Retreat.

Perhaps the happiest time of Grey's life was when he was playing the squire on his beautiful island home the Kawau. That natural park of the Hauraki Gulf he made a kind of botanical museum; he had a staff of gardeners for the grounds of his mansion-house (it cost him £5,000), and from the island he sent many plants to stock the Albert Park in Auckland. He grew trees and flowers from all parts of the world; he even had coconut palms, under glass; they grew but there were no “milky-nuts.” There with his books and all manner of treasures about him, he lived a leisured cultured life and often played the hospitable host to famous men from abroad. It was from this quiet retreat, among the great pohutukawa groves and the products of many a foreign land, that he was called forth to lead a party and shake up the dry bones of politics in Wellington. He was an inspiration to reform; his presence, his eloquence, and his magnetic mana carried all before them—for a time. But that great burst of popularity, which followed on the successful appeal of a deputation which waited on him at the Kawau, was chiefly confined to Auckland, where Grey always was a hero. He was Premier of the Colony for two years, 1877–79. There is no space here to narrate the ex-Governor's career as a fighting politician; but it may be summed up as a page 20 meteor-like life, full of fire and thrust. The veteran's last few years in politics were a miserable dragging out of a great career; wiser of him had he retired before his reputation and his popularity waned. He alienated his supporters by his too-autocratic methods, his obstinacy, his secretiveness, his unreliability, his indifference to the views of others of his party.