His Departure.

He did not at once return to England. The Executive Council and both chambers of the Legislature passed votes of respectful sympathy and eulogized his courage in withstanding the calumnious assailants of the Colony and his devotedness to its interests. The citizens of Wellington organized a grand send-off in the harbour on the day appointed for his departure. By one of those perversities that so often did him wrong, though he seemed more on his guard against them than other men, he refused to take part in the demonstration. Instead of letting himself be triumphantly escorted to the steamer by a flotilla, he took refuge, of all places, in the house of an officer of the Treasury, who ever after spoke of the act as the proudest distinction of his life. There, in his borrowed tent, Achilles sulked till "the tumult and the shouting" died away. Then, in the dark he skulked on board of the ship that conveyed him to Auckland, en route for his hermit-island of Kawau, where he lay perdu till the hour of parting struck. Once he emerged. A public banquet was given in Auckland in his honour, and his successor, Sir George Bowen, who had arrived from Queensland to take over the reins of government, as if he were going to do something that required apology, somewhat defiantly informed the Colonial Office that he intended to be present on the occasion. The devolution of office should have been no more melancholy than the handing over of authority by the retiring to the incoming president at Washington, when the ceremony takes place in the presence of a crowd; but the circumstances made it tragic. It was the last public dinner he ever attended, or the last but one. Twenty-six years later he declined page 162a banquet given in his honour by the Colonial Office in London, accepting a luncheon instead. In February, 1868, he shook the dust of the Colony off his feet, doubtless inwardly resolving that he would never again set eyes on it. After vainly offering the Colonial Government his mediation with the rebel guerilla chief, Titokowaru, he set sail for England to seek justice at the hands of the British Government for the foul wrongs he believed it had done him, to solicit further employment if he could not have that, and to wreak his revenge upon it if he could have neither. He was to have neither. He was never again to be employed by the Colonial Office, and the only justice he was ever to receive from it, save the barren honour of a public entertainment, was a tomb in St. Paul's.