drowning himself. If he does, you are to send a servant to me, informing me of the fact, and go for the drags. If such a casualty should occur, you are to consider your engagement as terminated that day week. I object to skittles, to potting at public-houses, and to running along the towing-path like a lunatic, bellowing at the idiots who row boat-races. Any conversation with my son Erne on the subjects of pigeonshooting, pedestrianism, bagatelle, allfours, toy-terriers, or Nonconformist doctrines, will lead to your immediate dismissal. Do you understand?"

I did not; but Erne and Reuben did. They understood that the old man had

taken a fancy to Reuben, and was making fun. They both told me this, and of course I saw they were right at once. Still, I was puzzled at one thing more. Why, after he had turned away, did the old gentleman come back after a few steps, and lay his hands on Reuben's shoulders, looking eagerly into his face? Could he see any likeness to his father-to the man who had used him so cruelly-to Samuel Burton? I could not think so. It must have been merely an old man's fancy for Reuben's handsome, merry countenance; for Sir George pushed him away with a smile, and bade him go about his business. To be continued.

CALCUTTA, May 11, 1863.

DEAR SIMKINS,-I lately read through a file of the Friend of India, for 1836, with great pleasure, not unmingled with regret. The value of such a paper in these days would be incalculable. The tone of the articles indicated the existence in Anglo-Indian society of a spirit which has passed away and left but faint traces. In those times the wellbeing of the Hindoo was the first and dearest care of our leading civilians. Their successors honestly do their duty by the native population; but that duty is no longer a labour of love. Thirty years ago the education of the people of the country was the favourite subject of conversation in the best circles, and occupied the spare time of men who had little enough of that commodity. Hindoo history, Hindoo literature, Hindoo social life, were discussed with inexhaustible ardour; and the hopes entertained concerning the future of the race were proportionate to the interest which it excited. Of course this feeling, like all that is noble and unselfish in the mind of man, partook of a strong

dash of illusion. But the same may be said of every successive stage in the progress of knowledge and civilization. Philanthropists are a sanguine class; and it is well for them that they are So. The generation which was determined to show that Englishmen came to India with other ends than that of making money, and swaggering about the "great Anglo-Saxon race," might well be forgiven for over-rating the merits of Sanskrit poetry or the attainments of a Bengalee Bachelor of Arts. Once every week, Marshman, the editor of the Friend of India, would come down from Serampore for a conversation with the Secretary to Bengal; and the salutary fruits of this close understanding between the executive power and the press were evident, both in the acts of the Government and the articles in the Friend. Public measures were dictated by a spirit of enlightened philosophy, and the suggestions and disquisitions in the journal were practical and temperate, and acquired additional value from the fact that they were understood to represent the views of men in power. A noisy and en

thusiastic breakfast-party frequently met to discuss the subject which was next their hearts. Of these men, some are still doing good work well, while others have passed away, leaving their mark more or less deeply impressed on their generation. There was Sir Edward Ryan, then Chief Justice of Bengal, now President of the Civil Service Commission, whose hearty address and kindly advice are among the most agreeable associations which a young civilian carries from the shores of England. I remember well, that, on emerging from his pleasant presence, I remarked in the hall a bust of Dwarkanath Thakur, a Hindoo gentleman for whom Sir Edward entertained a strong regard. For our officers were then not ashamed to call a native by the name of "friend," and would have been very much ashamed to talk of him by the appellation of "nigger," even without the customary prefix. Then there was young Trevelyan, very vigorous and earnest, and very proud of "Dwarky" having eaten a mutton-chop in his house. When Sir Charles returned to Calcutta, after the lapse of five-andtwenty years, he was mobbed by Hindoos, Mussulmans, and Parsees, with whom in old days he had hunted and travelled and disputed about Persian poetry and jurisprudence, and whom the most excellent Indophilus treated with a courtesy and familiarity which a young assistant-magistrate of modern days would scorn to show towards the proudest zemindar. There was young Colvin, whose destiny was to die sick and weary in the darkest hour of the great mutiny, at a time when his authority as governor of the North-West Provinces was confined to the space commanded by the guns of the fort of Agra Sir Benjamin Malkin, an able judge and a ripe scholar, a man eminently distinguished "by public spirit, "ardent and disinterested, yet always "under the guidance of discretion:' Ross Mangles, who, when chairman of the Court of Directors during that eventful year 1857, could never be convinced that the mass of the population No. 52.-VOL. IX.

of India had been suddenly transformed into felons and rebels, preordained by Providence to afford food for powder and the gallows. Last, but not most silent, there was Macaulay, in high delight at finding himself in a country where so much was to be learned, keeping the company far on towards noon over the cold curries and empty teacups, until the consciousness of accumulating bones drove them one by one to their respective offices. Now-a-days such a reunion would be reviled in the local papers as a parcel of conspirators assembled to hatch dark plots against the English name, the planting interest, and the development of the resources of the country. Under the auspices of Lord Dalhousie, the harvest which had been sown by these men and those who thought with them was reaped in a series of wise and beneficent reforms. But during the reign of the next viceroy things took a fatal turn.

At the commencement of 1857, humanity and philanthropy were the order of the day. We had just brought to an end the Russian war, which had been fought throughout in a spirit of generous chivalry, in spite of the efforts of those who endeavoured to turn a contest waged to preserve the balance of power into a murderous struggle of embittered nations. It was not many years since we had put down, in a cheery, off-hand style, an Irish rebellion, which would have furnished our forefathers with a welcome excuse for barbarous severity and prolonged and increased oppression. In 1798, the victorious Orangemen could not be induced to spare the lives of a parcel of clever schoolboys, who talked a little too much about Brian Boru, and Harmodius, and Aristogiton. In 1848 we transported the leader of the revolt for a few years, rather because we did not know what else to do with him, than from any desire to make him suffer for his presumption. When Smith O'Brien was sentenced to be hanged, drawn, and quartered, any one who knew the temper of the nation was perfectly aware that the value of the life of the condemned

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rebel, in an annuity office, was as good as that of any other man of his age in the three kingdoms.

Then came the tidings of the outbreak at Meerut; of the massacre at Delhi. The first impression produced by the intelligence was curiosity mingled with pity, and surprise that any interesting thing could come out of India. But as every mail brought a fresh story of horror and disaster, a significant change came over the face of society. If the sympathy and indignation inspired by an outrage is intense in proportion to the faculty of suffering in the victim, here was a case in which indignation and sympathy could know no bounds; for the victims belonged to the most refined and enlightened class of the first nation in the world. Ladies, bred and nurtured amidst all that wealth and affection could afford, were dragged along, under a June sun, in the ranks of the mutineers, in hourly expectation, and soon in hourly hope, of death. Officers, who had been trained to the duties of government by the best education which the mother-country could supply, judges, magistrates, men of science, men of letters, were pelted to death with brickbats, or hung, amidst shouts of laughter, after a mock trial. Then from the lowest depths of our nature emerged those sombre, ill-omened instincts, of whose very existence we had ceased to be aware. Intense compassion, intense wrath, the injured pride of a great nation-those combative propensities against which Mr. Bright has so often testified in vain-surged in upon the agitated community. It was tacitly acknowledged that mercy, charity, the dignity and sacredness of human life-those great principles which, at ordinary times, are recognised as eternally true-must be put aside till our sway was restored and our name avenged. It is well that nations, as men, should pray to be delivered from temptation. Two years of civil war have changed the people who boasted themselves to be ahead of the universe in the march of progress, into a society of combatants, without habeas corpus, or free-trade, or

decency, or self-respect, or gold, or a single friend and admirer, except some ignorant mechanics, and a few men of thought, who have pinned their reputation to the cause of the United States. Two months of Nana Sahib brought about an effect on the English character at the recollection of which Englishmen at home have already learned to blush, but the lamentable consequences of which will be felt in India for generations yet unborn or unthought of.

Who does not remember those days, when a favourite amusement on a wet afternoon, for a party in a country house, was to sit on and about the billiard-table devising tortures for the Nana; when the palm was given to that ingenious gentleman who proposed that he should be forced, first, to swallow a tumbler of water in which all the blue papers in a seidlitz-powder box had been emptied, and then a tumbler with the contents of all the white papers in a state of solution? when every one chuckled to hear how General Neill had forced high Brahmans to sweep up the blood of the Europeans murdered at Cawnpore, and then strung them in a row, without giving them the time requisite for the rites of purification? It is singular that he imitated in every particular the conduct of Telemachus towards the maid-servants who had lent too kind an ear to those suitors who were content to fly at low game, with a view, I presume, to keep their hands in during the intervals of their more ambitious courtship. Every one chuckled, with the exception of a certain evangelical paper, which remonstrated with the General for depriving these poor men of their chances of salvation! "Have you heard the news?" said a celebrated author to an acquaintance, as they stood together under the porch of the Athenæum. "The Sepoys have taken to inflicting the most exquisite cruelties upon the Sikhs, and the Sikhs in return swear that they will cut the throat of every Sepoy who comes in their way. These are the sort of tidings that now-a-days fill every heart in England with exultation and thankfulness."

During the first debate at the Union Society, in my first term, an orator wound up with these remarkable words : "When the rebellion has been crushed "out from the Himalayas to Comorin; "when every gibbet is red with blood; "when every bayonet creaks beneath its "ghastly burden; when the ground in "front of every cannon is strewn with

rags, and flesh, and shattered bone ;"then talk of mercy. Then you may "find some to listen. This is not the "time." This peroration was received with a tumult of applause by an assembly whose temper is generally characterised by mild humanity, modified by an idolatrous attachment to the memory of Archbishop Laud. If you turn over the volume of Punch for the latter half of 1857, you will probably open on a picture representing a big female, with a helmet and a long sword, knocking about a black man, in appearance something between a gorilla and a soldier in one of our West Indian regiments, who is standing over a dead woman and child. Two palm-trees in the background mark the locality, and the whole production is labelled "Justice," or "Nemesis," or "O God of Battles, steel my soldiers' hearts!" What must have been the fury of the outburst which could transport to such lengths that good-natured and sensible periodical, which so admirably reflects the opinions of a good-natured and sensible nation!

Such was the feeling in England; and, being such, it was only the faint shadow of the state of things in India. For out here men were influenced, not only by pity and wrath, intensified by the immediate presence of the objects of those passions, but by shame, by the bitterness of bereavement and ruin, by an ever-present fear, by the consciousness of an awful risk which they had barely escaped, and of innumerable perils still to come. History

shudders at the recollection of the terrible "Spanish fury" which desolated Antwerp in the days of William the Silent; but the "English fury" was more terrible still. With the grim determination and 1 Sic in orig.

the dogged pertinacity of their race, men went forth over the face of the land to shcot, and sabre, and hang, and blow from guns, till the work should be accomplished. It was generally understood that no one would be called in question for having erred on the side of severity. Many a one of those good-humoured agreeable civilians with whom you canter along the course, or play billiards at the club, who are so forgiving when you revoke palpably and inexcusably, and so ready with their letters of introduction and offers of hospitality-many a one of them has witnessed strange scenes, and could tell strange tales. He could tell how he has ridden into some village in Shahabad or the Dooab, with a dozen troopers at his heels ; how he has called for a drink of milk, and taken his seat under a tree, pistol in hand, while his men ferreted out the fugitive mutineers who had found their way home to seek concealment and sustenance among their relations and neighbours; how very short a trial sufficed to convict those who were accused of housing and abetting the rebels; and how, as he left for the next camping-ground, he pretended not to observe his followers stealing back to recover their picket-ropes. There is a degree of mutual terror which almost necessitates mutual extermination. a time when the safety of India depended on the Punjab, and the safety of the Punjab hung on a single hair (and, thank God, that single hair was a strong one, for it was Sir John Lawrence), a native regiment quartered in that province, unable to resist the epidemic of sedition, mutinied and left the cantonments. An energetic civil officer started off in pursuit with the slender force of sixty-six policemen, brought the mutineers to bay, and, by a rare display of audacity and craft, captured them to a man. It is more easy to blame what followed than to say how he should have acted under the circumstances. It would have been madness to send off a compact and numerous force with tickets of leave to recruit the rebel garrison of Delhi. At the same time, Sir Joshua Jebb himself would have hesitated before he

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undertook to guard a battalion of regular troops with a handful of native policemen, who were themselves at that moment on the eve of an outbreak. One course remained. There is a closer prison than a Government jail: a surer sentry than a Punjabee chokedar.

When first I came out there were two gentlemen here who were considered the most welcome addition to Calcutta society. One was a jolly comical-looking chap, an excellent officer, and a capital man for a small dinner-party. The other was most refined and intelligent, with a remarkably courteous and winning address. It was said that these two had hung more people than any other men in India. The jolly fellow was supposed to have been somewhat too indiscriminate in his choice of subjects, while it was generally allowed that the other had turned off no one who did not richly deserve it. Mr. Hume, of Etawah, who was blamed by many for excess of leniency, but who so bore himself that no one could blame him for want of courage, distinguished himself by keeping down the number of executions in his district to seven, and by granting the culprits a fair trial. These he treated with fatherly tenderness, for he invented a patent drop for their benefit; so that men prayedfirst, that they might be tried by Mr. Hume, and next, that, if found guilty, they might be hanged by him. morning I was lounging in the room of a very good friend of mine, one of the youngest captains in the army, who went through as much rough-and-tumble fighting as could be squeezed into twelve months, and who came out of the business with the reputation of being a firstrate cavalry officer. We were overhauling his collection of guns, trying the locks, and criticizing the grooving, as men do on such occasions, when I remarked, suspended in the place of honour, an archaic rickety revolver, and an old cut-and-thrust sword, with a bright notched blade, and a well-worn leathern handle. Those were not holiday weapons. Once, when charging a couple of hundred of the famous Dinapore mutineers, he left that sword in the body of a

One

sepoy. While dismounting to recover it he was separated from his squadron, and surrounded by a party of desperate Pandies, who, being perfectly aware that their last hour was come, were desirous of opening to themselves the gates of the celestial Zenana by the sacrifice of so redoubted a Sahib. My friend sheltered himself as best he could behind his horse's neck, and kept the assailants off with his revolver, till two faithful Punjabees galloped back to his assistance. Meanwhile, he had shot three men dead on the spot, each with a bullet through the brain. He took part in the pursuit of Coer Sing from Lucknow to the Ganges. On the night before that old. warrior succeeded in passing the river, a picket was posted to keep watch upon the rebels, who were quartered in and near a populous village. From time to time the country-people came in with the intelligence that the enemy were still there, until their importunate desire to give information roused a suspicion that all was not right. We advanced cautiously, and found that Coer Sing had stolen away, and was already well on his road towards the ferry. After the affair had terminated in the escape of the mutineers, our commanding officer sent back his cavalry, with orders to take signal vengeance on the peasants whose treachery had foiled his carefullyconcerted plan. The regiment surrounded the village, set the roofs on fire, looted the dwellings of what cloth and grain they contained, stripped the women of their bangles and anklets, and put all the males to the edge of the sword. This was only one among many like deeds, deeds of which every one approves at the time, but which afterwards no one cares to justify or to discusss. We little dream what a dire and grim significance is attached by many a widow and orphan in Oude or Bahar to the names of some who appear to us the mildest and most lovable of human beings. In the eyes of only too many Roman matrons Cæsar was the most attractive and insinuating among the young swells of his day; whether amiability and tenderness formed the leading features