Books About India

Review of:
Orisea (by W.W. Hunter, 1872).
Concerning John’s Indian Affairs (by R.H. Elliot, 1872).

Part 1: July 23, 1872.

In the main, Indian administrators appear to have acted on the principle that silence is golden so far as regards books about India which it is possible for ordinary people to read. This is the more singular because there is probably no part of the world which has been so minutely, so patiently, so diligently described as British India, and because every transaction which has ever taken place there has been recorded in the most authentic manner by the persons who took part in it. If the Indian records in the different departments of the various Governments and in the offices of the different district officers were carefully examined and sifted, they would give an account of our doings in that country more accurate, more complete, more thorough, and more curious than could be given of the transactions of any other Government in the world, For instance, the series of volumes called "Settlement Reports,” which are scattered through various offices in India, contain such an amount of everything that any one can want to know about great part of the country as is not to be had about any other part of the world. It is impossible to render any service to the Indian Empire of anything like such importance as the service of collecting and arranging all available information about it in a shape suited for general use by intelligent people in this country.

The two books mentioned at the foot of this article illustrate very fairly two different ways of giving the public this information about India. Mr. Hunter's book on Orissa is the mature and laborious work of a man who has devoted the whole power of his mind first to the practical duties of his profession as an Indian civilian and next to the study of all that relates to or can illustrate it. Of Mr. Hunter's literary ability and of his style we need say nothing, as they are sufficiently well known to the public by previous publications. Of the importance of the official duties which have lately been entrusted to him as Director-General of Statistics in India we could say much, but it would be very difficult to give an adequate idea of them to ordinary English readers. It is enough to say that if the work under his direction is carried out as successfully as from his former services and well-known ability we may hope that it will be, the world will have the means of knowing something really worth knowing about one of the most remarkable undertakings now in progress or ever carried out in any part or any age of the world. His present work is a sample of the sort of account which we may finally expect to get of the immense empire of which Orissa is certainly neither the most interesting nor the most important province.

Many of our readers probably know little more about Orissa than that: it was in 1866 the scene of a famine by which a great waste of human life took place. They may not even be aware of its geographical position at the top of the west side of the Bay of Bengal, lying along the coast between Bengal proper and the tributary States which bound the Madras Presidency on the north. Its population is slightly greater than that of Scotland in 1861, and its area is rather less. The main body of the work, to use Mr. Hunter's own language, "deals with matters of the deepest: interest to all thinking Englishmen. It honestly endeavours to show what the real effects of English rule have been, and what are the difficulties and, sources of anxiety which now beset it."

It is difficult to give any idea within the space at our disposal of the: amount of labour and of curious and well-selected information upon every sort of subject which Mr. Hunter has collected in order to illustrate the matter to which he has thus addressed himself. His book is, among other things, a book of travels, and a very good one. It also contains accounts of the religion of the country, throwing great light on one of the most: curious and indirectly one of the most important subjects in the world-- the, history of Indian religions. It contains a complete political history of Orissa, the materials of which have had to be collected with a surprising amount of patient care from all sorts of sources. It contains a detailed account of the social system of the country, and of the different modifications introduced into it by English rule. It contains a mass of politico-economical matter, a history of prices, discussions on the salt duties, and discussions on the value of money at different periods in relation to the purchasing power of the revenue of the province. It contains a most minute, and at the same time a very readable account of the physical features of the country and of the various engineering schemes which are under consideration in reference to it. It contains a description of the native States under British protection which border on Orissa, and of the all but: savage tribes of aborigines who lie farther towards the interior. Finally, a mass of detailed information invaluable for the practical purposes of administration is contained in nine appendices, which in about 200 closely packed pages discuss in detail every conceivable subject connected with the government and administration of the country.

The defect of the book is in its arrangement. It leaves a somewhat confused impression on the mind. This was perhaps a necessary result: of the extraordinary quantity of information of various kinds which it contains, and of the extreme difficulty of bringing the various topics discussed under any sort of general scheme. It is, however, very much easier to find fault upon this point than to suggest improvements. The book as a whole unquestionably deserves the highest praise, and any one who will read it carefully will be able to get more real knowledge from it about the real nature of the work which is being done by the English in India than from any other book with which we are acquainted. One thing, at all events, it puts beyond a doubt-- the extraordinary vigour of the author, a quality which is the one great characteristic of the service to which he belongs, the articulus stantis aut cadentis regni. As long as Indian civilians write books like this in the intervals of business, and under all the hardships of life in India; as long as they interest themselves so passionately in their work, and feel so keenly its connection with nearly every subject which: can occupy serious thought, the English rule, if understood and supported by the people of England, will not only last, but will prosper, and make its subjects prosper too.

We cannot pretend to give more than a specimen of the contents of this remarkable book. Many of them we must leave altogether unnoticed. We cannot do more than mention the chapters which relate to the religion of Orissa, and in particular to Jagannath (commonly spelt Juggernauth), who, it appears, is a god distinguished above all other things for humanity and for a recognition of the equality of men, and who hardly ever ran over anybody except by accident. His real crime is that his ceremonies are to a certain extent indecent, and that his worshippers breed cholera among themselves by their filthy habits, and disseminate it through every part of India on their return to their own homes.

We may, however, give a very slight sketch of the main points established in great detail by Mr. Hunter about the condition of the province under native rule, and the effects of English rule upon it.

“Little is known regarding this kingdom," says Mr. Hunter, "before the sixth century B.C." He might have added that not much worth knowing is known about it for many centuries more. The oldest inhabitants appear to have been savage tribes, the ancestors of an almost equally savage remnant called in these days Savars and Kandhs. They were more or less displaced by a Sanskrit-speaking race, who appear from ancient monuments and traditions to have been Buddhists. There are also obscure traditions about certain "Yavanas," who were probably Greeks. In the course of the fifth century of our era Brahmanism seems gradually to have prevailed against Buddhism, and in connection with this revolution (one of the most singular and obscure in the history of the world) Mr. Hunter has much to say about the Brahmans and their divisions in different parts of India. His remarks tend to show that, instead of forming a single caste, they were and are divided into all sorts of castes, classes, and families, with which we are very imperfectly acquainted. Various Brahman dynasties succeeded each other in Orissa for many centuries, and worshipped according to different rituals, of which various monuments are still remaining. The system which finally triumphed, and still survives, finds its headquarters and its chief expression in the worship of Jagannath. Jagannath is now the most popular god in India. "While on the intellectual and spiritual side of his nature he claims to be identical with Buddha, the ninth incarnation of Vishnu, he stands forth the hero of the warrior caste, as Rama in his seventh incarnation, and has drawn to himself the sympathies of the pastoral races as Krishna, the eighth appearance of Vishnu upon earth." This shadowy series of religious changes fills up the history of Orissa down to the twelfth century of our era. At that time it was subject to rulers whom Mr. Hunter calls the Gangetic dynasty. Their history from 1132 to 1532 presents merely "a narrative of confused and miscellaneous fighting," during the greater part of which the Mahommnedans fought with various success with the native rulers, whom they finally deposed. Of these Mahommedans many were Afghans; the last of whom was first an officer of Akbar's, and then a rebel against him. He was killed in 1576, and Orissa became a province of Akbar's empire.

For about forty-five years Akbar and his lieutenants governed Orissa, and crushed the Afghans who had preceded them. When this was effectually performed, the rulers of Orissa began to revolt against the emperors of Delhi. "The military position of Orissa pointed it out as a natural permanent basis of revolt." The Afghans again raised their heads, co-operated with insurgents in Bengal, and were at length again suppressed. At last, in the middle of the eighteenth century, the Mahrattas came down upon Bengal and used Orissa, as the Afghans had before them, as their base of operations. They became at last masters of the province, and their single notion of government was to squeeze out of the country every available rupee. "I have," says Mr. Hunter, "most carefully examined the records of this period, but I can detect absolutely no trace of anything like a civil administration. The Mabratta cavalry harried the country at stated periods each year and departed with the spoil."

There had been a few European settlements in Orissa from very early times. The earliest English settlements were Pippli, founded in 1635, and Balasor, founded in 1642. They carried on business and held their own against the various native Powers till 1803, when Lord Wellesley determined to follow up his victories over the Mahrattas in Central India by an attack on their countrymen in Orissa. The Mahrattas made a very faint resistance. The expedition against them was most judiciously made and was completely successful. Orissa, "nearly equal in size to Scotland and twenty times more fertile," was conquered "at an outlay of ;3o;oco and about fifty men." The most interesting part by far of Mr. Hunter's book is the answer which he gives to the question, What has been the result of the establishment of British power? For the answer in detail we must refer to the book itself. In a highly condensed form it is as follows:--The government of Orissa may be divided into three parts. The government of the districts under the full British system; the government of the tributary States; and the government of the wild Mountain tribes. We must confine ourselves to the districts under British rule proper. In the first place, it appears that between 1822 and 2872, notwithstanding the famine of 1866, the population has doubled; and this is the result of the growth of tillage, for the town population has been nearly stationary. "No foreign enemy has crossed the boundary of Orissa since 1803. Armed violence on the part of the rulers has ceased; oppression on the part of the landholders and a hundred of their vexatious imposts, such as those on the marriages of the peasantry and the birth of their children, have been put down. Courts of law have been brought within every man's reach, and the villagers no longer adjust their disputes by bands of incendiaries and clubmen. Meanwhile, the criminal classes have been effectively dealt with, and a firm police administration has rendered anything like kidnapping or the old depredations on a great scale absolutely incredible to the Orissa peasant of to-day." In the last year of which Mr. Hunter had the returns there were in gaol "one criminal to every 6,000 of the population and one female to every 100,000.” That is to say, the average number of prisoners in gaol in a country about as populous as Scotland is under 450.

The great evils to which Orissa has always been subject are too much water or too little-- floods and droughts. We cannot follow the exceedingly interesting account of this matter which Mr. Hunter gives. It is enough to say that the physical formation of the country is such as to place it almost entirely at the mercy of three great rivers-- the Mahanadi, the Brahmani, and the Baitarani. These, at the rainy season, are apt to tear the country to pieces by their inundations. The river channels are sufficient to carry off to the sea only about one-half of the flood waters. They have been transformed by a perpetual process of silting into high-level canals, the bottom of which is above the general level of the country. Half the flood-water, therefore, sweeps over the country and spoils the crops. The rivers have to a great extent been embanked, and every effort is being made to construct canals which will husband and regulate the supply of water so as to make it a source of wealth instead of destruction.

Valuable as these material benefits to the country are, Mr. Hunter (most justly, as we think) places above them all as the great achievement of the English rule the gradual establishment of a whole system of private proprietary rights in the land. Under native rule these rights were inchoate. The rights of the villages and their various officials, and those of the superior revenue officials, were to the last degree indeterminate and fluctuating. The whole system depended on the Government, which from time to time took from the cultivators of the soil as much of the produce as it could get through a long chain of revenue collectors, to whose fingers in each case stuck a larger or smaller proportion of the revenue collected. The villages were, so to speak, the cultivating units and remained unaffected by the changes among their various superiors except as to the amount which they had to pay. The rights of the individual villagers, the rights of the inferior revenue officers, and the rights (if such they could be called) of the Government all remained in a fluid, indefinite condition.

The result of peace, legislation, and the establishment of courts of justice has been to make property in Orissa pretty nearly as definite as property in Kent or Middlesex, and to give to every peasant in the country specific individual rights to which he is intensely attached, and which he vindicates in the English courts. Mr. Hunter has a most striking remark on this point which deserves far more attention than it has received. “By creating a long series of private rights in the soil we have developed an inexhaustible source of perfectly legitimate litigation. I by no means join in the English outcry against the so-called litigiousness of the Hindus. The growth of private rights has been so rapid under our rule that if the people did not very freely resort to our courts it would be a proof either of hopeless apathy on their part or of the corruption or unpopularity of our tribunals." Perhaps the most striking mode of contrasting English and native rule is, however, to be found in a passage in which Mr. Hunter compares the revenue expenditure of our own Government with the expenditure of its predecessors. The present revenue of Orissa is about £450,000. Of this £339,696 goes in collecting the revenue, in the administration of justice, and keeping the peace. There is a single native regiment which costs £17,000, and the balance of £28,000 represents the contribution of Orissa to the general expenses of the empire.

The nominal revenue of £450,000 has varied but little for many centuries, but the value of this income measured in grain was at least eight times greater. "It sufficed to support an administration infinitely more minute and, as regards its higher officials, infinitely higher paid. None of the English governing body in Orissa ever hopes to make a fortune; under the Hindu princes Government employ was synonymous with assured opulence. Sixteen great Ministers regulated the kingdom with seventy-two deputies and thirty-six separate departments of State. . . . . The Orissa king could at a moment's warning take the field with 18,000 horse and foot. . . . Thirty or forty thousand pounds were not considered extravagant for an ordinary temple," and the kings kept Courts which must have been very luxurious, though their luxury is probably exaggerated by tradition. The simple fact is that when the country was much poorer than it now is the native rulers rackrented it to the very utmost, took from it eight times as much as we now take from a far richer country, and spent the proceeds partly in magnificence, partly in war, and partly in temples. "The native kings of Orissa enjoyed the undivided ownership of the land. Instead of a long line of part proprietors stretching from the Crown to the cultivators as at present, and each with a separate degree of interest in the soil, the plenum dominium was finally bound up and centered in the hands of the prince."

It would be very unjust to Mr. Hunter to regard him as an indiscriminate eulogist of the Government which he serves. He speaks freely of the various mistakes which have been made, and which, indeed, are inseparable from such an undertaking as the establishment of the British Empire in India, and he appreciates the immense difficulties with which English rulers have to contend. For instance, Mr. Hunter is one of those who think that the assessment of the land revenue in Orissa (and, we should infer, in other parts of the country) has not proceeded upon proper principles. He points out that we have developed private rights in land at the expense of the public revenue; that the original assessment upon the land was exceedingly light; that when the thirty years for which it had been made expired, Orissa was suffering from the effects of the famine; that it was then renewed for a further period of thirty years at the old rate; and that it should have been made either in grain or in cowries but not in silver, the value of which, as he proves by much curious evidence, has been steadily declining in Orissa ever since our conquest of it. Mr. Hunter says that had the revenue been taken in grain it would have enabled us in Orissa to reduce the salt tax, and to do without the income tax. Mr. Hunter's doctrine, in short, is that the land tax ought to be assessed in grain upon the produce of the land, and not in silver upon a something called the rent of the land-- a payment which in truth is not rent at all, but a customary payment bearing no relation to the value of the land.

Mr. Hunter also dwells upon the difficulties connected with the whole scheme of irrigation, which he points out in these pithy words:-- "A civilized Government cannot stand by and witness its people dying by hundreds of thousands of hunger. Yet in the present state of rural India Government cannot construct the requisite protective works without the risk of national insolvency." Be further points out with a distinctness which we do not think has been equalled by other writers what may be called the religious or spiritual difficulties of the Government of India. "These Indian races, to the spiritual side of whose nature our English Government is by its very position forced to shut its eyes, and for whose spiritual wants we can make no provision, have got a capacity of belief and a depth of religious emotion which, if worked upon by a really great leader, may yet be destined to blow in pieces our rule." This remark is of the highest importance. It points to questions of which we cannot even sketch the magnitude in this place, though they give to the whole question of India its principal interest in many minds. In a subsequent article we shall make some observations on Mr. Elliott's work about India.

Part 2: July 26, 1872.

We gave some account the other day of Mr. Hunter's work on Orissa as an illustration of one method, and as it appears to us the right method, of giving English people information of real importance about India. Mr. Elliott's book seems to us to be nearly as good an illustration of the wrong way of doing so.

The book, in the first place, is bad on the face of it. Mr. Elliott treats; his readers like children. He is of opinion that they will not read about India at all unless he tempts them into it by a crumb or two of stale sugar-candy. His title is "Concerning John's [John Bull's] Indian Affairs,” and the book from first to last is written in the form, at once awkward, tedious, and insulting to the common sense of his readers, of a series of letters from Mr. Elliott to John Bull, which profess to be reports of former conversations between John Bull and Mr. Elliott. Mr. Elliott tells "My dear John" that they had a talk a few days before about Indian affairs. "My dear John" will remember that he addressed Mr. Elliott as "my good man," and made many observations about his (Bull's) "Indian property." My dear John will also remember various unpleasant things which Mr. Elliott told him: "How you fretted and fumed, my dear John! But as facts and figures were duly marshalled before you, and you began to be nervous, or at least doubtful as to the safety of your Indian estates, you again took refuge in anger," &c. &c. At the other end of the book there is a great deal of capital made by describing Mr. Grant Duff as Duff. "The fact is, my dear John, that Duff had no business on the committee at all.  'Well, well,' you broke in, 'let me hear no more of it. I'll speak to the Duke, and see what he has got to say about Duff's conduct.'” All this is simply bad manners, the behaviour of a person who has no confidence in his power of interesting others on a most serious subject unless he takes liberties and is rude. We need not insist upon that wretched style in which the whole book is written, but it is bad throughout. The substance of the work is the really important part of it.

Shortly, its substance is this. Everything done in India by its present rulers is wrong from end to end. The whole form of government should be revolutionized. The Governor-General should sink into a Minister of War and Foreign Affairs. India should be broken up into "at least five great divisions-- say Bombay, Madras, Bengal, North-West Provinces, and Punjaub." Each governor is to manage his own finances. No new laws to be made for the future unless initiated by petition from the people. Every "county" (this we may explain means district, which Mr. Elliott supposes to be too hard a word for an Englishman to understand) "to have a consultative council." The governing power in each collectorate in all points of internal administration to rest with the collector. No fresh taxation to be levied without the consent of the councils, and then only for local purposes, unless in the case of a levy required for some extraordinary Imperial emergency, as, for instance, war. Does this mean that every district council is to consent before a tax can be imposed, or a majority of them, or what? These and many other matters of great importance which we have not room to notice are to be done at once under pain of the destruction of the Empire by bankruptcy.

It is difficult to give an adequate idea of the wild absurdities involved in this "very rough outline of a scheme of government by which the country might be managed cheaply and effectively," but we may mention a few of them. In the first place Mr. Elliott is inconsistent. At p. 65 he gives a sort of hint at this scheme, and says (p. 66), "I cannot think, with all the will in the world, that, considering their present ignorance, the people of India can possibly fit themselves for such a system of government under a period of at least fifty years from this." At pp. 200-2 he speaks of the scheme as one which must be adopted at once, to escape pressing danger. Again, Mr. Elliott is one of the persons who exclaim against excessive legislation in India, and one of his proposals is that no more laws should be made unless initiated by petition from the people. In order to get his scheme into working order it would be necessary to begin by repealing nearly all the existing laws of India, and enacting a completely new set of laws, invented out of the head of Mr. Elliott or somebody else. The whole organization of the country, the whole system for the administration of justice and collection and assessment of the revenue, would have to be broken to pieces, and a new one erected in the place of it, and this new system when once established could never be altered, except upon a petition by the people.

In the next place the proposition that each collector is to govern his own district "in all points of internal administration" is incredibly wild. It assumes that the whole experience of all Indian Governments at all times is to be set aside. The essence of Indian Government, the mainspring by which such enormous results have been secured by the use of exceedingly small means, is discipline and subordination. The magistrates and collectors of districts rule over their assistants. The Commissioners of Divisions superintend the magistrates. The Local Governments superintend the Commissioners, and in matters of grave importance the Governor-General in Council superintends the Local Governments. To break up all this and to cut up British India into several hundred petty principalities each governed by a magistrate (who, by the way, under the present system would probably not stay in his district for more than two or three years) would be an act of suicidal folly. As to the proposal to have five local governors each managing his own finance in his own way, subject only to the payment of a contribution (to be fixed apparently by nobody and on no principle) to the national army, it is equivalent to a proposal to multiply by five at least, and probably by a much larger figure, every existing difficulty of governing India.

We could easily pursue the subject, but these remarks are enough, if any are needed, to show the crudity and extravagance of Mr. Elliott's ideas. Violent and sudden changes, which are dangerous everywhere, amount in India to mere destruction. With a degree of pains, labour, risk, and good fortune which very few people in the least appreciate, we have contrived in the course of several generations to build up by degrees a system of government which no doubt has its defects, but which most assuredly does effectually answer most of the great purposes of government. It keeps the peace, protects life and property, and maintains a sufficient force to secure the country against foreign invasion. It is in full operation, and is being worked by people who understand it. To make such changes as Mr. Elliott suggests would be like selling a house and grounds which undoubtedly belong to the seller, and in which he and his family have lived with reasonable comfort for generations, in order to invest the proceeds in the shares of a bubble company established to work an invention of which we have not even got a working model. The scheme is hardly worth serious discussion, but it throws great light on all the rest of the book, and illustrates strikingly enough the value of a great deal of talk about Indian grievances and Indian reform.

We cannot discuss the various points which Mr. Elliott refers to. Besides the "My dear John" and "My good man" of business, and apart from his scheme for a legislative revolution, Mr. Elliott's 286 pages treat of education, railways, irrigation, religion, finance, the assassination of Lord Mayo, the use of cattle-dung for fuel, and many other matters. His views about religion are characteristic of the man. Of course, instead of saying what he has to say plainly, he throws it into the form of a 'dialogue between a missionary and a Brahmin. The Brahmin suggests, and the missionary approves the suggestion, that the true way of Christianizing the Hindoos would be to teach them first of all a purified version of their own creed as it was understood by its earliest monotheistic teachers. This would in time raise the people to pure theism. Pure theism "can never satisfy the religious wants of mankind as at present constituted." The people would discover this, "and spontaneously seek out the admirable religion of Christ." Mr. Elliott thinks that this suggestion is too much in advance of the age to be adopted, but is sure it is right. He considers, in short, that he knows more about every department both of speculation and of practical business than all other persons who have had to do with India put together, and he proposes the most radical changes in every department of things with a simple confidence which gives the measure of the value of his opinions. Mr. Elliott's life has been that of a coffee-planter in an out-of-the-way part of Mysore, where he had hardly any one of education or experience to associate with. What would be thought of a Chinese who had passed many years of his life in managing a sheep-farm in Lewis or Mull, and on his return to China set up on the strength of his experience of Europeans as an authority on the measures to be taken for the restoration of good government to Spain?

We are far from saying that his book has no value at all. On the contrary, some of the points which be makes are, we think, good, though they are very familiar. There may be room for considerable economy in regard to the organization of the army. Three commanders-in-chief, each with a separate staff, require a strong justification. Probably there is room for reduction in parts of the native army, and more particularly, as has often been pointed out, in the Madras army; but the advantage of such savings cannot be got at once. Change in itself is a most expensive business. A private person may often find it cheaper to live for several years in an expensive house than to move into one at a lower rent. Just in the same manner, a Government may often commit itself to great expense for a series of years by making changes which will ultimately effect savings. No one, again, can dispute the evils of the Guarantee system for railways, and it is highly probable that the railways, constructed under it were much too expensively made. A narrow guage might have been quite as good as the Irish gauge which was adopted, and would have no doubt been far cheaper. No doubt, also, Mr. Elliott is right in thinking that great caution is needed in undertaking, planning, and carrying out the enormous engineering works which are in progress or under consideration in various parts of India. Engineers, no doubt like other people, want to distinguish themselves, and not unfrequently are apt to try to do so by building bridges or other expensive structures which by no means repay their cost; and the same is true of architects. No doubt there are many public buildings in India which might have been left unbuilt, and many works which need never have been constructed, while others have been built very badly. Let all these matters by all means be looked into as carefully as possible; let past faults be subjected to the most searching criticism; let the most careful precautions that can be devised be taken against their recurrence. No doubt there is an ample field here, as in every department of Indian affairs, for the exercise of any available amount of sagacity and ingenuity. Upon many of these topics Mr. Elliott makes very sensible remarks, and supplies pointed illustrations. We will go a step further with him. We think he is right in the belief that India is a very poor country, and is never likely to be rich as Europe is rich; and we quite agree that it would be wrong to impose heavy taxes on the natives of India in order to force them into a career of speculation and labour alien to their habits and wishes for the sake of promoting the interests of English merchants and manufacturers. Some influential persons both in England and India have advocated the policy of what they call developing the resources of India by the expenditure of enormous sums of money to be raised by loan, the interest being provided by taxation. We should feel as strongly opposed to this as Mr. Elliott himself. The Empire was no doubt founded by merchants, but it never can be creditably administered as a mercantile speculation.

The point at which we differ from Mr. Elliott, and at which we think his book likely to do great mischief, is a very plain and broad one. His criticisms all proceed on the principle that we ought not to attempt, however cautiously, to introduce the fundamental principles of European civilization into India; that we are not justified in spending the money, or in investing the English authorities with the political discretionary powers, which are absolutely indispensable to that object. How far Mr. Elliott himself realizes this we are unable to say, but it is the real drift of his book. He says in one place, in advocating the banishment and the confiscation of the property of "the whole kith and kin" of men like the murderer of Lord Mayo, "If we do not choose to govern the country, at least to some extent, on Asiatic principles, the sooner we leave it the better." Here the truth comes out. The vague, "at least to some extent," may be struck out as mere surplusage. Mr. Elliott's real wish, and that of many others, is that India should be ruled on Asiatic principles. He wishes us to sit in the seats of Hyder Ali and Tippoo, of Runjheet Singh or Sevajee, or at best to occupy the position of Akbar and his successors. He does not believe in the principles of European society. He considers law, legislation, and government by law as mere delusions and weakness of mind. An act like Mr. Cowan's is in his eyes "merely one of those errors of judgment which, considering our peculiar position in India, we must expect to be occasionally made." His advice would be, "Do not trouble the people with principles about law and justice, which are just so much froth; do not worry them with your ideas about civilization. Put down an absolute ruler in every district; let him have a set of native assessors, and manage matters on native principles. If he hangs people without trial, or blows them away from guns, or impales them, or cuts off their hands and feet, it is at worst an error of judgment. It is nothing to you, the people, or the European governors, of England. Satisfy the natives, and let everything else take care of itself." This is the real tendency of the scheme of local councils with a veto on legislation and taxation, and the real drift of much of the talk which is so common in these days about sympathy with the natives and knowledge of their ways. It admits, of course, of being thrown into a popular form, and of being connected with many of the commonplaces of English liberalism about representative institutions and local self-government. Its essence, however, is retrograde and bigoted. Popular institutions in modern Europe have been progressive for several generations for reasons which we need not refer to, and we have thus got fixed in our minds the notion that there is a necessary connection between popular institutions and the progress of civilization. No error can well be greater. In India the establishment of such a scheme as Mr. Elliott proposes would simply put a stop to all improvement whatever. It would not merely prevent improvement; it would convert blessings into curses. Prevent war, keep the peace, establish private rights, and you get a vast increase of population. Govern the increased population on the principles on which the mere rudiments of social life were provided for in times of war and rapine, and you produce want, disorder, gross oppression and jobbery, and a pressure of population on means of subsistence not less injurious than war and rapine. There are only two modes of dealing with India; the native mode, with its logical results, and the English mode, with its logical results. Experience has shown what native principles of government fully applied resulted in. They led to centuries of anarchy and a reduction of the organization of society to the very lowest form consistent with its existing at all.  What will ultimately be the result of the English mode of dealing with India it would be rash to foretell; but so far, in the midst of all kinds of dangers and difficulties, and in spite of every sort of mistake, it has produced magnificent results. If we determine to shut our eyes to these results, to look at nothing but failures and mistakes made under difficulties which it is hardly possible to estimate without special knowledge of the subject, and to try to go back to principles of government which are as barbarous in theory as they have been shown to be futile in practice, we shall sacrifice to mere despondency and faint-heartedness one of the noblest enterprises in the world.

Pall Mall Gazette, July 23 and 26, 1872.

The Bishop of Carlisle upon Heathenism

The Bishop of Carlisle appears to have been so much interested by the discussion on heathenism to which the remarks made by the Archbishop of Canterbury gave rise, that he has preached a sermon containing sentiments of his own on the subject, from which we have already published a remarkable extract. In a few words, it amounted to this. The heathen-- or, to take a phrase which cannot possibly give offence, natives of India-- ought by acquainting themselves with the condition of England to be either converted to Christianity or at all events so favourably disposed towards it that they "ought to be their own missionaries." "What, then, was the aspect which England presented to an educated Hindoo who came to visit the country of his conquerors and rulers?" He would find English people in general "excommunicated by about five-sixths of Christendom or more.” He would find the whole Christian world divided by "rents," than which "nothing could be more pronounced and apparently hopeless." He would find the English Church full of "strife and disputes." He would "find men equally earnest who differed in their accounts of” its doctrine "as widely as the poles." All this, however, might be put aside "if the general effect produced upon the mind of a Hindoo by the condition of our country were such as to compel him to say that God was of a truth among us. Therefore we must ask, Is this so? Is the general condition of public morality-- is the purity of life among us, the sobriety of people in the lower classes of life, and the practical godliness of those in the higher classes, such that we can take our stand upon them? The missionary's work would be a comparatively simple one if he could say to the natives of any heathen country, If you could only come home with me, you would perceive what a blessing it is that I am now offering to you; if you could see England, you would easily understand what I want to make your country. Dare any missionary put his message to this test?"

As the whole sermon is not before us, we cannot say what answer the Bishop gave to his own questions; but if he merely drew from them the trite moral, "Mind and behave well, because the Hindoo gentlemen are looking at you," the sermon must have been not only commonplace and unsatisfactory, but exceedingly like playing with edged tools in the most dangerous way. Practically speaking, the Bishop of Carlisle, like every other bishop and man, knows perfectly well that no amount of sermons will make England or English morality very different from what it is now, was yesterday, and will be to-morrow. We are, in all essential respects, very much the same sort of people as our fathers, and our sons have a very strong family likeness to ourselves. The presence of all the Hindoos for whom there is room in England will not make us alter our demeanour in the smallest degree. English we are and English we shall continue to be, whether they like us and our ways or not; and, what is more, the Hindoo need not go so far as England to see English people. He sees them in his own country, under circumstances singularly favourable for the observation of their character, which, by the way, they display there with a frank indifference to the impression which they make and with an absence of all concealment and affectation of habits which they do not like and opinions which they do not hold which is by no means common in England itself. As for the religious divisions of Christendom in general and those of the Church of England in particular, it is absurd to suppose that a reflection as to the scandal they will cause to Hindoos will affect them in the smallest degree. They are what they are, and they will continue to be so.

As all this is not only notoriously true, but the most common- place of all commonplaces, it would surely be as well if, instead of using it for the sake of enforcing a pointless moral, the clergy would simply accept the fact as a fact, and consider what it means. What would be the sense or meaning of going to a man in a consumption and preaching to him from the text chosen by the Bishop, "Ye are the salt of the earth"? "Oh, my dear brother, consider this awful truth! You are the salt of the earth. You are six feet high. You have a splendid figure, a fine complexion, well-shaped limbs, and a good digestion, yet there you lie unable to make the least exertion, wasting away daily, and obliged to spend the winter in Madeira in order to get a chance of living over another summer. What would your dark-skinned brother say if he saw you? what would he think of Englishmen six feet high, and remarkably well made, if he judged them by your sad example? Why do you not get well at once for the credit of your country?" The obvious answer would be, "Why do you mock a sick man by ascribing to him what he never claimed? You cannot cure me, and you know it. Why cannot you let me alone?" The answer to the Bishop's sermon is very much the same. Can any rational man who knows what he is talking about even pretend to believe that Christians are in possession of such a complete solution of the problems of life that they either have actually solved them, or have made such an approach to a solution of them that they can claim belief in their creed on the strength of its practical success from people not otherwise inclined to believe in it? Do any considerable body of English people really imagine that they are either the salt of the earth or the light of the world? If they do, it may be an act of charity to break down their absurd vanity by such arguments as the Bishop of Carlisle’s; but to imply that they are by telling them to act up to their character is disguised flattery of a very vulgar kind. Suppose a nurse were to say to the child under her care, What a naughty child you are to be speaking to little common children as if they were your equals! would the lesson be one of humility or of pride? If preachers wish to preach to advantage and to base what they have to say upon facts, the very first fact with which they have got to deal is that Christianity does not produce the effects which, according to certain views of it, it ought to produce; that all sorts of different opinions prevail in perfect good faith as to what constitutes it; that in the most Christian countries the great mass of mankind do not really believe in it with the faith which influences their conduct and moulds their character, but only acquiesce in it in a superficial, half-hearted way. To take it for granted that this is all wrong, the result of ordinary negligence which can be removed by appropriate admonition, and that matters may be set to rights by reminding congregations that the Hindoos are looking at them, is like giving a man a glass of water to clear his throat of a consumptive cough.

What a Hindoo or any one else who looks at the condition of England with open eyes will learn from it is plain enough. He will see one of the most intelligent, vigorous, and prosperous nations in the world actively engaged in leading the life which suits it. He will find in it, among other things, many religions and in particular several forms of Christianity, each of which is believed by a considerable number of persons with various degrees of energy, from enthusiastic belief down to mere acquiescence. He will see that the enormous majority of the nation, without being altogether indifferent to religion, are very far indeed from being enthusiastically attached to it, and that far the greater part of their thoughts and actions depend upon totally different principles. Above all, he will see that, whatever according to theological theories ought to be the case, religion is no more the whole of life, or even the supreme guide and ruler of life, in Europe than it is in India. He will perceive, in short, that such sermons as the Bishop of Carlisle’s are in the nature of reproaches to men for not living up to an ideal which never has been realized, which never can be realized, which hardly any one wishes to see realized, and which in some particulars is habitually trangressed or modified by people whose consciences do not reproach them for such transgressions and modifications.

That all this is true in fact no one can deny. Of course it is another question what is the proper inference from the fact; but, at all events, let us begin by recognizing its existence. It would be a great gain if the clergy would do so in real earnest, and would once for all discard from their sermons reproaches as unmeaning as an exhortation delivered by a judge in former times to John Doe or Richard Roe to give up his litigious habits would have been. When they had done this, they or any one else who was interested in the subject might well say to Hindoos, Go and see England if you want to know the nature of the work that Englishmen are doing in your country. If you look at it with intelligent eyes, you will see a sight which you will never forget as long as you live, and which will give you more new ideas than you will know what to do with. In the first place, you will see a general level of life and energy utterly unlike anything which you have ever had an opportunity of observing. You will see all the arts of life, not only the physical but the social and political arts, carried to a point which will confuse you.  You will, in a word, see human nature working at a far higher power and under much more favourable circumstances than those to which you have been accustomed.  This you will find has its effects on religion and morals as well as on other things.  You will not find a perfect religion or a perfect system of morals, but you will find much better specimens of both than you have been used to.  You will find that in England as in India human beings are men and women, but you will find that they know more, that they can do more, that they have many more interests in the world, and, speaking generally, care much more about life and get much more out of it. All this can be said with perfect truth; to lament over the impossibility of saying with truth England is a paradise of universal love and perfect virtue is like regretting that we have not angels’ wings and shining clothing, that ours is not

“A land of pure delight,
Where saints immortal reign,
Where endless day excludes the night
And pleasures banish pain.”

Pall Mall Gazette, September 11, 1872.

Major Hodson's Life

Review of:
Twelve Years of a Soldier's Life in India (by George Hodson, 1859).

It is a difficult thing for those who are accustomed to use language with any degree of precision to bring themselves to make general statements about nations and national character; for a nation is so vast and so ill-defined a body, that it is almost impossible to have any very accurate or adequate knowledge of it. Still most of us do gradually form an estimate of the people amongst whom we live, sufficiently just for ordinary purposes, and sometimes of surprising accuracy; nor are any facts better attested than that this estimate varies materially in different nations, and that the differences it indicates regulate the position which such nations occupy in relation to each other. The whole course of history is mainly determined by the average qualities of human nature, and this fact gives peculiar interest to the cases in which average men are placed in extraordinary circumstances. Mechanical contrivances will inform us whether the gun-metal or the wrought-iron which present the same resistance to the touch is the stronger substance; but it is not once in a lifetime that the winds blow and the rains descend, and the floods beat upon the commonplace virtues of commonplace men, so as to show whether they are built upon sand or rock; and it is not once in an age, that the experiment is performed on such a scale as to throw light of the same kind on the character of a nation.

The Bengal Mutiny appears to us to derive a great part, perhaps the chief part, of its interest from the circumstance that it furnishes us with abundant evidence of this description. At a moment's notice, without the smallest preparation, far remote from effective assistance, thousands of ordinary Englishmen and women were plunged into what may, with no exaggeration at all, be called a fiery trial. In the midst of peaceful pursuits they were called upon to fight for their lives against overwhelming odds. From unsuspecting confidence and security they were suddenly awakened to the existence of universal treachery. The unquestioned rulers of a mighty empire on one day became proscribed fugitives on the next. Here, indeed, was an instance in which men might prove what they were made of Here if anywhere was a test which would show what were the materials of which so splendid a fabric as the Indian Empire had been constructed. It is as evidence of the character of an ordinary Englishman, endowed with no other gifts than hundreds of his fellow-countrymen possess, trained by no other education than that through which English gentlemen usually pass, favoured by no unusual combination of circumstances, the object of no other patronage than that which he won by a zeal, intelligence, and energy, which, though highly creditable, are of common occurrence, that we invite attention to the Memoirs of the late Major Hodson. We have selected him from many other brave men for this purpose, not because he was, but because he was not, one of the principal defenders of the British Empire in India. Whatever eminence he might have attained, had his life been spared, it would be absurd to place him in the same class with Lord Clyde, with General Havelock, or with Sir John or Sir Henry Lawrence. There is nothing to show that his name would not have risen (had he lived) to a height far greater than that which he did in fact attain; those who knew and loved him may have good reasons for believing that it would ; but the course of events was not so ordered. To the world at large, Major Hodson may stand as a fair specimen of the great staple produce of the country, the ‘good yeomen whose limbs are made in England.’ An outline of his career will show what that position implies.

Major Hodson was the third son of the late Archdeacon of Stafford, and was born near Gloucester, in March, 1821. He was educated at Rugby from his fifteenth to his twentieth year, establishing there a great reputation for bodily activity, and for that combination of moral and physical force on which Dr. Arnold placed so much value, and which his system undoubtedly tended to develope in some cases. In 1840 he was removed to Trinity College, Cambridge, where his pursuits were rather athletic than intellectual. After taking his degree he determined to enter the army; and, after a short term of service with the Guernsey Militia, obtained a cadetship in the Company's service, and landed in Calcutta in September, 1845, whence he went up the country to Agra, to join the troops proceeding to the Sutlej campaign. He did duty with the 2nd Grenadiers, and was present, within two or three months after the commencement of his military life, at three of the most desperate battles ever fought in India, battles which will sustain a comparison, in point both of fierceness and of slaughter, with the bloodiest engagements of European warfare. Nearly the first gun he heard fired, killed a man at his side; and immediately afterwards a ball, from the musket of a Sepoy behind him, grazed his cheek, whilst his face was blackened by the explosion of the powder.

This rough entrance into the duties of his profession was succeeded by a period of quiet, as far at least as ordinary military service was concerned, though it was filled by a constant succession of those multifarious occupations, engineering, political, and military, which are commonly incidental to a successful Indian career. Of these avocations Lieutenant Hodson's correspondence with his family gives a very full account. He had the good fortune to make the acquaintance of Mr. Thomason and Sir Henry (then Colonel) Lawrence; and as he was both older and far better educated than most officers of his standing, either civil or military, he obtained, through their means, abundant opportunities of distinguishing himself by activity, zeal, and intelligence. The list of his services gives a singular notion of the career of an active Indian officer. He was sent in the first instance to superintend the establishment of an orphan asylum, founded by Sir H. Lawrence at his own expense, at Subathoo, on the slope of the Himalayas, an institution intended to provide for the education of the motherless children of European soldiers in the Company's service. The mode in which the works had to be carried on was very characteristic. Not only were plans to be drawn, a house to be built, 450 workmen to be superintended, paid, and kept to their several duties, but every department of the work performed had to be invented from its first principles.

‘I have to get earth dug for bricks,’ says Lieutenant Hodson in a spirited letter to his father: “see the moulds made, and watch the progress of them till the kiln is filled, get wood for the kiln, and direct the lighting of the same, and finally provide a goat to sacrifice to the demon who is supposed to turn the bricks red. . . . . . Then the whole of the woodwork must be set out and made under one's own eye, and a lump of iron brought from the mine to be wrought (also under one's direction) into nails and screws, before a single door can be set up. . . . . . You will naturally ask how I learned all these trades. I can only say that you can't be more astonished than I am myself.'

Having completed the works at Subathoo, Lieutenant Hodson was deputed to make a road from Lahore to the Sutlej, a distance of forty miles, and to undertake a variety of police and surveying duties in the district. He was also second in command of the Corps of Guides, lately established, and found himself, with “a half sensation of modesty,’ administering justice in cases of very considerable importance.

In the course of these avocations the second Sikh war broke out. Our readers will remember the part which was played on this occasion by the irregular forces raised on the frontier by Lieutenant (now Colonel) Herbert Edwardes. Lieutenant Hodson had several somewhat similar opportunities of distinguishing himself. Though at that period he had no independent command, he played a principal part in several actions, and displayed, in a very unusual degree, the highest and least common, of all forms of courage—that which consists in accepting most serious responsibility. Thinking, on one occasion, that his commander, Brigadier Wheeler, did not advance as rapidly as was desirable, he himself marched on, at the head of 100 men, to attack 4000, ‘sending back a messenger to the Brigadier to say that I was close to the place, and that if he did not come on sharp they would run away or overwhelm me.' The Brigadier came on accordingly. The Sikhs had at first advanced on the small party which they saw in front of them, but they stopped on perceiving how it was supported. Brigadier Wheeler gave Lieutenant Hodson orders to charge with two regiments of irregular cavalry. The enemy fled in confusion, leaving 200 or 300 men dead on the ground. A little later in the campaign Lieutenant Hodson charged a body of 150 men with 15 troopers. Amongst the enemy were included a number of fanatics called Akhalees, who resisted with desperate ferocity. One, in particular, beat off four of the troopers, and was then attacked by Lieutenant Hodson, who thus describes the scene in a letter.

‘He rushed to meet me like a tiger, closed with me, yelling, ‘Wah Gooroo, ji!” and accompanying each shout with a terrific blow of his tulwar. I guarded the three or four first, but he pressed so closely to my horse's rein that I could not get a fair cut in return. At length I pressed in my turn upon him so sharply that he missed his blow, and I caught his tulwar with my bridle-hand, wrenched it from him, and cut him down with my right, having received no further injury than a severe cut across the fingers. I never beheld such desperation and fury in my life. It was not human scarcely.’

For this gallant action, as well as for the mode in which his other duties were discharged, Lieutenant Hodson received the thanks of the Governor-general.

After the peace, which followed on the battle of Chillianwallah, Lieutenant Hodson was employed for a considerable time in various civil capacities, and, amongst other things, he accompanied Sir Henry Lawrence in a journey to Cashmere and Thibet. The change of occupation was not, however, very agreeable to his tastes, and he was accordingly greatly rejoiced at being appointed to the command of the Corps of Guides on the Peshawur frontier, on the return of their former commandant to England. Indeed the appointment was one of the most desirable and important in India. It conferred precisely one of those positions which distinguish the Indian service from any other. The Corps of Guides consisted of 5 English officers, 300 horse, and 600 foot, the latter being all riflemen. They were divided into three troops and six companies. Each of the troops and companies was of a different race, and in each the officers were of a different race from the men. During the period of his command Lieutenant Hodson was at the head of every department of business, judicial, financial, and military in one part of his district. It was a very wild, exciting way of life.

‘A daybreak parade or inspection, a gallop across the plain to some outpost, a plunge in the river, and then an early breakfast, occupy your time till 9 A.M. Then come a couple of corpses whose owners (late) had their heads broken over night, and consequent investigations and examinations. Next a patch of villagers to say their crops are destroyed by a storm and no rents forthcoming. Then a scream of woe from a plundered farm on the frontier; and next a grain dealer to say his camels have been carried off to the hills. . . . Then each of my 900 men considers me bound to listen to any amount of stories he may please to invent or remember of his own private griefs and troubles.’

The amount of the business discharged may be estimated . from the fact that in the course of a single month ‘he disposed  of twenty-one serious criminal charges, such as murder and wounding with intent, and nearly 200 charges of felony,  larceny, &c.’ The ordinary business of the station was varied by a campaign of seven weeks on the frontier against a wild Afghan tribe, who were attacked in order to secure the Kohat pass. For his services on this occasion he was mentioned in the despatches of Brigadier Boileau, and thanked by the commander-in-chief, Sir W. Gomm.

Up to this period, Lieutenant Hodson had enjoyed uninterrupted prosperity, but in the year 1853, he was accused of negligent management in respect of the public money which had passed through his hands. His brother's statement of the case is that his appointment had excited great jealousy, that on his arrival at the scene of his duties he found the affairs of the station in great confusion, and that he had in the course of twenty-four hours to take the field without any audit between his predecessor and himself, and that he tried to reduce this confusion to order, but was unable to do so effectually. Under these circumstances, a special military court sat in Peshawur in the end of 1854 to investigate the charges. They reported to the Governor-general, but their report was delayed till July 1855. The Governor-general referred to Major Reynell Taylor, who made his report in February 1856; but this report, according to Mr. George Hodson, was kept back by some private influence, and was never laid before Lord Dalhousie at all before his departure from India. Of its tenor, Sir Robert Napier and Mr. Montgomery, then one of the Commissioners in the Punjab, and now Chief Commissioner of Oude, both gave their written opinion. The former says,

‘The result of Major Taylor's laborious and patient investigation of Lieutenant Hodson's regimental accounts, has not at all added to the confidence that I have throughout maintained in the honour and uprightness of his conduct. It has, however, shown how much labour Lieutenant Hodson bestowed in putting the affairs of his regiment in order.’

Mr. Montgomery said,

“To me the whole report seemed more satisfactory than any one I had ever read; and considering Major Taylor's high character, patience, and discernment, and the lengthened period he took to investigate every item, most triumphant.”

 This evidence certainly exculpated Lieutenant Hodson from the imputation which such a charge carries with it, but the private letters which he wrote to his family at the time will to many minds convey a still stronger impression of his innocence, especially when their manly simple tone is connected with the equally manly and simple conduct which their writer constantly maintained.

For about two years from the beginning of 1855, till the outbreak of the mutiny in 1857, he underwent a series of the severest trials. He lost a child to whom he was very tenderly attached. He lost his father, and he was dismissed from his command, and obliged to return to his regimental duties as a simple lieutenant. He turned to them with as keen an interest, as strong a sense of duty, and as prompt efficiency as if he had never commanded on one of the most stirring positions in India. The regimental affairs had fallen into great disorder, and the Colonel requested Lieutenant Hodson to accept the post of quarter-master, . Instead of brooding over his grievances, he applied himself with such energy to this complicated and uninteresting task as to accomplish most successfully the objects which his superiors had in view, and to earn from them the warmest acknowledgments for his services.. Mr. George Hodson may well say, that nothing in his brother's career was more admirable, or showed more real heroism.

In July, 1857, Lieutenant Hodson's services were required on a very different scene. On the outbreak of the mutiny he received orders to raise the regiment of irregular cavalry which was known by his name. The services which they rendered at the siege of Delhi and during Lord Clyde's advance on Lucknow are too well known to require minute description. Nor do we feel prepared to enter upon the question of the justice of Major Hodson's view as to the possibility of taking Delhi at a much earlier period than that at which it actually was taken. The materials for the discussion of such a question are not, and perhaps never will be, collected. The proceedings of Major Hodson (for he gained brevet rank on obtaining his company in the course of the siege of Delhi) are so characteristically and so happily described in several passages of his brother's memoir, that we lay them before our readers in full, that they may judge for themselves as to the character of his exploits. The following is Lieutenant Macdowell's account of the capture of the princes. It supersedes all necessity for comment:

‘On the 20th the King gave himself up, and was lodged securely in Delhi under a guard. On this day all had evacuated the place, of which we were complete masters. On the 21st a note from Hodson, “Come sharp, bring one hundred men.” Off I went, time 6 o'clock A.M. To explain why he wrote to me, I must tell you that although he commanded the regiment, he was also the head of the Intelligence Department, and lived in the General's quarters, while I lived with the regiment, commanding it in his absence, as being Second in command. Well, down I went. He told me he had heard that the three Princes (the heads of the rebellion and sons of the King) were in a tomb six miles off, and he intended going to bring them, and offered me the chance of accompanying him. Wasn't it handsome on his part! Of course I went: we started at about eight o'clock, and proceeded slowly towards the tomb. It is called Humayoon's Tomb, and is an immense building. In it were the princes and about 3000 Mussulman followers. In the suburb close by about 3000 more, all armed, so it was rather a ticklish bit of work. We halted half a mile from the place, and sent in to say the princes must give themselves up unconditionally, or take the consequences. A long half hour elapsed, when a messenger came out to say the princes wished to know if their lives would be promised them, if they came out. “Unconditional surrender,” was the answer. Again we waited. It was a most anxious time. We dared not take them by force, or all would have been lost, and we doubted their coming. We heard the shouts of the fanatics (as we found out afterwards) begging the princes to lead them on against us. And we had only one hundred men, and were six miles from Delhi. At length, I suppose, imagining that sooner or later they must be taken, they resolved to give themselves up unconditionally, fancying, I suppose, as we had spared the King, we would spare them. So the messenger was sent to say they were coming. We sent ten men to meet them, and by Hodson's order I drew the troop up across the road, ready to receive them, and shoot them at once if there was any attempt at a rescue. Soon they appeared in a small “Ruth” or Hindoostanee cart drawn by bullocks, five troopers on each side. Behind them thronged about 2000 or 3000 (I am not exaggerating) Mussulmans. We met them, and at once Hodson and I rode up, leaving the men a little in the rear. They bowed as we came up, and Hodson, bowing, ordered the driver to move on. This was the minute. The crowd behind made a movement. Hodson waved them back; I beckoned to the troop, which came up, and in an instant formed them up between the crowd and the cart. By Hodson's order I advanced at a walk on the people, who fell back sullenly and slowly at our approach. It was touch and go. Meanwhile Hodson galloped back, and told the sowars (10) to hurry the princes on along the road, while we showed a front and kept back the mob. They retired on Humayoon's tomb, and step by step we followed them. Inside they went up the steps, and formed up in the immense garden inside. The entrance to this was through an arch, up steps. Leaving the men outside, Hodson and myself (I stuck to him throughout), with four men, rode up the steps into the arch, when he called out to them to lay down their arms. There was a murmur. He reiterated the command, and (God knows why, I never can understand it) they commenced doing so. Now you see we didn't want their arms, and under ordinary circumstances would not have risked our lives in so rash a way, but what we wanted was to gain time to get the princes away, for we could have done nothing had they attacked us, but cut our way back, and very little chance of doing even this successfully. Well, there we stayed for two hours, collecting their arms, and I assure you I thought every moment they could rush upon us. I said nothing, but smoked all the time, to show I was unconcerned; but at last, when it was all done, and all the arms collected, put in a cart, and started, Hodson turned to me and said, “We'll go now.” Very slowly we mounted, formed up the troop, and cautiously departed, followed by the crowd. We rode along quietly. You will say, why did we not charge them I merely say, we were one hundred men, and they were fully 6000. I am not exaggerating; the official reports will show you it is all true. As we got about a mile off, Hodson turned to me and said, “Well, Mac, we've got them at last;” and we both gave a sigh of relief. Never in my life, under the heaviest fire, have I been in such imminent danger. Everybody says it is the most dashing and daring thing that has been done for years (not on my part, for I merely obeyed orders, but on Hodson's, who planned and carried it out). Well, I must finish my story. We came up to the princes, now about five miles from where we had taken them, and close to Delhi. The increasing crowd pressed close on the horses of the sowars, and assumed every moment a more hostile appearance. “What shall we do with them?’” said Hodson to me. “I think we had better shoot them here; we shall never get them in.” 

‘We had identified them by means of a nephew of the king's whom we had with us, and who turned king's evidence. Besides, they acknowledged themselves to be the men. Their names were Mirza Mogul, the king's nephew and head of the whole business; Mirza Kishere Sultamet, who was also one of the principal rebels, and had made himself notorious by murdering women and children; and Abu Bukt, the commander-in-chief nominally, and heir-apparent to the throne. This was the young fiend who had stripped our women in the open street, and cutting off little children's arms and legs, poured the blood into their mothers’ mouths: this is literally the case. There was no time to be lost; we halted the troop, put five troopers across the road behind and in front. Hodson ordered the princes to strip and get again into the cart, he then shot them with his own hand. So ended the career of the chiefs of the revolt, and of the greatest villains that ever shamed humanity. Before they were shot, Hodson addressed our men, explaining who they were, and why they were to suffer death; the effect was marvellous, the Mussulmans seemed struck with a wholesome idea of retribution, and the Sikhs shouted with delight, while the mass moved off slowly and silently.'

No more righteous act was ever done. No history in the world records an instance of more heroic courage. [In the ‘Times’ of March 15. 1859, General Thompson is reported to have said in the House of Commons: ‘He stood up in that ‘house to speak of the murder of the princes of Delhi. There was a “slight probability that the man who committed these murders was ‘suffering under the affliction of insanity. We make no other comment upon this than that no other nation was ever so splendidly served as our own, and that in none have all the arts of detraction, ridicule, and contempt been exercised on public servants with such inveterate and ignorant malignity.]  The following passage, from the same pen, is an instance of courage of another kind. It reads like one of the most exciting scenes in Fenimore Cooper's novels. After describing how Major Hodson and himself rode over from Bewar to Lord Clyde's camp (fiftyseven miles) between 6 A.M. and 4 P.M., Lieutenant Macdowell thus describes their return. The road was beset by the enemy, but Hodson resolved, if possible, to push through:—

‘We had a very pleasant dinner, and at 8 P.M. started on our long ride (fifty-four miles) back. We arrived at Goorsahaigunge all safe, and pushed on at once for the next stage, Chibberamow. When we had got half way, we were stopped by a native, who had been waiting in expectation of our return. God bless him " I say, and I am sure you will say so too when you have read all. He told us that a party of the enemy had attacked our twenty-five sowars at Chibberamow, cut up some, and beaten back the rest, and that there was a great probability some of them (the enemy) were lurking about the road to our front. This was pleasant news, was it not? — twenty miles from the commander-in-chief’s camp, thirty from our own; time, midnight, scene, an open road; dramatis personae, two officers armed with swords and revolvers, and a howling enemy supposed to be close at hand. We deliberated what we should do, and Hodson decided we should ride on at all risks. “At the worst,” he said, “we can gallop back; but we'll try and push through.” The native came with us, and we started. I have seen a few adventures in my time, but must confess this was the most trying one I had ever engaged in. It was a piercingly cold night, with a bright moon and a wintry sky, and a cold wind every now and then sweeping by and chilling us to the very marrow. Taking our horses off the hard road on to the side where it was soft, so that the noise of their footfalls could be less distinctly heard, we silently went on our way, anxiously listening for every sound that fell upon our ears, and straining our sight to see if, behind the dark trees dotted along the road, we could discern the forms of the enemy waiting in ambush to seize us. It was indeed an anxious time. We proceeded till close to Chibberamow. “They are there,” said our guide in a whisper, pointing to a garden in a clump of trees to our right front. Distinctly we heard a faint hum in the distance—whether it was the enemy, or whether our imagination conjured up the sound, I know not. We slowly and silently passed through the village, in the main street of which we saw the dead body of one of our men lying stark and stiff and ghastly in the moonlight; and on emerging from the other side, dismissed our faithful guide, with directions to come to our camp—and then, putting spurs to our horses, we galloped for the dear life to Bewar, breathing more freely as every stride bore us away from the danger now happily past. All Hodson said when we were at Bewar, and safe, was “By George! Mac, I'd give a good deal for a cup of tea,” and immediately went to sleep. He is the coolest hand I have ever yet met. We rode ninety-four miles. Hodson rode seventy-two on one horse, the little dun, and I rode Alma seventy-two miles also.”

Major Hodson, with his regiment, was present at the operations before Lucknow. Lieutenant Macdowell, his gallant companion, and the author of the striking letters from which we have quoted the above extracts, was killed on the 27th of January, 1858. On the 12th of March Major Hodson himself met the same fate. He was shot through the body by a sepoy who with some others had taken refuge in a room in the begum's palace at Lucknow, which he entered to look for fugitives. He died the next morning with the same patient courage which he had so often displayed in life.

A few of the anecdotes of his behaviour during the siege of Delhi may serve to complete his portrait:–

‘The way Hodson used to work was quite miraculous. He was a slighter man and lighter weight than I am. Then he had that most valuable gift, of being able to get refreshing sleep on horseback. I have been out with him all night following and watching the enemy, when he has gone off dead asleep, waking up after an hour as fresh as a lark; whereas, if I went to sleep in the saddle, the odds were I fell off on my nose. 

In a fight he was glorious. If there was only a good hard skrimmage he was as happy as a king. A beautiful swordsman, he never failed to kill his man; and the way he used to play with the most brave and furious of these rebels was perfect. I fancy I see him now, smiling, laughing, parrying most fearful blows, as calmly as if he were brushing off flies, calling out all the time, “Why, try again, “now,” “What's that?” “Do you call yourself a swordsman?” &c. 

He has wonderful tact in getting information out of the natives, and divining the movements of the enemy. He is scarcely out of the saddle day or night, for not only has he to lead his regiment and keep the country clear, but being Intelligence Officer, he is always on the move to gain news of the progress of affairs, and acts and intentions of the enemy. He used to know what the rebels had for dinner in Delhi. 

Even when he might take rest he will not, but will go and help work at the batteries, and expose himself constantly, in order to relieve some fainting gunner or wounded man.’ 

We may seem to be doing injustice to the memory of such a man as Major Hodson in saying that we have chosen his life for special notice, because he is a representative of the ordinary and not of the extraordinary virtues of his countrymen. Nothing is further from our wish than to say a single word about him which could convey any impression of coldness or indifference to his merits. What his career appears to us to prove is, that there must be amongst us many hundreds, perhaps many thousands, of persons who, in the common course of life, attract no attention, but who, if they were placed in extraordinary circumstances, would show that they possessed qualities which every one would call extraordinary. The proof of this is that in Major Hodson's career there is no violent break or transition, and that great part of his career was in no way remarkable. Such as he was at Rugby he continued to be at Cambridge. The different occupations in which he was engaged in India were all of the same character. They do not seem to have required other faculties than that sort of Robinson Crusoe independence and self-reliance which we see in a thousand cases on less picturesque stages without being at all surprised at it. . An active clergyman in a neglected parish; a clever attorney who puts a case together from incoherent materials; a country gentleman who brings an ill-managed estate into good order, and raises its value by agricultural improvements; any man who works his way in life by the exercise of enterprise and intelligence, is doing, on a commonplace stage, just the same sort of things that Major Hodson did on an exciting one. We meet with such men in abundance in all directions. Any one of our readers could, no doubt, name scores of them with a little thought. We usually tacitly assume that such men must be commonplace, because they are placed in commonplace positions; and Mr. John Mill, in the latest and one of the ablest of his publications, has very emphatically indorsed this opinion, by expressing his belies, that a great decay has taken place, and is continuing to proceed, in the power and originality of individual character: Major Hodson's career appears to us to show that such an opinion is most unjust. That he was a man of great power and vivacity of character, no one who reads his memoir can possibly doubt. If he had worn a coat of mail and lived in a feudal castle, his career might have been quoted as a proof of the racy vigour which feudalism developed; but it is strictly true that he was only a specimen of a class. There is nothing in his life or letters to show that he possessed any supernatural powers either of mind or body. Each, no doubt, was trained to the highest pitch. His mind was in a state of constant and wholesome employment. His body was hardened by continual exercise, but the capacity, as distinguished from the training, displayed by his performances, does not appear to us to have been at all uncommon, though it was certainly considerable. His letters are exactly the sort of letters which might be expected from a shrewd lively man, with a keen eye and plenty of sound good sense, but they contain no traces of any qualities of a higher kind. Thousands of such letters arrive by every mail, and during the Crimean campaign, scarcely a day passed in which a considerable number were not published in the papers. Curiously enough, an exact measure of Major Hodson's physical powers is given in one of these letters. Speaking of prodigious marches which he had accomplished on horseback, he says that he certainly shall never again be able to repeat his college feat of walking from a ferry between the mainland and the Isle of Skye to Inverness (about sixty miles) in thirty hours. It is a feat which would present no insuperable difficulty to any man of active out-door habits in the vigour of life. We will venture to say that scores of Major Hodson's contemporaries at Rugby and Trinity were thoroughly equal to him both in mental and physical capacity. Where are they now? They are the leaders of every day English life, – what we may call the non-commissioned officers of English society, — the clergy, the lawyers, the doctors, the country squires, the junior partners in banks and merchants' offices, men who are in every sense of the word gentlemen though no one would class them with the aristocracy. Take a man of this order at random, throw him into strange circumstances, repose confidence in him, subject him to responsibility, and Major Hodson is the result.

 If it were necessary in these days to give any formal proof of the soundness of that popular instinct which attaches the highest importance to military prowess, we should find it in the belief that it is the rough but certain test of those broad, deep, common virtues, which are not too great and good for the aspirations of common men, but which are so great and good that without them a nation would be no more than a mob of cheats, slaves, cowards, and liars, more or less cunning. We have all heard a great deal more than enough of the horrible, the ludicrous, and contemptible side of war, and of the foibles and follies of soldiers. Let us turn for once to the other side of the picture. What a world of silent, untold worth must have preceded so much rude heroism, -- what lessons of obedience, patience, and honesty are implied in that iron stubbornness which won the battle of Inkermann! What numbers of parents must have taught their children to fear God and honour the Queen, before six hundred carters and ploughboys could be capable of being drilled into the cavalry who charged at Balaklava! What self-reliance, what resource, what a frank, hearty, common understanding, must have been learnt in the schools which trained the civil and military servants of the East India Company! what a vast mass of unemployed energy and latent courage must be diffused through the classes of society from which they were chosen The Army and the Company's Service were true samples of the material of which the English nation is composed. It is as a faithful picture of a noble specimen of this class, that Major Hodson's life well deserves wide and lasting attention. We will add that the execution of the book is thoroughly worthy of its subject. The skill, the modesty, and the self-respect with which Mr. George Hodson relates his brother's life almost entirely by means of his letters, are very remarkable. That form of narrative is now very common, and is often extremely tiresome; but there is not a page of Mr. Hodson's book which has not its own interest, or which fails to carry the story forward.

Edinburgh Review, April 1859.

Kaye's 'Indian Mutiny'

Review of:
A History of the Sepoy War in India, 1857-8 (by John William Kaye)

The events by which Englishmen, to adopt the phrase of an eminent author, have been of late amazed and 'bewildered' are not opportune for a consideration of the literature of past wars. Attention is literally absorbed by the multiplicity of harrowing details given by a whole army of war correspondents. The proportions of the present struggle are gigantic. Its issues are complicated and vast. Its effects will influence the social and national feelings of generations not yet born. And, in contemplating the enormous hosts, the scientific methods of destruction, the outpouring of life and treasure, and the deadly grapple of two great military Powers, we feel tempted to forget all previous contests for empire or for existence, and to say with Dr. Johnson, 'Let me never hear of the Punic wars again.' Yet the story of the Indian mutiny, or the Sepoy war as Mr. Kaye prefers to call it, is one of surpassing interest to all Englishmen who rightly value those Eastern possessions which we hold by a judicious combination of moral ascendency with physical force. Fourteen years ago, at a period almost equidistant from the Crimean and the Italian wars, Europe looked with varied feelings of envy, dislike, and admiration at the isolated bands of Englishmen who were resolutely bent on winning battles or retaining provinces against enormous odds. The story has been told, in parts, by many graphic pens; but by no one so qualified to combine a mass of conflicting, ample, or ill-assorted materials into one consistent whole, as the practised author before us.

Mr. Kaye brings to his task a variety of qualifications not often united in the same individual. He has a great command of language and a full and flowing style. The story of the Afghan war, as told by him in two goodly volumes, has all the power and significance of a Greek Trilogy. His biographies of such statesmen as Metcalfe and Malcolm have been welcomed by the Indian administrator at his desk as well as by the English student in the library. No writer is more jealous of our national reputation as conquerors or rulers, and none has shown greater willingness to recognise the merits of those from whose policy he may have reason to dissent. But many readers who know the author only as the first of writers on Anglo-Indian subjects or as Political Secretary at the India Office, may not be aware that Mr. Kaye was, in his early years, a lieutenant in the Bengal Artillery. He left India about a quarter of a century ago, on account of failing health. But even at that time he was favourably known to the Anglo-Indian public as a writer; and his early productions of Peregrine Pulteney and Long Engagements contain graphic and faithful pictures of social and domestic life in India, and stand out in happy contrast to those vulgar tales and flashy novels which describe a sensational elopement at the hills, an improbable boar hunt in the plains, and an administration conducted by rogues or idiots, on principles borrowed from a corrupt French prefecture or a Russian police office. Mr. Kaye's practical experience at the old headquarters of the Bengal Artillery near Calcutta, in Southern India, and in Arracan, is a guarantee for his accuracy in military and political details. He has even more than that knowledge of evolution which Scott acquired from service with the Edinburgh volunteers in 1798, and Gibbon from a commission in the Hampshire militia. His present occupation gives him an insight into everything of importance with regard to our frontier policy, our treatment of Indian feudatories, and the principles which now actuate the Viceroy as the unquestioned representative of the Queen of England and the Mogul Emperor. He has lived in constant communication with statesmen and administrators of every rank. Large masses of familiar and private correspondence have been freely placed at his disposal. He has ready access to the vast stores of information which the official pen of viceroys and secretaries has sent home to be stored up at Westminster. And, consequently, when we regard his past associations and his present employment, his experience in literature, his opportunities for collecting accurate information, and his political training, it may safely be conceded that no writer has commenced such a task with greater advantages, or is more likely to produce an historical narrative which shall be accurate without being wearisome, and full but not overflowing; which shall illustrate the most striking differences in the British and the Asiatic character, and which shall rise to the just level of the great arguments and the exciting topics with which the historian of 1857 must necessarily deal.

The first volume of the work was published five years before the second. As so often happens in these literary ventures, the author has somewhat miscalculated the extent of his materials and the proportions of his work. In the volume published in 1865 he had given us his own view of the causes and origin of discontent amongst
the Sepoys. This led him. to examine narrowly the very foundations on which our Indian Empire rested, the motives which had actuated successive rulers in undertaking wars, in annexing provinces, and in civilising the population, and the general effect on the minds of princes and peoples of the measures which had tended to feed national vanity or to build up individual reputation. And though some critics and administrators did not wholly concur in the strictures of the author with regard to particular statesmen, or were not prepared to endorse all the inferences which he drew from facts stated with fairness and not disputed in essentials, yet all men agreed in reading and praising the work as one in which a mass of information was collected and set out with undeniable ability, and which was a valuable record of the efforts of a dominant Power to do justice to the most solemn trust ever delegated to any nation distinguished both in commerce and in war.

Mr. Kaye, at the close of his first volume, left his readers on the tiptoe of expectation at the outbreak of Meerut. It was then understood in literary and Anglo-Indian circles, though perhaps without any solid grounds for the belief, that the task of the author would be accomplished in three volumes. The second was to contain the whole history of the outbreak, battles, sieges, and retributive operations. The third and last was to be taken up with an account of the changes in the Constitution, and in the remedial measures by which Lord Canning endeavoured to substitute order for chaos, and generous trust and loyal submission in the place of frenzied alarm or inveterate dislike. It seems, however, tolerably clear that the original limits of the work on the above programme must be exceeded. That a good deal of ground is got over in the present volume, and that it is full of life and interest, we readily admit; but a series of vast and connected operations remains to be described. Delhi is not taken; Lucknow is not relieved; Lord Clyde is never mentioned; Sir Hugh Rose has not appeared in Central India, or even at Bombay. The author, not unnaturally, is perplexed by the multitude of similar and thrilling events occurring in the course of a week in half a dozen quarters of the empire. Tacitus, in his Annals, because he adhered to his plan of compressing into each year all the events which belonged to it, had, we know, to rush from the Rhine to Egypt, and from a conflagration in the City to an embassy from the Parthian king. Mr. Kaye, in the same way, has to explain to his readers how, during those well-remembered months of May and June 1857, in different parts of the empire, treasuries were 'looted,' prison bars burst open, gray-haired colonels were shot down while haranguing their petted Sepoys, and mothers and children were exposed to insult and pitiless attack. There was a horrible likeness in many of those frantic outbursts of Asiatic devilry. But Mr. Kaye has managed his abundant materials with much discrimination and method, and has, practically, divided his second volume into three main parts. One series of chapters describes the outbreak at Meerut and the seizure of Delhi. Another series is taken up with the awful massacres of Cawnpore and the retributive march of Neill and Havelock from Calcutta. The third division treats of the siege of Delhi, and, as a consequence, of the strenuous efforts which were made by Lord Lawrence, then Chief Commissioner, not only to preserve order in the Pnnjaub, but to make that province the base of operations against the rebel city. This arrangement strikes us not only as judicious, but as the best that could be made. But the upshot is that we hold Mr. Kaye to be committed to four volumes; nothing less can do justice to the gallantry of his countrymen and to the firmness and policy of Lord Canning.

A review of the main features and of some of the principal topics of this volume is due to Mr. Kaye, as far as space will permit. Mr. Kaye explains with perspicuous brevity the circumstances under which the old East India Company had allowed Delhi to remain the residence of the successors and descendants of Tamerlane. In the commencement of this century the ambition of the French was shattered and the Mahratta Confederacy broken up by Wellesley in the cabinet and by Lake in the field. But with a respect for fallen royalty which was closely allied to weakness, we permitted three generations of puppet kings to retain something of the external pomp and pageantry which appertain to kingcraft. The allowance for the royal family was left at more than £100,000 a year. Certain districts were exempted from the operation of the ordinary laws and courts, and were attached to the royal person. Residents and agents, and even secretaries on the part of the Governor-General, went through the degrading ceremony of presenting offerings of fealty to the Great Mogul. Until a comparatively recent period money was coined in his name, and the royal era was current in public proceedings and in legal tribunals. It is true that these acts of apparent homage and submission were not conceded without some opposition on the part of clear-sighted and independent officials, or without decided misgivings in the minds of British statesmen. The palace at Delhi became a seething caldron of corruption and intrigue. Gradually, however, one exemption or privilege after another was taken away. The rupee of the Company took the place of the gold mohur of the Emperor. The juloos or royal era no longer headed formal proceedings. The kingly pension was not diminished, nor was the substantial comfort impaired; but men of decided views and undoubted prescience began openly to discusa the propriety of extinguishing the titular dignity of these mock emperors, and even of removing them from a place which was replete with tempting historical associations, and which might, at any moment, become a source of positive menace to our power. At length, a question which had suggested itself, though dimly, to such men as Lord Metcalfe and Lord Ellenborough, assumed, in the vigorous and trenchant minutes of Lord Dalhousie, the following proportions and shape. Recognising fully the evils, moral and political, to which the retention of the king at Delhi gave rise, Lord Dalhousie boldly proposed that, on the death of the present incumbent, the kingly title should be abolished; that the palace should become an arsenal and be kept as a British post, and that the king should go forth to reside at the Kootub, some eleven miles to the south-west of Delhi, remarkable as the burial-place of members of the royal family, and known for its imposing minor or pillar, the highest and the most striking in the world.

The receipt of Lord Dalhousie's proposals in England was followed by a sharp discussion amongst the Directors, and by a conflict of that body with the Board of Control. This contest was ended by instructions to the Governor- General, issued from the Board, but through the Court, empowering him to act on his own views. But Mr. Kaye tells us that when Lord Dalhousie 'learnt in what a hotbed of contention the despatch was being reared, he wisely hesitated to act on its contents,' and, 'to his honour,' 'deferred to the opinions expressed by the majority of the Court, and by others not in the Court whose opinions were entitled to equal respect.' Now the facts lucidly given by the author lead, to our thinking, to a very different inference. Mr. Kaye has expressed in no measured but in just language the iniquities and the abominations of the palace. He has deliberately recorded his conviction that the so-called humiliations inflicted on the inmates of the palace were the inevitable consequences of British supremacy; that it may be questioned 'whether a single man, to whoso opinion any weight of authority can fairly be attached, has ever doubted the wisdom of these excisions'—to wit, the abolition of the kingly era, of the royal rupee, and of the degrading obeisance; that, in the interests of humanity, we might have done even more; and that there was undoubted wisdom in that portion of Lord Dalhousie's minute which pointed out the dangerous position of a fort at Delhi, dominating over the city, tempting intriguers, and menacing the great magazine. Yet Mr. Kaye apparently rejoices in the triumph of the majority of the Directors who had opposed Lord Dalhousie and the President of the Board of Control, and to whose opposition it was mainly due that the wise suggestions of the Governor-General were not acted on, and that in the end they fell through after further discussion. He describes this party as 'powerful in intellect, more powerful still in its unflinching honesty and candour, and its inalienable sense of justice.' That the conservative party, which always musters strongly at an Oriental court, at a board like that in Leadenhall Street, or at a council like that now sitting at Westminster, contains many honest, upright, and intellectual men, who in their day have done admirable service' to the State, we are quite ready to admit. But if we admit their candour and respect their motives, we must demur to their sagacity and statesmanship, and must look on them as quite incapable of taking in those changes in public policy and internal reforms which had been rendered not only expedient but imperative by the sheer progress of events. There are always some excellent men whose thoughts will not widen with the process of the suns. It is quite certain that Lord Canning, with but a few months' experience of India, not only came to some conclusions identical with those of Lord Dalhousie, but saw, with even greater distinctness, the social, military, and political dangers arising out of our injudicious retention of a rallying-point for intrigue. But the events of 1857 are a commentary on the whole contest far more significant and decisive than any argument or weight of authority which we could adduce. Early in 1857 Delhi was the very centre of disaffection and treachery; and how the mutineers at Meerut and elsewhere fled to the capital, used the king's name and standard, and made the palace a reeking shambles, is known to everyone, and is the subject of some of Mr. Kaye's most brilliant chapters. The deduction, then, which ought to follow from the obstructiveness of some of the old Court of Directors is, not that we should deliver funeral harangues about their candour and their justice, but that we should boldly denounce timidity and deprecate twaddle wherever we find them, especially when these qualities have thwarted a sound and just policy, and have intensified the calamities of rebellion and war.

Mr. Kaye, in his preface, tells us the principles by which he has been actuated in describing events so recent, some of the actors in which are still living. As we interpret his remarks, he speaks freely of all, but with marked forbearance in the case of those who are dead and can no longer defend themselves. Yet in no place has he been neglectful of the first duty of an historian, ne quid falsi . . . ne quid veri non audeat. It is impossible even now to read his account of the vacillation and helplessness of the officials at Meerut, or of the inconceivable folly which selected the spot for the entrenchment at Cawnpore, without a feeling of indignation or shame. We have no time to go minutely through the accounts of the successive outbreaks by which the country either fell into the hands of the rebels, or became a mere reflection of anarchy and chaos when the representatives of our authority were withdrawn.

But Mr. Kaye brings out very ably and clearly the important part which individual character played at this crisis. Where there was incompetence, hesitation, or credulity the rebels did exactly as they pleased. The same hideous programme was played out at stations very remote from each other. The details varied; the chief features were identical. Where there was incapacity, officers gray in the service, or mere boys, were shot down by troops wearing medals or decorations which they had gained while serving in our ranks; the houses were burnt and plundered; the treasury was sacked; the convicts of the gaol and the refuse of the city or bazaar fraternised; all external symbols of British rule and authority were blown up or defaced; and the men with white faces either lay dead in the gutters or were seeking shelter in the jungles. Where, on the contrary, there were two or three men who feared no responsibility, and who had heads to conceive and hands to execute, the whole scene was changed. Intending mutineers were disarmed, waverers were brought over, disaffected Mahometans or Hindus were awestruck by timely and wholesome exhibitions of severity; public authority was hardly interrupted for a day, nor was an ounce of silver taken from the public till. For if, on the one hand, we had to deplore the catastrophes of Meernt, Jullundur, Loodiana, and above all of Cawnpore, there was something to command admiration and to restore confidence in the splendid tenacity and the rapidity of execution which were displayed by soldiers and civilians at Lahore, Peshawur, and Benares. Nowhere have Englishmen performed deeds so calculated to vindicate the national claim to ascendency and empire, or to impress the natives with a humiliating but very fortunate sense of their inability to act long in concert or to shake India from our grasp.

Enlightened public opinion has never been divided as to the merits of the officials in the province of Punjaub, who, from the very first, took in the whole danger and devised the remedy. But the services rendered to the State by Lord Lawrence, who at that time was Chief Commissioner, and by a band of his trusted subordinates, appear, on calm reflection and after the lapse of years, even greater than they are usually accounted. It is quite true that there were some special circumstances in the administration of the province and in the character of the people that favoured our cause. The Sikh had an old grudge against the Poorbea soldier, or 'Down-Easter' as this epithet might be rendered. The government of the Punjaub, for eight years after its conquest and annexation, had been entrusted to very able hands, had been conducted with great vigour and tact, and had been signally cherished and encouraged by the Supreme Government. A considerable portion of the English soldiery then serving in India occupied Peshawur, the cantonment of Mean Meer near Lahore, and other important stations. The influential chiefs on the Sutlej, who had been protected by the diplomacy of Metcalfe from the aggressions of Runjeet Singh, warmly espoused our cause and kept open the communication between Umballa and Delhi. But it would have been quite possible for feeble hands and hazy intellects to have thrown these advantages away. The intrepid soldiers and civilians stationed by the Indus, the Ravi, and the Sutlej, pressed them to their utmost, and generally seemed to know exactly where audacity terminates and mere rashness begins. It was a happy moment when the local authorities conceived the idea of a movable column, and when it was placed under the command of such a dashing officer as Sir Neville Chamberlain. The effect of this was that a compact body of troops, thoroughly equipped and splendidly led, was ready to move at once wherever mutiny was threatened, instead of waiting till treasuries were invaded and bungalows were in a blaze. In truth, as Lord Lawrence forcibly pointed out in one of his letters to General Anson, there is no period of Indian history when rapid and bold action has not been successful. The celebrated maxim of Danton has, in India, nerved many a hand and filled many a bright page in history. Clive crossing the river at Plassey, Wellesley rushing on the Mahratta batteries at Argaum, Gillespie galloping to the relief of Vellore, Fitzgerald charging round the little hill of Seetabuldi, Hardinge and Gough attacking the Sikh lines at Ferozeshah on the afternoon of a brief winter's day, as soon as they were joined by the brigade under General Littler; these and many others are instances of that lofty confidence and that supreme contempt of difficulties which, when joined to some strategic skill, have proved as effective as our arms of precision, our rigid discipline, and our serried ranks. To these fine chapters must now be added several others, and no Englishman can read without a glow of satisfaction those animated pages in which Mr. Kaye narrates the spirited doings of the council of war at Peshawur, and the great disarmament of the Sepoy regiments at the morning parade near Lahore. O, si sic omnia! Mr. Kaye is fully justified in saying that it rested with the Chief Commissioner not only to save the province, but to save the empire; not only to anticipate anarchy and rebellion in the mixed population of Sikhs and Mahometans, but to collect and send forth troops beyond his own sphere of action, who should confront rebellion in its head quarters and should recapture the city. And here Mr. Kaye lets the general public, perhaps for the first time, into the secret of one point which was hotly debated. In the eyes of the Chief Commissioner the recapture of Delhi was of such paramount importance that it dwarfed by comparison every other object. To effect this Lord Lawrence was prepared to give up the Peshawur valley to the Ameer of Cabul and to retire to the Indus. Such a decision could perhaps be only justified on the ground that in this way and in no other could Delhi be taken. But able pens, on the other side, pointed out the extreme value of that outpost or bulwark, and the impolicy of any retrograde movement which would turn friends into waverers, and waverers into active foes. The arguments for not yielding an inch of ground were put forward with great point and earnestness, and we have no doubt that they were sound, and that the abandonment of the frontier across the Indus would have been a desperate measure, to be resorted to when everything else had failed. But the opponents of the secession went much too far, on the other hand, in thinking that the siege of Delhi might be raised without irretrievable disaster. Fortunately, the progress of events and the determined front shown solved the difficulty without compelling a resort to either alternative. Peshawur was not abandoned, and Delhi was eventually retaken by British and Punjaubi troops without the addition of a single bayonet from England. But Lord Lawrence was essentially right in attaching immeasurable importance to a successful siege. The eyes of all India were directed to the imperial city. The rebels, strengthened by almost weekly additions from revolted brigades in divers parts of Upper India, seemed to taunt and defy our forces. Neither enemies nor adherents had forgotten that, half a century previously, we had been compelled to raise the siege of Bhurtpore. There was no doubt in the minds of men who took not a local but an imperial view of the situation, that to take the Mogul capital was to strike a blow at the very heart of the rebellion, and to satisfy friends, enemies, and those who faced both ways, that the final extinction of the revolt was a mere question of exertion and time.

In the volume before us, however, that decisive blow is not struck. The situation of the British army before Delhi was in every sense peculiar, and the story of June, July, and August 1857, as told by Mr. Kaye, is one of gallant straggles but deferred hopes. Within less than a month from the outbreak at Meerut, in spite of heat and the incompetence of the commissariat, a compact force had certainly taken up a strong position before the walls. A brigade under General Wilson set out from Meerut, twice routed the mutineers by the Hindun river, and effected a junction with the columns of General Barnard, when the combined forces were again completely successful in a third action, -which was known as that of Budlee-ka-Serai. That the mutineers, though outnumbering our forces, should not withstand the well-directed fire of the Bengal Artillery and the rush of the British infantry, and that they should take refuge within the red walls of the capital, was just what everyone expected. But when we had once occupied the ridges and the old cantonments, the aspect of affairs was entirely changed. The mutineers had powerful guns, inexhaustible stores of ammunition, the traditions of history to encourage them, and bulwarks under which to fight. The consequence was that the story of Sebastopol was repeated. The besieging army found itself almost besieged. It is still a question amongst military men whether our little army could not on arrival have taken Delhi by a coup-de-main. And it is quite certain that the practicability of this step was urged on the General in command by a knot of gallant young officers; and that on more than one occasion active preparations were made for an assault. But from misapprehension of orders on the part of one officer, from indecision and doubt, or some other grave causes, the hazard was not run; and for three months the operations, which are detailed with great force, accuracy, and animation, took somewhat the following shape. The mutineers from their battlements sent shot and shell, at long ranges, into the very middle of our camp. Our artillery, though served splendidly, was wholly unable to silence this fire, or even to reply to it with effect. Our force was numerically small; it was subject to loss by disease, while some portion was not to be trusted. The rebels, as we have remarked, were receiving frequent additions from regiments and even brigades which had revolted at large stations, and which, after the usual atrocities, had marched straight to the capital. As these new allies flocked to the city they were sent out to have their 'baptism of fire,' with the double purpose of proving their fidelity and prowess, and of affording us no respite. It mattered not that they were invariably routed and had to get back to their cover. Our men, meanwhile, had no peace. They were disturbed at the bath and at the midday meal, when the sun was at its fiercest; attempts were made to attack our rear and to interrupt our convoys; our pickets were shot at from gardens and inclosures; mistakes occurred from the similarity of dress, bugles, and accoutrements; and it became evident that until reinforced we could not hope to see the inside of Delhi, even if we could calculate on maintaining our position in the teeth of serious losses, and against the attacks of an emboldened enemy. To those who were then in India, and who look back on the history of the mutiny, there was no darker period of depression and danger than the first three weeks of August. Delhi had not fallen; Cawnpore had indeed been recaptured; but Lucknow was not relieved. Reinforcements were only just arriving from England, and were on the seaboard. We were making no progress; and, at such a crisis, and with an Asiatic people, not to advance was in reality to go back. But by the end of August our prospects brightened. Nicholson with his movable column had arrived in camp, and had fought a splendid battle in the rear of our forces. One of the most skilful of our engineers had taken the exact measure of his antagonists; the siege train, protected by the loyal Sikh feudatories on the Sutlej, was at hand; and the exertions of Lord Lawrence had collected a force which, however small when compared with that of the rebels, proved itself adequate to the task of assaulting batteries, though manned by skilled and desperate artillerymen; and, what was of even greater importance, of clearing out and holding the city whenever the walls might be gained. It will be for Mr. Kaye, in his next volume, to tell us how the victory was won, to be dimmed by the loss of such a general as Nicholson. But the great episode of the small force that resolutely kept the Flagstaff Tower and the Observatory with unfailing courage and unimpaired cheerfulness, with all its incidents of personal prowess and chivalrous daring, may be read by all with pride and admiration, especially at a time when a display of the same qualities may, at any moment, be required from many who are now calmly sitting by their firesides or lounging in the streets.

It was a natural consequence of the total disruption of intercourse, and of the scope which such a Hydra as the mutiny afforded to individual energy and talent, that the figure of Lord Canning is less prominent in this volume than those who honour his memory would desire. The statesman from England was in the Gangetic Delta: and it became impossible for him to retain the supreme control or even the partial direction of events which succeeded each other in dissolving views of bloodshed and fire. When telegraph wires were cut, early posts had ceased, and intelligence could only be transmitted by stray messengers, officers had constantly to act on their own judgment, and to hope for confirmation or subsequent indemnity. It may, however, be fairly questioned whether all the measures taken by the Supreme Council at Calcutta were judicious and suited to the crisis. It was unquestionably a mistake to receive with marked coldness or indifference the spirited and timely offer of the inhabitants of Calcutta for the enrolment of a corps of volunteers. It was also a mistake to treat the press conducted by Englishmen just as we treated the mischievous productions emanating from disloyal and seditious natives. But of the dignity, fortitude, and calmness shown by Lord Canning there should be but one opinion. After a brief tenure of office, and without having paid a single visit to any part of Upper India, he was suddenly called on to face one of the most terrible ordeals that had ever tested human foresight and skill. And we see him, in these pages, straining every nerve to reinforce Benares and the Doab of Hindustan, to procure troops from Ceylon, China, and England, to narrow the circle of the mutiny, and to limit the spread of discontent. Men keeping important posts, or watching densely-crowded cities, were cheered or rewarded by a few lines written by the hand of the Governor-General, in that language which he wielded with such stately dignity and grace. By edict and by example he firmly checked the effusion of innocent blood and the excesses of retribution; and to his efforts, if to those of any one individual, it is owing that the mutiny did not bequeath to his successors an undying legacy of religious antipathies and of national hate. But the subsequent volumes will, in all probability, be more fitted to bring out the really noble points in Lord Canning's character; to show how he could reward devotion and cast a veil over error; and how he shaped the outlines of a grand and a regal policy which was at last rendered possible by the quelling of the mutiny, and by the assumption of the Government in the name of the Queen.

Mr. Kaye's service in India has not only guaranteed him immunity from absurd misconceptions of Anglo-Indian life and phraseology, but it has imparted a lively and a picturesque character to his descriptions of scenery and to his estimates of men. It was said of Lord Macaulay that his celebrated essays on Indian generals or administrators derived interest from the local knowledge which such a mind naturally acquired and digested in his four years' residence, during which, though he visited the Neilgherries, he never went much higher up the river Hooghly than Barrackpore. Mr. Kaye is not one of those educated Englishmen who cannot tell whether Holkar is a Hindu or a Mahometan, or who won the battle of Buxar; and he may even be credited with a knowledge of the subtler distinctions existing between a Rani and a Kirani, and between the Karkoons of the island of Bombay and the Monsoons of the Bay of Bengal. Some of his descriptions of celebrated Indian forts and stations are accurate and graphic. The holy city of Benares with its temples, landing-stairs, and devotees; the junction of the two sacred rivers at the fort of Allahabad; the large, dusty, and straggling station of Cawnpore, which, as a military post, had, in late years, somewhat diminished in importance; Delhi with its mosques of architectural beauty, its stately houses, red walls, and green retreats; Roorkee developed from an obscure village to a huge workshop: these and other places, with their distinguishing characteristics, are all hit off with remarkable neatness and skill. Nor is the work wanting in animated portraits of soldiers and civilians whose spirits or calm courage seemed to rise with the crisis, and also, by their promptness of conception and execution, almost tempt us to forgive the blunders of incapacity and irresolution elsewhere. We forbear to draw marked attention to the names of men still living; but, with regard to the dead, the sketches of Herbert Edwardes, soldier, politician, and administrator—of John Nicholson, born to rule wild tribes and to win battles—and of Havelock, the God-fearing Puritan, who was the first to stem the tide of rebellion, and to prevail against numbers by pure strategy— appear to us excellent specimens of literary workmanship. Whatever opinion Anglo-Indians may entertain regarding Mr. Kaye's political bias or personal predilections, there can be no doubt of the skill which he manifests as a painter in the grouping of materials, or in the spread of colours on the canvas. The facts and figures buried in solid blue books have all been disinterred, sifted, and digested; while private correspondence, personal recollections, and familiar intercourse, have supplied the animation and life. In the background the picture is lurid with the flames or dark with the smoke of rebellion and anarchy: in the front, stand out prominently those exiles of undaunted hearts, ready hands, and magical influence, who, under God's providence, preserved from dissolution our vast and magnificent dependency, and elevated the character of our nation in the eyes of the world.

As critics it is our duty to note a few literary blemishes which somewhat detract from the merits of the work. There is always a difficulty in dealing with contemporary events and in making the petty and familiar incidents of daily life harmonise with the full and commanding style of an historical narrative. Not that we in the least object to the introduction of topics or of anecdotes which impart vitality to the account, or that we are at all oppressed with any consequential notions of 'the dignity of history.' But we should have wished some things to have been called by their own simple names. Havelock's men do not drink 'beer' before they rush on the enemy, but they arc 'primed with good libations of malt liquor'! Yet when General Neill had to recruit his exhausted physical energies, we are very properly told that he had to drink champagne and water, and not that he sustained himself by resort to what Mr. Tennyson calls 'the foaming grape of Eastern France.' Then again we have in the siege of Cawnpore an example of translation from ordinary language into the 'grand style' which Mr. Matthew Arnold would scarcely approve. The guns of the unfortunate garrison suffered damage from the enemy's fire; and from this and other causes the canisters could not be driven home. The difficulty was overcome, we are informed, by the 'gentlewomen of Cawnpore, who gave up perhaps the most cherished components of their feminine attire to improvise what was needed.' On turning to a foot-note extracted from the narrative of one of the few survivors of the massacre, we find that, in plain language, the ladies gave up their stockings, and that these articles were charged with the contents of the shot-cases and rammed down the guns! An amusement common enough at stations in the interior of Indian Presidencies is elevated into dignity by the following remarks: 'Accompanied by his daughters, he (Sir H. Wheeler) often went out in pursuit of a jackal, with a few imported hounds which he kept for the purpose; and there was still enough of the fire of the sportsman in the ashes of the veteran, to suffer him, in the crisp air of the early morning, to enjoy the pleasures of the chase.' A subaltern or young civilian would epitomise the above sentence into something of the following: 'The General commanding was a fine old fellow, who kept a bobbery pack in the cold season.' Now and then, but rarely we admit, there is an instance of mere literary amplification or of the introduction of epithets because they have a ringing sound. The troopers of the 3rd Cavalry, who commenced the outbreak, were hastening towards Delhi on the memorable night of the 11th of May, with, we are reminded, the sound of carbines and rifles and 'the roar of the guns, with their deadly showers of grape and canister,' ringing in their ears. From this a casual reader might have imagined that the mutineers had got away from Meerut after experiencing severe loss. But the truth is, that nothing practically was done towards attacking the rebels protecting the station, although the authorities had at their disposal artillery, rifles, and carabineers: and only a few pages before we had been informed that even when our troops had turned out equipped for a fight, 'a few harmless rounds of grape were fired into the obscurity of the night.' A more splendid soldier than General Nicholson scarcely existed, but we can hardly credit what the author gives as a report, namely, that during the pursuit of the mutineers from the Fort at Hote-Murdan, 'the tramp of his war-horse was heard miles off.' We do not see how the hoofs of one horse should make a much greater sound than the clattering of two rough-shod ponies, nor are we able to credit General Nicholson with a seat like that of the Wild Huntsman, or the Demon-Lover in Scott's version of Burger's Leonore, who went 'tramp, tramp, across the land; splash, splash, across the sea.' The expression 'rotting royalty,' though forcible and quite true when applied to the festering corruption of the palace of Delhi, is hardly suited for a history, though it might be used in a trenchant speech or an indignant article. And Avatar is not happily applied to an expected Mahometan priest or prophet who was to restore the wealth and splendour of Mussulman dynasties. Avatar, as Mr. Kaye knows perfectly well, is a pure Sanskrit word, originally used for the periodical appearances of the incarnate Vishnu on the earth, of which nine are passed and the tenth is yet to come.

The above blemishes do not seriously detract from the merit of the work. A few actual errors of fact or orthography must now be noticed. The name of the civilian who gave evidence at the trial of the King of Delhi is Sannders, and not Sanders, and this gentleman is now our able Resident at Hyderabad. The intriguing queen was Zeenut, and not Zeemut. For Mr. T. C. Wilson read Mr. J. C. Wilson. The magistrate of Delhi at the time of the outbreak was not Sir Thomas, but Sir John Theophilus Metcalfe; and though wo do not ask for Oriental pedantry in the spelling of Eastern names, we protest against metamorphoses of Oriental nomenclature into genuine Anglo-Saxon. No Sepoy's name could be Bridge-Mohnn. What is meant is, no doubt, Brij-Mohun. A well-known missionary at Benares is Leupolt, and not Leupholt. One of the officers slain at Cawnpore was Vibart, and not Vilbart. A platform, in Hindi, is not ' chaboutree,' but chaboutara. Mutiny, wickedness, or depravity would be fãsad, and not fissad. The Holy War, so often preached by Mahometan fanatics, is Jihad, and not Jaidad. This latter phrase is not, indeed, 'Heaven bless us! a thing of naught,' but it means property, or an assignment in land, and has nothing to do with battles and sieges. The deputy-commissioner of Loodiana was Mr. G., and not Mr. M. Ricketts, though we are bound to state that the wrong initial is given in a formal report by another officer. Mr. M. Ricketts was unfortunately amongst the officials murdered at Shahjehanpore, in Rohileund. The late Mr. Blake, of the Civil Service, was killed many years ago in a tumult at Jyepore, the beautiful city just visited by the Viceroy, and not at Jagpoor. But the error appears to originate with Colonel Sleeman in his Rambles of an Indian Official. Many people would imagine that an English officer whose 'skull' was 'clove to the brain ' by a despairing trooper could not have survived. The officer to whom we allude is Colonel James Hills, who figures nobly in one of the most stirring episodes of the camp before Delhi, and who is, we are happy to say, still alive and wearing the Victoria Cross for his gallant conduct. It is fair to state, however, that in a foot-note Mr. Kaye quotes from Colonel Hills' own account of the occurrence. And as Colonel H. is not an Irishman he could not have written about his own death. But the phrase 'clove to the brain' applied to an officer still living strikes us as somewhat sensational. We trust that Mr. Kaye may have an early opportunity of rectifying the above slight errors or misprints in his second edition.

There are some other statements and remarks in regard to which critics familiar with Indian topics may have ground of objection. At page 123 Mr. Kaye admits that there are many things which in the month of May 1857 'might have been done better if the future had been clearly revealed to those who had the conduct of affairs.' And he then proceeds to say that we 'must judge men according to the light of the day which shone upon them, not the light of the morrow which had not yet broken when they were called on to act.' This strikes us as a rather perilous doctrine to be applied to the conduct of affairs in the hands of ministers or statesmen at a national crisis. Statesmen are selected, elevated to particular posts, paid by the Treasury, and trusted by the people, precisely on the supposition that they are wiser and more prescient than other people. We credit them not only with lofty purpose and good faith, but with insight into motives, with calculation of consequences, and with some prevision of events. We applaud their political sagacity when they come up to this standard, and we cease to believe in them when they signally fail. Even a eainit lupinum may be wise after the event, and we all know what is proverbially said to be the master or teacher of fools. Why, it may be asked, when General Hewitt had mismanaged matters at Meerut, was General Lloyd allowed to retain the command at Dinapore? And why, if disarmament had been successfully carried out at more than one station by the Punjaub authorities, was the same measure not resorted to by those of Calcutta in regard to native regiments in Behar, while we had English bayonets near Patna? We admit that had this been done, as it easily might have been, history would not have had to record the splendid defence of Arrak by its garrison of civilians and Sikhs. But Lord Lawrence and his subordinates did not wait for 'to-morrow's light.' They acted boldly on the occurrences of to-day, and their success in crushing rebellion or in anticipating it suggests the enquiry why policy should change with the latitude, or why what was done on the banks of the Ravi or the Jhelum should have been unattempted on the banks of the Ganges. The country would not record its belief in the firmness and diplomacy of Lord Granville at the present moment, if it thought that he was waiting for some revelation of the future, independent of that which can be gathered from his own insight into character and his power of drawing correct inferences from the position of Cabinets and the course of events.

We are unable to accept, in the literal or the broad sense which the words imply, the author's statement that in parts of the Empire other than the Punjanb there 'might be seen something almost amounting to fusion between the Hindnised Mahometan, and the Mahometanised Hindu.' The Hindu may ape the dress and imitate the manners of Englishmen, but between Hindu and Mahometan there is, in all parts of India, still as wide a gulf as ever. Not a year passes in which the peace of a great city or a populous mart is not endangered by some riot about a mosque near which a pig has been slaughtered, or a temple into which beef has been thrown; and were it not for the staff of the policeman and the presence of the English magistrate, there would be broken bones and bloody heads on both sides. That Mahometan chiefs or landholders may have Hindus for their agents and managers, and vice versâ; that men of different creeds may, under our levelling rule, meet on the same council and sit on the same committee ; and that, like Shylock, the one may buy, sell, talk, and walk with the other, is all very true. But the Hindu makes no proselytes from other sects, and the Mussulman still preaches the spread of his own creed by sword and fire. The angularities which Mr. Kaye alludes to are still, we think, sharp and protruding; and union by the social board or the altar is just as far off as it was in the days of Akbar or Shah Jehan.

We might also be permitted to doubt whether the number of mosques — not temples — in the Hindu city of Benares is as many as 272, had not Mr. Kaye quoted Mr. Sherring as his authority; and we have looked over the excellent map of the Cawnpore Station at page 277 without finding the Subahdar's Tank, so often mentioned in contemporary accounts, indicated by name, although those who are familiar with the locality can make out its position. Hurdeo, we beg to observe, is not the Oriental equivalent for fisherman. The Temple of Hurdeo is the Temple of Siva, the destroyer in the Hindu Triad, from Hara, an epithet of that deity. We believe that Mr. Kaye himself is perfectly well aware of this, but the collocation of words used by him might lead the unwary to think that fisherman is the translation of Hurdeo. We suspect that, as so often happens all over India, a temple to Hur, Hara, or Siva, had been erected at the expense of a fisherman, or of a number of persons of that caste, in a fit of piety, or on some lucky windfall.

But, with these criticisms, we are ready to give all praise to Mr. Kaye for the spirit in which he writes, for the honesty of his endeavours, for his dispassionate estimate of characters and measures, for his general fidelity and liveliness, and for his high moral tone. By no writer have the heroism, the endurance, the energetic lives, and the noble deaths of Englishmen and Englishwomen, been so worthily commemorated. Nowhere is there a trace of exultation such as might escape from the lips of one who was telling the story of unsuspecting confidence requited by foul treachery, and who might rejoice in any retribution which overtook a host of incarnate fiends. Stories of mutilation (which, indeed, disappeared before the investigation of the late excellent Lady Canning, who herself saw every lady that passed through Calcutta from the Upper Provinces) are mentioned by Mr. Kaye only to be discredited; and the same fate in Mr. Kaye's hands attends the report of writings said to have been discovered on the walls of the slaughter-house at Cawnpore. They were bungling forgeries made by excited soldiers. The extraordinary inconsistency of the mutineers, and instances of their romantic attachment and even chivalrous courtesy, are well brought out in contrast to their deeds of ferocity and violence. Due praise is given to the princes who adhered to our cause, from the Sikh chiefs down to the Afghan pensioner Jan Fishan Khan, whose name, it may readily be conceived, was speedily metamorphosed in the English ranks into John Fisher. And in his earnestness not to palliate retribution exacted by young men of hot blood and ardent imagination, Mr. Kaye even condescends to quote such a work as the Travels of a Hindu, by Bholanath Chundra, a writer who never went near the scene of the mutiny when it was raging, who is singularly inaccurate in his account even of places which he has visited, and who writes just as a Bengali might be expected to write.

We take leave of Mr. Kaye with a feeling of gratitude that the events of the great mutiny have found an historian who writes in a spirit worthy of the fine corps to which he belonged, of the noble services whose ability in civil or political administration he is daily criticising and reviewing, of that literature to which he devotes such hours as can be spared from the pressure of official duties; and we may safely anticipate that no rash annalist will rush in upon the ground which he has trodden with so firm and dignified a step, and that the history of the great mutiny will not be rewritten.

Fraser’s Magazine, February 1871.