of his character, as conceived by a Helvetian or a Nervian, may reasonably be doubted.

Things had now come to a terrible pass. During the first weeks of the mutiny the murders were perpetrated by the "budzarts," or black sheep, of the regiment, with a view to implicate their comrades beyond the hope of pardon; to place between themselves and their former condition of life a gulf filled with English blood. Their scheme met with entire success. The minds of our

countrymen were so agitated and distorted by anger and uneasiness, that even those battalions which remained true to their salt began to be apprehensive for their safety whenever they found themselves in the same cantonment with European troops. In a station where this state of things existed, suspicion and dislike reigned supreme. The officers of the native corps slept in the European lines with loaded revolvers under their pillows; the guns, unlimbered and charged to the muzzle with grape, faced the quarters of the sepoys; a strong force was at all times under arms, and the very air seemed heavy with an impending storm. Under such circumstances an outbreak would have been regarded rather as a relief than as a misfortune. But if our people were anxious, the wouldn't-be mutineers had far more reason to be nervous. On occasions of this description there is nothing which men so constantly underrate as the terror which they themselves inspire in the breasts of others. During a town and gown row, I always used to think that the hostile column looked most formidable and impressive, while I was only too conscious that the fighting power of our own array was lamentably defective. Who could depend on Screwington, who had descended by hebdomadal steps from the second to the sixth boat, until he finally retired into the illimitable? on Dufferly, who cried three weeks before he left school, when the fags mutinied and pelted him with penny-rolls? on Timkins, who had never taken a walk a mile long since he spent the day at Shelford to escape

being condoled with after missing his scholarship? And yet the effect produced on the imagination of the town by our onward charge was, doubtless, very demoralizing. A cloud of tall forms, in square caps and flowing gowns, bearing down through the fog, must test the courage of the hardiest Barnwell cooley, or the most vindictive college kitmudgar, burning to take out his unpaid wages in undergraduate gore. Once, or more than once, it befell that, when the suspected troops were ordered out to be disarmed or discharged, the loaded cannon, the lighted matches, the line of frowning white faces, proved too much for their nerves. Convinced that they had been assembled to be butchered, the poor devils broke and took to their heels, under a crashing fire of shrapnel and canister. By the time it came to this, the only chance of existence for the one party lay in the utter destruction of the other. Quarter was not given, and, indeed, hardly could be said to be worth the asking. An Englishman knew well that, though one set of Pandies were to spare his life, the next lot who came across him would cut his throat; and a sepoy knew well that, if his captors took the trouble to drag him about in their train for a few days, the magistrate at the first station on the road would infallibly hang him before the officer in command of the party had finished his dinner.

The presence of a military officer, however, seldom afforded much comfort to a prisoner. None of their persecutors were so dreaded by the natives as the royal troops lately arrived from England. No civilian armed with the thunderbolts of the law, able to ascertain at a glance whether the culprit was a pensioned sepoy, a Mahommedan fanatic, or a peaceable cultivator, was half so terrible a judge as a beardless subaltern, fresh from the depôt at Chatham, whose experience of the population was summed up in the statements that "niggers were all blasted liars," and that, "when a feller said he was a ryot, he was sure to be the greatest scoundrel unhung: a distinction which he was not likely long

to retain. The knowledge of the servants of the Company was far less formidable than the ignorance of the servants of the Crown. No Sikh burning to avenge Aliwal and Sobraon on the revolted mercenaries who had been used by the Feringhees as tools to accomplish the humiliation of his race, inspired such horror in the souls of the village people, as the British private who saw a probable murderer, and an undoubted subject for "loot," in every "Moor" who came in his way-for in those days the rank and file of our army always spoke of the inhabitants of India by the appellation of "Moors." As the men landed at Bombay, they expressed vexation and disappointment at not being allowed to go in at the Moors who were taking their siesta upon the beach. They had been brought all the way from England to kill Moors, and why should they not begin at once? One Moor in the hand was worth two in the bush, or rather the jungle. At one time it became necessary to double the guards at Fort William, in order to prevent the soldiers from sallying forth at night to avenge the atrocities committed in Oude and Rohilcund, upon the sycees of Chowringhee, and the palkee-bearers of the China-bazaar. A corporal, who had travelled up with a party from Bombay to join his regiment in the field, on his arrival at head-quarters reported that in the course of the journey a mutiny had taken place among the bullockdrivers. On inquiry, it appeared that the hero of the affair was an honest fellow, who had disembarked with his head full of the Nana and the fatal well. His story was simple:-"I seed two "Moors talking in a cart. Presently I "heard one of 'em say 'Cawnpore.' I "knowed what that meant ; so I fetched "Tom Walker, and he heard 'em say "Cawnpore,' and he knowed what "that meant. So we polished 'em both "off."

At Buxar, which, you may remember, is on the Ganges, a little above Arrah, there lived a native, well known to all the residents by the name of "Coony Baboo," who was employed by the

Government in a subordinate capacity. He was a Bengalee, and as such had just as much reason to be alarmed for his safety as any Englishman at the station. One day he was pursuing his avocation at a wharf on the river, armed with a pistol, which he kept to protect his life and property against the stray mutineers, and other vagrants, who swarmed in those troubled regions, when a steam-flat came up the stream carrying a detachment of English troops. The commanding officer sent a boat to communicate with the authorities on shore. The crew, seeing a man who, to their eyes, presented a suspicious appearance, hanging about the jetty, took it into their heads that he might just as well hang on board their steamer, and accordingly seized him and searched his perWhen the pistol came to light, they made no doubt but that he was a mutineer who had in some unaccountable manner been delivered into their hands. They forthwith took him on board, where, after a short but satisfactory investigation, the poor Baboo was ordered for immediate execution. Happily, in the nick of time, a civil officer appeared on the scene, who, when he saw the prisoner, exclaimed, "Why, it is Coony Baboo! What are they doing to you, Coony?" It was with great difficulty that the captors could be induced to believe the assurances of the civilian, whom they evidently regarded as an emissary of Lord Canning, and a representative of that clemency policy which was the bugbear of the day.

son.

At a place hundreds of miles distant from the seat of war, some brinjarries, or corn-dealers, came into the camp of a regiment which had been a very short while in the country. The men on guard observed that the heads of the strangers were shaved, and knew by instinct that they must be sepoys. hastily-constituted tribunal took cognizance of the matter, and called in a serjeant who had the reputation of a profound knowledge of India.

A

at being consulted, he cocked his eye, and after due inspection, pronounced that the prisoners were undoubtedly

sepoys. A civilian, who was present, remonstrated most vehemently, but was answered with the prima facie, or rather primo capite argument, "You see their heads are shaved! They must be sepoys." At length his importunity prevailed, and the colonel ordered the soldiers to take the brinjarries to the outskirts of the camp and let them go. These orders were obeyed to the letter. The men were led beyond the tents, set free, and shot down as they ran away. The events of those times have left their trace in our military vocabulary. During the year and a half which followed the outbreak at Meerut, to "loot" and to "polish off" became household verbs in the British army. The sterling qualities of that army alone rescued it from utter demoralization. No other soldiers in the world could have preserved their self-respect amidst so fearful an ordeal. Eighteen months in such a school would have turned the French regiments into Zouaves, the Zouaves into Turcos, and the Turcos into cannibals.

After all, however, the best hope of the miserable natives lay in the justice. and moderation of official men. The stern and cold animosity of the civilians, the reckless and unscrupulous retribution dealt out by the military, were as nothing to the rabid ferocity of the nonofficial community. These men had come to the shores of India for the sole purpose of making money. They were under no professional obligation of providing for the prosperity and happiness of the population, and indeed were too apt to regard their dark fellow-subjects simply as tools for promoting their own ends. Now that their lives and fortunes were brought to the extreme of jeopardy, in consequence of a wide-spread and most formidable revolt of the despised race, their fury and hatred knew no measure. In one or two instances the Government was constrained by the pressure of circumstances to place power in the hands of men of this class. In a place where the outbreak had been accompanied by deeds of peculiar atrocity, some such persons were vested with authority. The unhappy place was

delivered over to a Reign of Terror. Whatever misery could be inflicted by cupidity, private malice, and vulgar barbarity, was endured to the full by the wretched natives.

The tone of the press was horrible. Never did the cry for blood swell so loud as among these Christians and Englishmen in the middle of the nineteenth century. The pages of those brutal and grotesque journals published by Hébert and Marat during the agony of the French Revolution, contained nothing that was not matched and surpassed in the files of some Calcutta papers. Because the pampered Bengal sepoys had behaved like double-dyed rascals, therefore every Hindoo and Mussulman was a rebel, a traitor, a murderer; therefore, we were to pray that all the population of India might have one neck, and that all the hemp in India might be twisted into one rope. It would be wearisome to quote specimens of the style of that day. Every column teemed with invectives which at the time seemed coarse and tedious, but which we must now pronounce to be wicked and blasphemous. For what could be more audacious than to assert that Providence had granted us a right to destroy a nation in our wrath ?-to slay, and burn, and plunder, not in the cause of order and civilization, but in the name of our insatiable vengeance, and our imperial displeasure? The wise ruler, whose comprehensive and impartial judgment preserved him from the contagion of that fatal frenzy, was assailed with a storm of obloquy for which we should in vain seek a precedent in history. To read the newspapers of that day, you would believe that Lord Canning was at the bottom of the whole mutiny; that upon his head was the guilt of the horrors of Cawnpore and Allahabad; that it was he who had passed round the chupatties and the lotahs, and spread the report that the Russ was marching down from the north to drive the English into the sea. After all, the crime charged against him was, not that he had hindered the butchery, but that his heart was not in

the work. No one had the face to say, or, at any rate, no one had the weakness to believe, that Lord Canning had pardoned any considerable number of condemned rebels. His crying sin was this, that he took little or no pleasure in the extermination of the people whom he had been commissioned by his Sovereign to govern and protect.

After Lord Canning, Sir John Peter Grant had the gratification of being the personage most profusely and fiercely maligned by the enemies of the native; which honourable position he long retained, until of late Sir Charles Wood put in his claim, a claim which has been instantly and fully recognised. A certain journal made the brilliant suggestion that Sir John Peter, had he dared, would very likely have released the sepoys whom General Neill had ordered for execution, and then proceeded to abuse him as if he had actually so done. This hypothetical case soon grew into a fact. It was stated positively in all quarters, that Sir John Peter Grant had set free the murderers of Cawnpore, with a bombastic proclamation, containing the words "in virtue of my high authority," an expression which at once discredited the story in the estimation of all who knew the man. Sir John and his high authority were reviled and ridiculed in the daily and weekly papers of England and India, in conversation, on the stage, and on the hustings. Meanwhile, with native laziness and good humour, he said nothing, and allowed the tempest to whistle about his ears without moving a muscle. length the Home Government wrote out to the Governor-General, directing him to take cognisance of the affair; and he accordingly requested the accused party to explain how the matter stood. Then Sir John spoke out, and affirmed that the report was a pure fabrication; that he never enlarged a single sepoy; and that, had he desired to thwart General Neill, such interference would have been entirely out of his power. Hereupon, the press in general proceeded to make amends in a full and satisfactory manner. One newspaper, however, had

At

no intention of letting him off so easily, and put forward an apology which was exquisitely characteristic, and which probably diverted the object quite as much as it was designed to vex him. The gist of it was, that Sir John had undoubtedly been falsely charged in this particular instance, but that he was such a confirmed and abandoned friend of the native as quite to deserve everything he had got, and that no contumely, whether rightly or wrongly bestowed on him, could by any possibility come amiss.

And now who can wonder that among a generation which has gone through such a crisis philanthropy is somewhat at a discount? It is unjust to blame men who have lost their fortunes and friends and health in the desperate struggle, because the moment the victory is decided they cannot set to work heart and soul at concocting and promoting plans for the benefit of their conquered foe! That struggle irresistibly reminded us that we were an imperial race, holding our own on a conquered soil by dint of valour and foresight. Cantonments and arsenals, field batteries and breaching batteries seemed more essential to the government of the country than courts of law, normal schools, and agricultural exhibitions. The questions of the day were, not whether Sanskrit should be taught at the Presidency College, or to what extent the pure mathematics of Hindoo men of science were borrowed from European sources, but whether artillery might safely be posted at a station where no English cavalry were quartered, whether the advantages of massing troops at central points compensated for the sanitary dangers of that measure. As long as human nature remains what it is, men who have just made a great and successful effort will ask themselves whether they and theirs are not to profit by their exertions. Had we poured forth our blood like water in order that the children of sepoys might receive a better education than they would have obtained in the event of their fathers having overturned the British supremacy? In order that

the disaffected Rajpoots of Shahabad might reap the advantages of a more speedy and equitable administration of justice than they would have enjoyed under the rule of Coer Sing? What was England to gain in return for her millions of money and thousands of lives? Did she not merit some more substantial recompense for having recovered India, than the privilege of governing the Indians in a spirit of wisdom and unselfishness? Echo and the planters answered "yes!" though equity and humanity steadily continued to assert that the events of 1857 and 1858 had not altered a whit our position in India-that our reconquest could be justified in the sight of God and Europe only by the same conditions as had justified our original conquest. We must still govern the land in the interest of the inhabitants. We must still provide them with everything that is essential to their well-being and happiness. We must still pay rent and taxes, keep the roof tight and the drains open, or out we must turn as unprofitable and dishonest tenants. It is greatly to the credit of the civilians that they hearkened to the voice of equity and humanity. The natives cannot accuse their governors of neglect or injustice. They have no reason to regret having exchanged Munro and Elphinstone for Grant and Beadon. Most of our officers would do all and suffer all rather than betray their trust. Some have already done much, and suffered not a little. But the new order of things is not as the old. The children of the soil are no longer regarded with the lively interest, the credulous partiality of yore. Those are plants

which do not flourish amidst the rank weeds and rushes, the sand and rubble that overspread the land which was lately submerged by the deluge of civil

strife. Men cannot at will cast aside the recollection of those times when all was doubt and confusion and dismay; when a great fear was their companion, day and night; when the mother and children were in sanctuary at the headquarters of the division; when the husband worked with a loaded revolver

among his papers, a horse standing saddled in the stable, his feet resting upon a pair of saddle-bags crammed with his most valuable property. The distrust and dislike engendered by such an experience are too deeply rooted to be plucked up by an act of volition.

Though the civilians do not allow the impressions left by the events of the mutiny to influence their opinions and their conduct, the case is far other with the non-official society. And here I may remark that there is some difliculty in finding an appellation for the members of that society. They themselves insist upon it that the civilians have given them the name of "interlopers," and grow extremely wroth over this imaginary grievance. I solemnly declare that I never heard the word used in conversation by a civilian, and never saw it in print, except when it occurs in the effusions of the "interloping i party. On occasions, when they are very angry indeed, they will have it that they are called "adventurers." Perhaps "settlers" is the least objectionable and most comprehensive title. Well, the European settlers in India speedily acquired that contempt for the Bengalees which it is a law of nature that the members of a conquering race should entertain for the subject population among whom they live. As the Norman baron regarded the Saxon churl, as the Dutch boer regarded the Hottentot, so it was inevitable that the English planter should regard the ryot and the cooly. No one can estimate very highly the moral and intellectual qualities of people among whom he resides for the single purpose of turning them to pecuniary account. But in the course of time a new element was added to the feelings which the settler displayed towards the Hinoo. Dislike appeared by the side of disdain. The Dutchman might treat the Hottentot as he pleased, without the interposition of government, as represented by as numerous and able body of public servants paid to protect and cherish the ancient population of the country. Front-de-Boeuf and Brian Bois de Guil