British commander-in-chief to his presence. Minuteness is important in these details. The prince was to have arrived at the commander-in-chief's tent at twelve o'clock, but did not reach the British camp till half-past three o'clock p.m.

"By the time his royal highness had been received, re-mounted on his elephant, and the whole cavalcade formed, it was half-past four o'clock. The distance being five miles, the commander-in-chief did not reach the palace at Delhi until sunset. The crowd in the city was extraordinary, and it was with some difficulty that the cavalcade could make its way to the palace. Its courts were full of people anxious to witness the deliverance of their sovereign from a state of degradation and bondage. At length the commander-inchief was ushered into the royal presence, and found the unfortunate and venerable emperor, oppressed by the accumulated calamities of old age, degraded authority, ex

treme poverty, and loss of sight, seated under a small tattered canopy, the remnant of his royal state, with every external appearance of the misery of his condition.

"The governor-general speaks of this event as delivering the unfortunate and aged emperor, Shah Aulum, and the royal house of Timour, from misery, degradation, and bondage. Who would not imagine, on hearing this language of the English ruler, that he was about to restore his imperial majesty his lost authority ?-to those territories from which he had been extruded only by successful usurpation and rebellion,-territories of which the possessions held by the company formed a material part? Or, if not to give him any of the usurped territories which had fallen to the lot of the English, if not to give him even that tribute which they had long withheld; at any rate, to bestow upon him those territories of which Scindia had deprived him, and which the English had just re-taken, or were about to re-take?

"Not an atom of this. The English were to restore no territory. They were, therefore, to hold his 'imperial majesty' still degraded from sovereign power-still in bondage as much as ever. The very words of the governor general are, that only so much 'regard should be paid to the comfort and convenience of his majesty and the royal family, as was consistent with the due security of their persons' in other words. imprisonment."

So far the historian. And we have no regrets for the degradation of the royal inheritor of the throne of the great Timour, and the great Aurung Zebe. We have had a share of their spoil. And calmly saying "it must be so," though we profess not to have adopted the Muhammadan's creed, we are contented to repeat with the poet,

"Kingdoms and states that long had stood,
Have from the summit of high fortune's flood,
Ebbed to their ruin fast!"

CHAPTER XXVIII.

"Oh, turn their wealth to arms, and make,

War for thy beloved sake,

On wealth, and war, and fraud; whence they
Drew the power which is their prey."

SHELLEY.

"As a specimen of the way in which petty wars may originate," writes, not Miss Aveley, but a medical gentlemen in India, "you must know that there is a quarrel between two chiefs in this neighbourhood, the one refusing to acknowledge the other. He who refuses is an old man, who traces his pedigree through a long line of ancestors

up to the progenitors of giants and demigods; whereas the young man, his neighbour, is an upstart, and worse, a rajah of the Company's creation.

"The rightful heir of the territory which he now possesses was a minor at the death of his father. He was given in charge to a man of low birth, who had once been a common soldier, but who was not wanting in boldness and ambiton. Availing himself of the anarchy of the times, he seized on the sovereign power and forced the rightful heir to take refuge with a distant Mogul chief or khan.

"The usurper kept possession of the territory, and at his death left it to his son, him whom our old chief will not acknowledge. He is, however, retained in it by the Company; for, when driven to shifts to raise money for the Burmese war, a certain person high in command, thought it a good stroke of policy to try to involve the rich