"ministering angel." Taking up too crowded a field of incident, I have not been able to make the characters properly known to the reader by their own speech as I should like to have done. Most especially do I regret this lost opportunity in the case of Beatrice Fane, with her firm and strong, lofty and noble, and yet sweet and gentle character. Then Mrs. Fane and her daughters had to go through a long period of anxiety on their own account. Major Fane and Hay both went to Delhi to take part in its famous siege. (Hay's fears for the loss of his arm had not been unfounded. He had, in fact, run a close risk of losing his life; but medical help came in time, if only just in time, and his excellent, unimpaired constitution enabled him soon to recover.) They both greatly distinguished themselves there. When the time came for the delivery of the final assault, and our batteries were being thrown up close under the walls, Fane especially distinguished himself by the coolness with which he, standing unconcerned in the midst of a storm of shell, directed the carrying on of the work in his battery, the furthest advanced and most important one-directed it with a bamboo stick, which was the successor of the Malacca cane, the loss of which represented the only personal damage he had sustained in the famous blowing up of the Khizrabad magazine. Hay threw himself heart and soul into the fight. He was actuated, no doubt, like any one else, by a desire for personal distinction; he entertained no doubt, as was natural to one in his position, a strong resentment against the mutinous sepoys. But he threw himself with all his soul into the fight because he thought it was a righteous one. Each side, of course, thought its own cause a righteous one. But the sepoys had stained their cause with blood. The land rang with horrors. Their hands were red with the blood of women and children. He was fighting against the heathen; he was fighting on the side of the cross. And so by next year Fane was Colonel Fane, V. C., C. B.; and Hay had made a still bigger jump, and was Colonel Hay, V. C., C. B., and had command of one of the new crack Sikh infantry regiments. And Hay, who had declared that he could not have his marriage deferred to the December of this year, had to wait until the December of next year. And he and Beatrice Fane were married, as they would rather not have been, in the church at Khizrabad, for Colonel Fane was sta tioned there again. Perhaps elsewhere the marriage might have been a larger one. In the joy of her heart-the marriage satisfied her now in every way- Mrs. Fane might have insisted on its being a big, gay affair. But in a place so haunted by sad memories as this it could only be a very simple and quiet one. The "whole station "cannot be present at it, as would have been the case had it taken place, as intended, in the July of the preceding year. Besides the members of the family and Hay's friend, who acts as best man poor Philip Lennox was to have filled the post - there are only four or five other people, chiefly relations, present. And Lilian is the only bridesmaid who follows Beatrice Fane to the altar. The royal family of Khizrabad was transported from the banks of the Jumna to that of the Irrawaddy. There the Sikunder Begum soon ate out her heart. The nuwâb mourned his exile and his fallen estate in many a much polished verse-surely the poets love to push the envenomed arrow further home, to sip of the poisoned draught; they must find some satisfaction in the misfortunes which afford them the occasion for melodious mourning. And he must sometimes have missed the splendid halls and chambers of the renowned palace fortress of Khizrabad; and he did very often miss his stroll along its lofty battlements. But still he was in reality very happy and contented. Had he not his books, his hookah, and his harem? Had he not got rid of his royal condition? Was he not now freed from all political worry? And so he lived on to an extreme old age. We must go on a little further yet. Thirty years have passed. The year 1887 dawns on British India even more gloriously than 1857. The January sun of 1857 had looked down on the dominions of the Honorable East India Company. The January sun of 1887 looks down on the empire of Victoria, queen of England and empress of India. It looks down on a great empire greatly administered. It looks down on a changed and transformed India - on a new India. It looks down on great changes great improvements, for great canals and railways now traverse the land; the railroad and telegraph have annulled its vast intervening distances. It looks down on fine new cities on the old ones made sweeter and brighter. It looks down on innumerable schools and colleges on a new generation of educated natives; the stream of human learning which for so many generations had flowed backward and forward between | most important and historical change. Europe and western Asia has now reached We have said that the ancient importance further from west to east and is flowing in of Khizrabad, as Delhi, was due to its full tide into India. It looks down on a standing at the highest point of the navipeople among whom has been an enor- gation of the Jumna, where a rocky ridge mous diffusion of wealth an enormous impinged on the river and allowed of a increase in the comforts of life. It looks strong fortress to be built; of its standing down on a land in which peace and secu- at one end of the flat, open tract between rity, order and quiet, law and justice pre- the Sutlej and the Jumna, which was vail in an eminent degree. bounded by the stupendous wall of the Himalayas on one side and the wide wastes of the sandy desert on the other, and which formed the ancient portal or gateway into India. That portal has now been removed further westward; has been placed on the top of the great mountain chain that forms the western boundary of Hindostan. In Khizrabad the change that has taken place all over the land is epitomized. Not only great roads, but railways now radiate from it. The place of the old bridge of boats has been taken by a fine iron-girder bridge, one of that splendid series of bridges which now span almost all the rivers in India-even the lower Indus, and even the Ganges at Benares. The The gun by the side of the flagstaff foul back slums and fetid alleys have tower on the Ridge has sent forth its been opened out and cleansed. Improved morning roar. The Hindoos of the town sanitation has caused the complete disap- are flocking down to the river to bathe. pearance of many loathsome and tortur- The English people are on the move, driving diseases. Star Street glitters more ing about on business or pleasure. The brightly than ever-glitters with its own doctor goes to visit his patients, the engay, bright, indigenous wares; for if once gineer his works. The commanding offiwe inflicted injury on some of the handi-cers of the various regiments- there are craftsmen of India by the introduction of our own manufactures (which was greatly to the benefit of the rest of the community), we have long since recompensed it tenfold, for the handicraftsmen of that land have had such employment during the past twenty years as was never known there before. Sikh ones here now and the brigadier and the commissioner, and the civil surgeon, and the chaplain, and the manager of the bank, and the other prominent residents of the place are to be seen in the Ghilani Bagh this morning, as we saw them on that morning in May thirty years ago. We pace the streets that others have paced before us and others will pace after us. Ghost follows ghost. And that corner of the gardens where the watercourse makes a beautiful sweep through the little wood of the ancestral banyan-tree, and where we saw the English girls assembled together that morning, is still the place of favorite resort. We can note no change here except the typical one of an iron garden-seat having taken the place of the old wooden bench. There are two ladies on the seat. The young girl with the bright and blue The ancient splendor of the renowned castle or palace-fortress of Khizrabad has passed away with its ancient use; it is now occupied by a regiment of English soldiers. But be it remembered that it was solely owing to the English that the royal family of Khizrabad had been able to occupy the palace and retain it for its ancient use for the half century preceding their final removal from it. Instead of the nuwâbs, a municipal council, composed chiefly of natives, now governs Khizrabad. It holds its meetings in a splendid town hall, at-eyed face bears a strong resemblance to tached to which is a lofty clock-tower, since the completion of which the old historical gong above the main gateway of the palace has ceased to ring forth the hours as it had done for so many hundred years before. The Ghilani Bagh has been greatly improved. You see natives strolling about in it as you did not do of yore, and in some of the finest equipages on the Mall you see natives sitting, though not yet with their wives. the Lilian Fane who formed one of that group of girls, as well she may, being indeed her daughter; and the pale but pretty middle-aged lady by her side is her mother, the Lilian Fane of old, but of course now Lilian Fane no longer. Her husband, Colonel Leslie, is now the commissioner here - Khizrabad, like Delhi, was placed under the Punjab government after the Mutiny — and Mrs. Leslie now lives in Melvil Hall. And the daughter who is now with her (she has several others, two of them married; she is, in fact, a grandmother) arrived from England only two between William Cowper and Charles Lamb. In nothing is the resemblance closer than in the circumstance that both began by writing poetry and produced much sweet verse, while the prose of each is far more noteworthy than his poetry, and is among the best in the language. If neither had written a line or a sentence, the personal story of each would have ensured his name being remembered. Though the career of both was chequered and painful, yet it has a fascination for every reader, and, of the two, Cowper's is the sadder and the more curious. days ago, and though she has, of course, | in common with another famous writer, heard the story of her mother's escape and it would be easy to draw a parallel from Khizrabad, she has not heard it yet in fullest detail from her mother's lips. And Mrs. Leslie tells it to her now, seated here in the shadow of the banyan-tree. She tells her how they were gathered together in this spot to settle the dresses they were to wear on the occasion of Aunt Beatrice's wedding, and how the cobra appeared and grandpapa killed it; and of the terrible day of the outbreak, and how they escaped to the Jumoo Gate, and how, seeing some of their own light summer dresses lying there on the ground, and, picking one up, she saw under it the dead body of a young officer she knew very well and liked very much ("Poor fellow! he was only a boy; every one called him Tommy Walton; I can see his face now," says Mrs. Leslie, with a shudder); and how they were let down the wall, and the difficulty they had in crossing the ditch, and all that happened afterwards; and how they wandered about for three days and underwent terrible sufferings; told her own part of the tale that I have told to you. The events of that time are graven very deeply on the minds of all who witnessed them. Reviewing my own work, I think they are graven too deeply for the purposes of fiction. You can manipulate fictitious events and characters as you will. You can make the events mold or bring out character, the character produce and bring about events. You can give the due proportion of space to the delineation of character or the narration of events. But in dealing with the real adventures of real people you are apt to forget that the characters of the actors are not as well known to the reader as to yourself, and every occurrence will insist upon being narrated exactly as it happened and at full length. You are apt to be overpowered with incident. The writer should dominate his events; but the events of the Indian Mutiny are sure to dominate the narrator. (We see this in every history of it as yet published.) But I have told the tale as best I could. Let the reader judge it leniently. From Temple Bar. THE BARD OF OLNEY. WILLIAM COWPER is one of the strangest and most pathetic figures in the literary history of England. He had much While an English essayist naturally perceives a similarity between the lives and habits of thought of Cowper and Lamb, a French essayist, whose pre-eminence as a critic is indisputable, has pointed out that there is a point of contact between Cowper and Rousseau. No writer in any language has dealt more tenderly and genially with Cowper than SainteBeuve; none has better appreciated the delicate aroma of his verse and the gracefulness of his prose, or given a truer picture of Cowper as an author and a man. And among the many suggestive remarks which Sainte-Beuve made, there is none which is more striking when considered, though far-fetched in appearance, than that which runs: "Cowper believed himself to be condemned to irrevocable reprobation, just as Rousseau regarded himself as the victim of a universal conspiracy." Indeed, it is with great writers like Rousseau, in whom there was a strain of madness, that a resemblance to Cowper must be sought and an explanation of his peculiarities can be found. It is but necessary, however, to note the points of resemblance between Cowper and Rousseau to be struck with the differences. There was not a grain of humor in the composition of the Genevese, while Cowper and Lamb were humorists to the core. Few things more comical have been penned than "The History of John Gilpin." Lamb himself never produced any thing more diverting, and he would have gloried in writing such a ballad. Cowper wrote it, and repented having done so. In August, 1785, he informed the Rev. John Newton, "I am at least very unwilling to esteem John Gilpin' better worth than all the rest that I have written, and he has been popular enough." Lamb revelled in humor; Cowper deemed it wicked. Lamb loved a joke and delighted in punning; Cowper never joked or punned after his illness without fearing lest he might ren- | the purely conventional sense of the term. der his desperate state still more hopeless. His faith was sturdy enough to save him He worked hard with his hands and his from doubts. He was satisfied to make pen to keep his mind from brooding upon the best of this world, and he displayed the damnation which he believed to be his no dread of another. Cowper's fears inevitable portion. If the topic were not about futurity rendered his existence a painful, it would be a fit subject for mirth. living torment. In his younger days Cowper made rabbit- When a young man he was a frequent hutches, chairs, and tables, to distract his visitor at the house of his uncle, Ashley attention. In his later years he translated Cowper. His uncle had two daughters, the Iliad and the Odyssey with the same the elder of whom became Lady Hesketh object. Few lives have been more origi- by marriage, and was Cowper's guardian nal and extraordinary than his. His angel in the later and miserable years of genius was so nearly allied to madness his life. The younger sister, Theodora that the line of separation cannot be dis-Jane, was never married, and she was cerned. It may be doubted whether it Cowper's first love. He would gladly ever existed. have become her husband, and she would readily have become his wife, if Mr. Ashley Cowper had not refused his consent to, the union. His objection is said to have been that he disapproved of first cousins marrying, but it is possible that he detected symptoms in his nephew which, in his opinion, rendered him unfit for marriage. Cowper submitted to his uncle's decision while bitterly lamenting it, and ceased visiting his cousin, to whom he had written many verses, which she treasured and which were printed after her death. Whether marriage might not have been to Cowper's advantage in every respect is a William Cowper had many advantages of birth, being well connected on the side of both parents. A younger brother and he were the only surviving children of the Rev. Dr. Cowper, rector of Great Berkhampstead, and Anne, his wife, their mother dying after giving birth to John, who was six years younger than William, who was born on the 15th of November, 1731. John Cowper entered the Church, and died on the 20th of March, 1770. William appears to have been more sensitive than delicate. He was harshly treated by an elder boy at the school of Dr. Pitman in Market Street, Hertford-problem which it is idle to discuss, as it shire, and he suffered much from his eyes. Moreover, he had an attack of small-pox at the age of fourteen, yet there is no record of his being a puny or weak lad. He wrote that, when a boy, "he excelled at cricket and foot-ball,” and the boy who is a good player at either game must be sturdy and manly. At ten he was sent to Westminster School, where he seems to have been well grounded in the Greek and Latin classics, for which he retained an admiration throughout his life. He was articled to Mr. Chapman, a solicitor, when he was nineteen, and had Edward Thurlow, afterwards lord chancellor, as a fellow clerk and companion. After leaving Chapman's, he took chambers in the Middle Temple, where he was called to the bar in 1754, Thurlow, who was his senior, being called in the same year. A greater contrast could not be found than that between the two friends. Cowper was shrinking and sensitive; Thurlow burly and domineering; Cowper had not nerve to avail himself of his opportunities, while Thurlow never missed putting his foot on a rung of the ladder of promotion through hesitation or fear. Religious melancholy was Cowper's ailment, while Thurlow was a good Churchman in can never be solved. What is certain is that he cherished Theodora's image, and, late in life, he wrote to Lady Hesketh: "I shall look back to the memory of your sister, and regret her; but how strange it is, if we were to meet now, we should not know each other." Theodora manifested her feelings for Cowper in a practical way. At a time when his circumstances were straitened, he received welcome gifts from an anonymous donor. The giver was Theodora, who survived Cowper twentyfour years. His father died in 1756, leaving him a small sum of money, with a part of which he bought a set of chambers in the Inner Temple. He appears to have lived upon his capital and not upon the interest derived from it; his only source of income being the office of commissioner of bankrupts, which brought him in sixty pounds a year. In 1764 he resigned this office. He was then at St. Albans, under the medical care of Dr. Cotton, and recovering from an attack of insanity. Being then in a morbid state, he held that he could not conscientiously act as commissioner of bankrupts. The income, though small, was an object to him, yet, as he said: "I would rather have starved in reality than deliberately have offended against my | London, I burnt my prayers, and away Saviour." While resident in the Temple he was not assiduous in following his profession. Literature had greater attractions for him than law. He was a member of the Nonsense Club, and he, like his fellow-members, probably looked upon life's brightest side. He was a contributor to the Connoisseur and the St. James's Chronicle, and he translated some of the odes of Horace for publication. He also translated two books of Voltaire's "Henriade," and diligently read Homer with a view of ascertaining how far Pope's translation represented the original. In short, he appears to have lived in the Temple much in the same way as his fellows. At the outset of his stay there he had an attack of religious melancholy. He wrote that it caused him such a dejection of spirits as no one can have understood who has not felt it: "Day and night I was upon the rack, lying down in horror, and rising up in despair." He lost all relish for his favorite studies; even his beloved classics ceased to charm him. While in this miserable state he met with a copy of George Herbert's poems, read them, and felt comforted. This author was the only one whose works then delighted him. He pored over them all day long, are the words he uses, adding: "And though I found not here what I might have found, a cure for my melancholy, yet I never seemed so much alleviated as while I was reading him." A near and dear relative advised him to discontinue reading Herbert's poems, on the not unreasonable ground that "such an author was more likely to nourish my disorder than to remove it." In this unhappy frame of mind he had recourse to prayer, and was relieved; he composed a set of prayers, and felt the better for doing so. He visited Southampton, and one day, when seated on an eminence there, the sun shone, and the prospect entranced him, and he felt the weight of his misery taken off, his heart becoming light and joyful in a moment. But this happy condition of mind did not last long. He says that Satan and my own wicked heart quickly persuaded me that I was indebted for my deliverance to nothing but change of scene, and the amusing varieties of the place. He had a relapse, to his subsequent sorrow, and it is under the influence of bitter regret that he penned the strong and self-condemnatory words: "Upon this hellish principle, as soon as I returned to went all thoughts of devotion and dependence upon God my Saviour." Cowper had relations who possessed patronage, and according to the notions prevailing before the period of competi tive examinations for public office, the duty of an influential relative was to provide, at other people's expense, for those connected with him who were poor and ambitious. Major Cowper was the poet's cousin, and he had in his gift two offices in the House of Lords; he appointed the poet, or Templar, as he was styled then, to the more valuable of the two, it being that of "reading clerk and clerk of the committees." Cowper accepted the office, but when he began to learn the almost nominal duties necessary for qualifying himself to discharge it, he was smitten with dread of his incompetency, and fell into a fever. The salary was of moment to him because his small patrimony was well-nigh spent. He had heard that Mr. Arnold was designated to fill the lesser of the two offices, and he begged Major Cowper to appoint Mr. Arnold to the greater, and let him have the minor one of clerk of the journals. When this was accomplished his mind was easier; and then his agitation was renewed and in creased by the intelligence that the House of Lords had called in question Major Cowper's action, and had summoned the newly appointed clerk to appear at the bar of the House, there to undergo an examination. Though the examination would probably have been a matter of form, yet to Cowper it assumed gigantic and menacing proportions, and he set himself to qualify for it by a laborious perusal of the journals. While thus engaged, he "read without perception," and made no progress towards understanding their contents. Parliament rising in Au gust, he went to Margate for change and rest, returning to the office in October. The prospect of standing an examination appeared more terrible than ever, and in his nervous state be began, as he writes, to look upon madness as the only chance remaining. I had a strong foreboding that so it would fare with me, and I wished for it earnestly, and looked forward to it with impatient expectation. Other persons have dreaded madness more than death; he welcomed it as a relief, and in so doing he showed that his reason was tottering. In this lamentable state his thoughts turned to self-murder, and his narrative of what he felt and did |