characteristics of the Governor, we have the following account of his moral and intellectual qualities:

This gentleman had been selected from among the Company's civil servants in India, where he had filled a number of important offices, and endeared himself to the natives by a kind and conciliatory demeanour, as well as by his extensive acquirements in Oriental languages and literature. In his private expenditure he was liberal, but in public matters he was parsimonious and it was probably owing to this circumstance that the new school, which began to figure about this time, pronounced him to be unfit for his high station. They said he could not take a comprehensive view of any great political question-in short that he was a practical illustration of the saying, "Tel brille au second rang, qui s'eclipse au premier." I leave that to be settled by the Oriental historians, observing, at the same time, that it is a dangerous trial for a person, who has passed with éclat through a subordinate career, to be placed (as Governor) at the head of the community, among whom he commenced his noviciate. The example is rare of their succeeding. I can only recall one instance of the kind in the course of my experience; but then he was one of a thousand, or such as may not be met with again in a century.

The "experienced observer" will discover, without much trouble, though the author furnishes no other clue, that this is a portrait of Jonathan Duncan, who was Governor of Bombay at the commencement of the present century. Sir James Mackintosh called him a good specimen of a Brahmanized Anglo-Indian. His character is not badly sketched by Sir James in a few pregnant lines. " The Governor," he says, "who has been very civil to me, is an ingenious, intelligent man, not without capacity and disposition to speculate. Four and thirty years in this country have Brahmanized his mind and body. He is good-natured, inclined towards good, and indisposed to violence, but rather submissive to those who are otherwise." There were many men, "who were otherwise " in those days; and at the head of these were Lord Wellesley and Major Malcolm. Jonathan Duncan was not fast enough for politicians of the Wellesley-and-Malcolm school. He was not what is called a "vigorous statesman;" but he was a very benevolent one. His name is still held in veneration by the few surviving natives, who remember him at Benares and Bombay, and by the many, who have heard their fathers speak, with reverence and affection, of his paternal sovereignty among them. His fault, as a Governor, judged by the standard of 1800-1806, was that he had no natural taste for dragooning. He had some strange heterodox notions about the duty of governing India for the sake of the people-of doing the largest possible amount of good to those who had already become subject to British rule. He was a simple minded, kind-hearted man, and

had not an idea of bullying any living creature. The new school, which began to figure about this time," declared that he was too easily bullied. For example, when the Persian ambassador, Hadji Khulil Khan, was killed at Bombay in 1802, and Malcolm (at that time Acting Private Secretary to Lord Wellesley) was despatched on a special mission of explanation and reconciliation to the Western Presidency, and, afterwards, if necessary, to the Persian Gulph-he complained that Jonathan Duncan had in the meanwhile suffered himself to be bullied by the Ambassador's suite, who put forth pretensions, which Malcolm, in his more vigorous" manner, very soon contrived to

suppress.

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The author of Yad Namuh, with his usual love of obscurity, tells us that he never knew but one Indian Governor, who, having been placed at the head of a community, among whom he commenced his noviciate," fulfilled worthily the duties of his office; and he was one in a thousand, or such as may not be met with again in a century." This is either a fine example of the bathos, or an extraordinarily liberal expenditure of Governors, not at all in accordance with the tables either of Mr. Davis or Mr Neison. At the least it allows an expenditure of ten Governors a year. But, setting aside this consideration, we should like very much to know who, according to the writer's ideas of a really good Governor, this "one in a thousand" was. Was it Mountstuart Elphinstone-was it Thomas Munro-was it John Malcolm? Or, going back to a more remote date and a more extended sphere of action, was it Robert Clive, or Warren Hastings, or John Shore? Or adverting to our own times, was it Charles Metcalfe, or George Clerk, or Henry Pottinger? Our own ideas on this subject, already expressed, by no means tally with those of our author. The only argument ever adduced against the system of promoting men from the services to the chief controul, civil or military, of those very services, might, with equal cogency, be applied to every description of professional rise. It is not alleged in England that a man is unfit to be a Lord Chancellor, or a Chief Justice, because he has gone the circuit, and dined at the bar table, and been for years in a state of familiar intercourse with his brethren of the long robe, who will henceforth have to plead before the ermine of their old companion. A Bishop is appointed to exercise dominion over his old college chums-a general officer over his old companions in arms. Our own deliberate opinion is, that in every profession the highest prizes should be open to every member of it, and that, just as every young barrister feels that he may some day be Lord Chancellor, and every young deacon

that he may some day be Archbishop of Canterbury, we would have every young writer on the establishment feel that he may some day be Governor-General, and every young cadet, that, in due course, he may be appointed Commander-in-Chief.

Perhaps, the best example of all that might be cited in answer to our author's objections-the example, which indeed not improbably furnishes his one exceptional cause-is that of Sir Thomas Munro. Captain Hervey has supplied us with an anecdote in illustration of the reverence and affection with which Munro was regarded by the natives of Madras, which may stand instead of any remarks of our own on this most attractive subject:

But mentioning Sir Thomas Munro's statue reminds me of a little anecdote in relation to it. I was oue day driving by the monument, when I saw an old man in a red coat, with three chevrons on his right arm, standing leaning on his staff, and gazing silently on the exalted statue. He was evidently an old pensioner, not only from his dress, but from a certain degree of military carriage in his tout ensemble, which there was no mistaking. Out of curiosity I stopped my buggy, got out, and addressed the veteran. "What are you looking at, my fine old fellow?" enquired I. 66 Do you know who that is intended to represent?" "Who can have known the great Sir Thomas Munro," replied the old man," without remembering him? And who can have known him without loving him? And how can I, who have served under him for many years, ever forget him?" "Then you think that is a good likeness of our Governor-you recognize the face ?" asked I.

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Yes, Sir," said he, "it is a good likeness, but we shall never again see any like him. He was indeed the friend of the Indian, whether a sepoy or a ryot at the plough. Madras will never again have a Governor like him." And raising his right hand to his head, he gave the old-fashioned salute, lifted up his bundle and walked off, mumbling to himself about the impropriety of crows being allowed to build their nests on the top, and to dirt over the head of the greatest man of his age.

But we are now, we believe, at Bombay, not at Madras, under the guidance of the author of Yad Namuh. Young Hopeful gets on rapidly, is invited to a dinner-party at a certain General's, and acquits himself there very honourably by singing a good song and getting immoderately drunk. Young military students, who have matriculated in this Napierian era, will, doubtless, be surprized to learn what was the result of this indiscretion:

The next morning, I found myself in bed at Colonel Drinkwater's house in a most shameful condition, and fit to be exhibited as an example against drunkenness. I found also a note from Colonel Dragon, to know my reasons for being absent from parade that morning, which my friend the Colonel kindly undertook to answer for me, as I could not hold my head up, much less a pen. The reply he made was perfectly correct :-" The poor boy had been taken ill during the night, and was still in a raging fever."

A little mulligatawney about one o'clock so far restored me, that the Colonel ventured to joke with me.

"So, my young gentleman, you can't sing. Eh! faith, you astonished us all last night.'

"

'I shall never forget it, Sir," said I, rubbing my aching forehead. "I don't think you will," replied the Colonel; "it has got you an aide-decamp-ship. I have just had a note from General Crotchet, saying he has recommended you to the Commander-in-Chief for the situation."

"I never heard before," said I, "of a man getting a post for getting drunk."

'But, my young friend," replied the Colonel, "you have only to get sober again. Do not look so very miserable, but try if you can get up and dress yourself to go with me and return thanks to the General himself."

In these days, instead of a staff appointment, a brisk dose of Napier's purge is the reward of such after-dinner achievements. The story as told by the author of Yad Namuh may look like an exaggeration; but we have, really, little difficulty in believing it. We are old enough ourselves to remember the days when gallantry at the mess-table was a characteristic of a young officer by no means lightly esteemed by veteran commandants; when to shirk the bottle was as great an offence as to shirk duty; and when staff-appointments, if not won by a single Bacchanalian coup, were sometimes obtained by a slower process of convivial graduation. Such indeed was the case of a very dear friend of ours, for whom, in his hot youth, some convivial excellencies of this kind, associated, however, with a happy faculty of "carrying his liquor discreetly," won the approbation and the patronage of his first commandant; and he was on the high road to a staff appointment, when the course of training, to which he was subjected under these distinguished auspices, was suddenly cut short by an intrusive fever, which sent him to England and well nigh to his grave. These were days when the small hours of the morning not unfrequently saw the "second supper" on the mess-table. Now, parties, which less than twenty years ago were often not broken up before three in the morning, are generally dispersed in the evening soon after nine.

We must pass over the history of young Hopeful's "aide-decamp noviciate" and plunge him at once into the midst of active military life. Not, however, that we intend to follow him through his hair-breadth escapes in the imminent deadly breach;"-these stories have been told too often. But there is a good deal of graver and more suggestive matter mixed up with the narrative portion of the work. Here is something regarding the multifarious duties of the officers of the Company's army, which is worth quoting:

The East India Company's officers possess one great and incalculable advantage in the diversity of employments they are called upon to fill. They are, by turns, military, civil, and diplomatic; their ideas become

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expanded; they lose that automaton-like impression, which is the result of passing almost a whole life in a barrack yard, or having the little brains, they may happen to be blessed with, spread over the surface of a Book of Regulations! Nothing can compensate for this: it deadens a man's intellects, converts him into a mere machine, and renders him perfectly useless for any more intellectual purpose than that of being shot at-a useful accomplishment in the army, no doubt, though obtained at an immense sacrifice to the individual.

The Duke of Wellington may be quoted as an instance of the great advantage to be derived from diversity of employment. His duties in India were diplomatic, civil and military, extending over an immense tract of country, and combining a variety of conflicting interests. It was the exercise of these, that developed the energies of his lofty genius, and prepared it (as it were) for the great European struggle, upon which he entered with advantages which none of his contemporaries had had opportunities of acquiring in the little predatory excursions, which (with the exception of the expedition to Egypt) were the only ones the Government of Great Britain had ventured upon. In all the laborious details of every department of the army in the Peninsula of Spain, and which the mass of the community have overlooked in the splendid military results, no person was so thoroughly conversant with them as the Duke of Wellington. In fact, he formed that army, from the Generals of divisions and brigades down to the very camp-followers; and he must have entertained the same contempt for the counsels and opinions of the home authorities of Great Britain, as the Duke of Marlborough did for the Dutch deputies, who, in like manner, impeded all his operations.

All this is pre-eminently true; but it hardly appears to us that the following is in keeping with it. It seems, indeed, to contradict the premises :

I own it is frequently mortifying, when all the fag and drudgery of a campaign has fallen almost exclusively on the native troops, to see the whole credit of it reaped by His Majesty's officers; but it is the nature of our service. Company's general officers are always so superannuated, that I never wish to see one of them Commander-in-Chief. They leave England mere boys, know nothing of European life, nor have they in general proper notions of either discipline or subordination. They acquire liberal habits certainly, amounting to profusion, but all their views are colonial, and their predilections Asiatic. They make good political residents, and commandants of subsidiary forces; but where any thing great is to be undertaken against any other than a purely Asiatic enemy, give me a King's general officer of intelligence, who has all his native energies about him, and who can command the respect and implicit obedience of every one; not a nervous old man, like some of ours, ever anxious to conciliate, and so afraid to give offence, that he embroils his whole camp in petty jealousies and disputes.

We do not quite see the force of this. If the duties of the Indian service are of such a nature, as especially to qualify an officer for the command of an European army, it appears to us, that, a fortiori, they must qualify him for the command of an Indian army. The writer says-"That what Wellington learnt and did in India, eminently fitted him for the duties of high command in the Peninsula:" why then should not the Munros and Malcolms, who were associated with him, have equally qualified