66 say, LOR 'le jeu' en littérature, le mouvement of rare Scottish books to the National Library of Scotland. The most interesting group is that concerned with Mary, Queen of Scots. Of the 289 works relating to her published between 1544 and 1700 which appear in Mr. John Scott's Bibliography (1896), 150 are found in this collection, and there are also in it no fewer than twenty-nine not recorded in the bibliography. We noticed in particular three French works of which one Testament et Derniers Propos' printed at Paris pour P. Marin," 1589, is believed to be unique. ORD Desborough, explaining the recent disastrous flood in riverside London as caused, not by the flood-water brought down by the Thames but by a tidal wave surging in from the North Sea, reminded his hearers of the Thames Conservancy Board on Monday last of an old project of Herbert Spencer's as the only way in which a human device could prevent similar catastrophe at any future time. This was to build a barrage across the river from Tilbury to Gravesend with five or six locks in the centre-producing thus the Two Hundred Years Ago. most beautiful reach of water in the world, from Tilbury to Teddington, "always clean, From The Daily Journal, Monday, January always deep, and capable of being used all the way up. Such a work as this would bring London nearer to the great cities of ancient times which, for all their inferiority in some obvious respects were certainly grander than modern cities in the matter of walls, and mighty buildings. A CRANE, with long white ear-tufts, one of the Demoiselle species, belonging to the Zoological Gardens, is at large in Regent's Park, subsisting largely on food given her by the public. The officials of the Gardens, says a correspondent of the Morning Post (Jan. 11), would be glad if people would refrain from feeding her, so that hunger may hasten her return to her proper paddock. She is anxious to return; every morning she comes wheeling and darting over her old home; but she is deterred partly by difficulties in the descent: the paddock is small and full of bushes and she requires room for circling, and partly by nervousness of the keepers who are trying to lure her back. The official who explained all this took occasion to say a word about the eagles in captivity. People speak reproachfully about the eagles in captivity looking so melancholy as they do; but they have been known to escape one night and be back next morning wanting food and companionship at any price. This agrees with a contention of our regretted correspondent, the late William del Court, who studied birds in cages with much attention and affection, and maintained that the strain and the anxieties of a free life pressed more heavily upon the bird than men were apt to imagine, and that life in a cage, with its security alike from hunger and from foes, was a relief to them. ON Jan. 10 The Times gave in considerable detail particulars of Lord Rosebery's gift 15, 1728. On Saturday arrived two Holland, two Paris, Jan. 12. The Sieur Kelly, who is come hither with feveral Commiffions from the Queen of Spain, and among other things, to compleat a Set of Diamond Buttons for the Infant Don Carlos, has executed his Orders. This Set confifts of 108 Buttons: The Diamonds for the Coat weigh from 20 to 25 Grains each, of the fame Form, and of a white Water, and fine. Those of the Waiftcoat weigh from 11 to 14 Grains each, equally perfect, fo that there is not a finer Set in Europe. The Button to his Hat is a fine Brilliant weighing 63 Grains. The 6th Rate Man of War in this Harbour, is Literary and Historical because I believe that boils Notes. UNPUBLISHED LETTERS OF WARREN HASTINGS. THE following sixty letters, written by Warren Hastings in his old age, and recently come to light, are all addressed to Edward Baber, an intimate friend who served with Hastings in India and was at one time Secretary to the Governor and Council of Bombay. The first, given below, is dated 1803, and the others from 1807 till within a few weeks of the writer's death in 1818. As Professor Dodwell pointed out in The Times last autumn, the letters of Hastings hitherto published are mainly official in tone except those written to Mrs. Hastings from India. The special importance of the letters now to be published lies in the fact that they are written-as informally as the custom of the period permitted-to a friend who had interests and experiences in common. I. D[aylesford house 25th April 1803. My dear friend Your remembrance of the anniversary of my deliverance is a proof, added to the many which have dwelt upon my mind, though this did not, that your attentions to my interests exceed my own. I am not so humble minded as to disclaim the pretensions which you assign me, whether to the justice and simple honesty of my country (which ought to pay me what it owes me) or to the gratitude of my sovereign. But I am satisfied. I flatter myself that my reputation rather gains than loses by time, and that the day is not distant when it will be generally acknowledged. In the mean time I eat, drink, sometimes laugh, and amuse myself, and possess some substantial blessings which do not fall to the lot of all men; and if I had all those which wealth could purchase, I am not sure that I should be happier. I thank you for your quotation. I like it, and repay your gold in base coin with the following: To living worth the world unwilling pays The tribute due, nor that unmix'd, of praise. Tis death alone the pure reward can give: Die then, proud claimant, that thy name may live. I am not quite sorry that you have suffered so much from your late painful disorder, are the most remedial of all the efforts of nature to relieve the animal habit. I am sorry only that you have wanted a remedy. I rejoice that the good Archbh.. is so well. No man living out of his own family loves him better, or venerates him more than I do, and I love to hear those whom I love express the same sentiments which I feel for him. Mrs. Hastings is well, uncommonly well, and expressed herself much pleased with the manner of your inquiry concerning her.-She this instant interrupts me, and understanding to whom I am writing, says: remember me affectionately to him, and tell him, I am sorry for his boils; because I am affraid, he has committed some great sin; and therefore God has permitted the Devil to afflict him as he did Job." She has left me, or I should have justified both you and Job. Sr Jn D'Oyly, and all his family have been my guests. Sr Jn left us yesty to return to Ireland, with his little son, one of the most ever saw. David promising children I Anderson is also with me. Happy as I am in such society,I only regret that I have not the power of Krishna to multiply myself, that I might bestow all my attentions equally on them, and at the same time prosecute some, like the present, with absent friends. I hope, you will let us see you sometime in this summer. You will find Dd much improved, not so much in ornament as in comfort, which I have extended to all the inanimate part of the parish. my In my Did Osborne tell you, that I chose the most rigorous portion of the winter to make him a visit at Molchet and at Litton? return home I composed the lines which you will find written at the back of this page; and beg your pardon for charging you with a double postage for them. I beg you to present my respectful compliments to Miss Babers. Adieu, my friend. Yrs. most affectionately You make me strange Ev'n to the disposition that I owe, When now I think, you can behold such fights; my anxiety respecting the Archbishop of -I could go on and address our ministers: York, whom some of the papers (not mine) report to be dangerously ill; I do not know, whether in town, or in Yorkshire. But in either case, you are more likely to know the truth than any other of my friends in town. A rumor of this kind may be safely hazarded by a newswriting speculator: for the good Arch: cannot be many months short of Eighty seven. : You are very good in your belief that my faculties have not suffered much of decay by an age less advaned by 13 years; because if you are in error, it is one arising partly from the wish that it may be true, partly from a partial judgment. Yet you may have much to answer for, if you are wrong, which I much fear for I have lately ventured (I do believe, on the strength of your encouragement, God forgive you!) to propose to the present Chancr. of Exchr. in his new modification of the assessed taxes, to reduce the rates payable by limited annuitants of all descriptions to the exact proportion which they severally bear to the incomes of perpetual annuitants, like the philosopher of Lagado, who affixed a sundial to the town weather cock, having previously so adjusted it as to cause it to meet the rays of the sun at the same exact point of time with that at which the Shadow pointed, with all the variations of the wind. Tell me, whether you think my design practicable? I think it is, because I paid 30 per ct. last year, all but a few shillings, on my annuity, instead of 10 per cent. I trust much to the spirit of conciliation, of wch Lord Henry has afforded many proofs in the exercise of his functions; and he is personally friendly. This project has occupied me through all the last week, and is yet uppermost in my thoughts; which is the natural reason, that I have given it so large a portion of this letter, and I would give 20 p.ct. on my income to reduce it to 10. I look with horror on India, and think it justifiable to turn my mind on any other subject, even of the most frivolous kind, to avoid it, since I can only blame,. and nobody mends. Last year I saw a letter from Ceylon which related that the Commandant of Seypoys had been subjected to a trial by a Court Martial for not conforming to the Arts. of War in making his men attend divine Service: and now we hear of a corps of natives and one of Europeans, massacred, in consequence of an order forbidding the former to wear the badges of their religion. Am I to believe that such things are, and overcome us like a summer's cloud, without our special wonder? And keep the natural ruby of your cheeks, When mine are blanch'd with fear. But perhaps theirs are red from anger. I wish it may be so. I could not have written this nonsense yesterday. Mrs. Hastings was very ill; but she is now so entirely free from pain as to leave me without anxiety about her. I am well, but have ugly symptoms. Adieu my best friend Yr affectionate WARREN HASTINGS. I pray you to present my best respects to Miss Babers. III. Daylesford house 6th Feby. 1807. I thank you heartily, my dear friend, for your kind letter of condolence. We are weak creatures, and our horror of death, a delusion providently implanted in our minds for our preservation, extends itself to cases in which that object can have no concern. In the present we have every cause of gratulation. Our good mother passed through a life far exceeding the period commonly allotted to mankind; without sickness, except that which brought it without much suffering to its close; with little trouble, though at one time encompassed with national troubles; and with little sorrow. She lived in comfort, and enjoyed it. At an age, in which, and long before it, we are petulantly told, the human heart is wholly wrapt up in itself, and dead to affection, she encountered a perillous journey through a country newly infested with bands of predatory soldiers, and a more perillous voyage by sea, to visit a beloved daughter, an act in itself equal to an accumulated store of virtue, and not the less so for being the effect of a different impulse: and as long as she retained the hope of life, she continued to indulge that of once more seeing that beloved daughter. This disappointment, and her want of power to write to Mrs. Hastings, to give her parting blessing, and the last assurance of her love, under her own hand, were the only regrets that she expressed in the course of her illness, which was only of six days duration. She possessed her understanding clear till she breathed her last and she died at the age of Eighty six years and two months. Yet we mourn! While I write, I cease to mourn, though my share of sorrow has not been wholly sympathetic; and a very little time, and that employed in the contemplation of the same subject, will, I trust, convert the sorrows of the principal mourner, already much abated, into a pleasing, though melancholy remembrance, and into sentiments of gratitude to the divine giver of so many, and unmixed blessings, to a person so dear to her. She is, I thank God, in a better state of health, than I had dared to expect from her first emotions; for, strange as it may appear, it was a stroke unexpected. The letters from her other relations, and one of so recent a date as the 2d of Novm. from the excellent lady herself, represented her in the full possession of health and spirits, and of bodily strength, nor did we suppose her to be within 9 years of the age which she had actually attained. Mrs. Hastings is much gratified with the interest which you have taken in this, as you have ever done in every other occasion connected with her happiness and mine, and desires me to tell you so, with the assurance of her kind remembrance. I find, that upon the subject which has occupied already three pages of this letter, I cannot write shortly. I believe, therefore I shall make this the last. Yet to you, of all my friends, and of all men living, it will be most acceptable from its great similarity to an equally interesting event of your own life, which I have often contemplated with emotions of pleasure, and an increase of that attachment, to which you are most justly entitled from me, and from all who know you. God bless you, my dear Baber. I know enough to be more interested about what is to be than what has been. Four days ago I received another letter from Mrs. Marriott, enclosing part of another letter from her son, Lt. Col. Marriott, which, from some other circumstances, I feared was part. of an extensive circulation; and I therefore not only determined to suppress it, but wrote to conjure her not to send more copies abroad than those which were already gone: but she has assured me that it had never been meant to communicate them beyond his own specified friends, and their friends; and with assurance, reading the extract again, I find it perfectly inoffensive, and highly curious. I will therefore enclose it to you, and think you will not grudge the heavy postage which it will cost you. I have copied the extract at the end from a letter since received from Mrs. Marriott. Think what the mother's feelings were, when she first read the original! What will yours be, my dear friend, when you read the simple remonstrance of the Sepoys, and the Court martial which followed it? Surely this execrable business will not be slurred over with a mere order (if even so much is done) for the recall of the Gov. and Commr. in chief. But it is not by punishment that the disease is to be hindered from becoming mortal. I will not believe a word-no, not a letter, against our Admirals, on the credit of a French reporter. We shall not have to wait long for the authentic account of what has passed at Constantinople. We have been starved with the cold, but except a little retardment in our sowing, we shall not experience any very bad consequence of this lingering winter, either in the farm or gardens. I am busied in an extensive plantation of firs, to which it is rather favorable. Mrs. Hastings has taken possession of your superbe machine pour servir de TIREBOUCHON, and locked it up, much delighted with it, and thankful for it, though she has not yet authorised me in form to say so. Perhaps she intends to do it herself. I have some doubts about the propriety of extending the communication of the narrative to a Director, who ought to know every thing essential to form his judgment upon it from the official dispatches. If you have no scruples, let Coll. Toone see it, and let Charles Imhoff see it of course. Adieu, my friend. Believe me ever with true affection Yours WARREN HASTINGS. To Edward Baber Esqr. 63, Park street Grosvenor square London. Extract from a letter from Lt. Colonel Thos. Marriott dated Sep. 18th, 1806. Charles will have written you fully on the lato melancholy business at Vellore in which fourteen Officers were massacred and ourselves with some others most wonderfully and providențially saved. I desired him to send you a copy of my letter to Lady William Bentick by which you will perceive how matters were carried on but I did not therein mention any causes as a commission was appointed examine into them. It would appear that a general meeting of the whole of the Sepoys on the coast was in agitation caused by the commander in Chief having most materially interfered with the prejudices of their casts.The ostensible to cause, was a new Turband which was formed in the shape of a drummer's, or German cap-There was also an order out to cut the Sepoys' whiskers and not to allow them to wear the marks of their cast on their foreheads, etc.-These prejudices were worked upon by the native officers and interested people untill a general combination appears to have taken place for altho it only broke out at Vellore in so open a manner yet very violent symptoms of insubordination and even threats took place at Walagabad, Hyderabad and even in Fort St. George. The first time the Turband was objected to, the Sepoys came forward in an open manner and said if they were to wear it their wives and families would not give them water to drink or prepare their victuals, and that they would be degraded from their casts-That they had fought for the Company all their lives with the utmost fidelity in the old turband and that they would do so still but that rather than be degraded by wearing a Topie they would first die-The consequence was that 20 of them were seized and tried by a Court Martial, two or three were sentenced 900 lashes and the remainder 500 each. The Sepoys finding they could gain no redress by a public representation were driven to seek more serious redress by concealed methods, and it appears that many hundreds were sworn to secrecy in the different corps Vellore was a point where it was most advisable to strike the first blow, for if they succeeded there they had a strong hold, a choice from the Sons of Tippoo (to set up as a rallying point) and a large sum of cash amounting to more than ten lacs of rupees They succeeded at first to a miracle, and were completely in possession of the Fort many hours, but the Sepoys beginning to plunder the cash chest no subordination could be kept up by the native officers and the men dispersed with what they could carry off. At this period the 19th Lt. Dragoons came over from Arcot, and relieved the remainder of the 69th of foot from their perilous situation. You will have heard the result. The Commissioners were appointed principally to learn what part any of the Princes had taken previously to or during the mutiny-It has not I believe been substantiated, that any of them incited the Sepoys to the Mutiny; but there is no room to doubt that two of them (Moiz Udeen the youngest be of Ld. C's. Hostages especially) encouraged the Sepoys after they had possession of the Fortresolved the whole of the male part of Tippoo's The consequence has been that Government Mysore so that they may never be looked up family should removed farther from to again as a rallying point for the disaffected -I left Charles in charge of the remainder of the family on the 20th Aug. and proceeded for Bengal with the Ten eldest sons of Tippoo, his brother and two Nephews, we sailed in the Culoden the 31 Augst. and had a miraculous escape being driven by a gåle and current on the Reef off point Palmyras; we lost an anchor at another time, but at length arrived safe in the river. I underwent a long examination before the Commissioners, and have every reason to believe that they were satisfied with the explanation I gave on all the subjects of enquiry It is a political thing to endeavour if possible to throw the whole upon the Princes but this I believe cannot at all be established, even so far as to justify the late treatment of those ten princes, who were acknowledged perfectly innocent, and on this account I fancy the whole affair must be brought forward in England. You will easily believe how seriously Government must have been alarmed, at so general a disaffection of the native troopsThe corps in Fort St. George went so far as to stick their turbands on their bayonets, whilst sentries on the Ramparts, and to wear the rear to the front, with other violent symptoms of mutiny-I must not forget to say, that the order for the removal of the Princes to Bengal, was passed before the Commissioners had made their report to Government, so that the resolution was not passed upon the strength of any of the Princes being implicated in having excited the mutiny, but only to prevent the possibility of any future inconveniences by having them so near the Mysore-They will now be completely insulated." Another letter dated Calcutta, 14 Novm. 1806, says The whole of the papers and proceedings of the Commissioners have been submitted to the Supreme Government and are now gone to the Government at home. The Supreme Govt. has not only exculpated the Princes from exciting the Mutiny, but are satisfied of their highly good conduct (with the exception of Moiz Udeen who encouraged the Sepoys after they had possession of the Fort) in refusing to join or have communication with the mutineers-The consequence has been that the Govt. which previously to the receipt of the papers from Madras had supposed them all guilty, and consequently treated them with great rigour, has now granted them every indulgence, is erecting temporary buildings for the accomodation of their families, and has determined to build them permanent and suitable bouses-So that they may during the rest of their lives dwell quietly and in peace, which they could not have done, so well, at Vellore, from its proximity to Mysore; where every one inclined to disturb the peace would have taken their names, etc. I have no doubt but the Govern |