who approves of almost every thing done by the English in India; but it does at any rate please one to see a military man really able to comprehend that the world was made for some other small purposes besides that of being a field to fight upon. At the same time, we think there is the most value in that portion of his facts and observations, which has been furnished to him and by him in his professional capacity. There is very considerable importance and interest in his descriptions, interspersed in different parts of the narrative, of the constitution, habits, efficiency, and progressive alteration of quality of the native troops in the English service. Some of the incidents of his journey are illustrative of this subject; and he makes no scruple of suspending his story for a good while, to illustrate from his previous knowledge any subject thrown in his way.

Perhaps the hands accustomed to wield the sword, are apt to be more daring than others in the exercise of the pen. We think we have noticed instances enough of this to warrant us in calling it a professional characteristic. Courage has been said to be a soldier's religion; and, analogously to that of a Christian, which is required to pervade every thing in life, it may be felt an obligation on military conscience, that writing should be executed in the same style as fighting. To be deliberate and slow in judging, to hesitate in opinion, to acknowledge there are doubts and difficulties on all sides, not to be ashamed that more daring men should pronounce more promptly and decisively, would be held to betray a defect of gallantry. Why, indeed, should a man who would readily brave whatever can be brought from camps and arsenals, be afraid of any thing in the forces and magazines of logic? What should there be in any possible array of opponent ideas, to appal him who would not hesitate, with a stout regiment of horse, to attack a whole Mahratta army? And what should he care for the width, and intricacy, and obscurities of a question, when he knows he should not have asked more than an hour's warning, to dash into the thickest forest or jungle in Asia, in pursuit of Pindarry murderers, and without caring what might be their number? How unreasonable, it were to expect him to submit to shew, on any ground, of politics, morals, or even theology, an indecision which, if betrayed in giving orders, in camp, or march, or field, would expose him to contempt.

Whether, however, it be a fact, or not, that there is such a professional characteristic, our Lieutenant-Colonel, at least, possesses this endowment, of unhesitating opinion, in a very high degree. He fears not to pronounce with confidence at first sight; and the judgements which he has had a little more time to grow positive in, are laid down in terms as decided as the great geographical lines of the globe.

Fortunately, some of the principal subjects on which this martial quality of intellect is displayed, are nearly as little, as any great concerns ever were, within the range of controversy. The substantial justice of the recent war in India can admit of no denial, except from those who hold war altogether, under any possible circumstances, to be wrong. And really the persons maintaining that opinion would be put to their extreme resources of argument, on reading our Author's and other authentic descriptions of the character and operations of the Pindarries, whose irruptions into some of the provinces of the British empire kindled the war. We have the greatest respect for that Christian class of the community among whom it is an established principle, that a case justifying a recourse to arms is impossible; but we should really be curious to hear what they would have counselled the government to do, when many thousands of robbers and murderers, literally such, burst in suddenly and unprovoked, on the country, traversing to a vast extent the peaceful tracts of agriculture; perpetrating, not incidentally, but systematically and generally, every possible abomination compatible with the rapidity of their march; torturing and killing, with every wantonness of infernal barbarity, men, women, and children; with eager activity destroying every thing that could not be carried away as plunder; resolved to continue thus ravaging and desolating the provinces, till gorged to the utmost with slaughter and spoil, and then to retire to the territory of their dens, to digest amid their plunder, at their leisure, new schemes of similar destruction. Abhorring, as intensely as ever disciple of Robert Barclay did, the war-spirit with which almost all the nations and their governors have run mad, and believing a justifiable, that is, a purely defensive war, to be one of the rarest things in the history of the world, we should nevertheless feel it impossible to conceive a more desperate intellectual undertaking, than that of a man attempting to make out to the conscience of the Governor-General, a plain, sound, satisfactory proof that his duty was to remain perfectly still, while messengers from a province apprehending the horrible invasion, were in his presence, accompanied as we may be allowed to imagine the case, with a few persons escaped from a province already overspread with devastation and murder. We will suppose it to be directly in answer to the descriptions of these latter mournful heralds, and to the earnest representations and entreaties of the other messengers, appealing to these depositions, in pleading for instant powerful succour, that the advocate for non-resistance should make his remonstrance against any thought of a warlike movement against so infernal a visitation. It is possible there are many worthy persons whose judgement and conscience would, if they could have been placed in such a situa

tion, at the moment that such a question was deliberated on, have impelled them to make this remonstrance; but we can hardly think there is any hazard in saying that there is not one, supposing him to have had his family and property in the province menaced, who would not have been secretly gratified to see the Governor-General actuated by a quite different, that is, a perverted and depraved, judgement and conscience. Let any person of the opinion in question, read the accounts of these miscreant bands, and deny that in such a case he would have been so gratified.

Our Author's appointment to Europe, prevented his being a sharer or witness of any thing more than the preparatory movements for the destruction of this rapidly augmenting power, essentially constituted of incorrigible ruffians, against whom it had been ridiculous to wage any other war than one of extermination. He begins his work with a short historical and descriptive sketch of them; followed by a comprehensive rapid view of the state of each of the chief native powers, relatively to one another and to the English, and relatively in particular to the somewhat critical juncture of the commencing operations against the Pindarries, in whose continued existence there could be no doubt that some of those powers took an interest, because, though sometimes suffering from their predatory violence, they could on occasions reinforce their armies from these lawless bands. It was worthy of the accustomed wisdom of these native despots and courts to meditate a quarrel, and to betray that they were meditating it, by unequivocal signs, in vain contradicted by worthless professions of amity, just at the time when the English were putting their whole immense military force, in readiness for action. It would seem as if they were desirous to take this intruding and detested power in its strongest attitude, from the consideration that if they could upset it then, they were likely to have no more trouble with it. This judicious proceeding cost Scindiah the degradation of admitting a "subsidiary "force," flung the Peishwah, the nominal head of the Mahratta confederacy, from his throne, reduced Holkar to a shadow, and the Rajah of Nagpoor and other of the legitimate holders of power to nothing. The fatuity manifested by most of these princes and their courts is perfectly astonishing. So many years of experience seem to have done nothing towards teaching them either diffidence or caution. It would be very curious if we bcould know in what language their consultations were carried on, and what could be the reasons on which they could found their confident presumptions of the sudden reversal of an order hof events which had been steadily progressive during the whole length of the lives of the oldest of these prognosticators. This bmadness of presumption was just what was requisite to com

plete their ruin, and within a very few weeks to carry on the course of events one grand stage further in the same direction. We e must continue to think there is something more in all this than our merely military or political commentators can explain; and that a train of events without parallel, or at least without equal, in history, is passing on under the Divine superintendance, toward a result of which the moral glory will correspond to such a prodigy of the destruction and creation of power.

The most important events of the Mahratta war had taken place before our Author could reach the western shore of the Peninsula, on his way to carry intelligence of the compulsory pacific arrangement with Scindiah. He furnishes short notices, from the information which reached him on the road, and at Bombay, of transactions which, even during the course of this expeditious transit by horse or palanquin, added millions to the subjects of the British Government.

One of the remarkable circumstances of this war, as well as of the preceding wars, was the almost invariable fidelity of the native troops, in fighting against their own countrymen. the Peishwah or his ministers had entertained a vague expecIt seems tation of some possible failure of it in some of the native corps, contrary to all former experience. But this new occasion made no difference in either their allegiance or their bravery. They all did as they were ordered, and fired and hacked away with perfect good will at figures of their own complexion, language, and religion. The triumphant success with which they did this, will have put an additional security on their allegiance for the next trial, as, doubtless, their firm adherence to their foreign masters in the present instance, was fortified by their recollection of past victories gained under the same command. The prodigious disparity, in point of military efficiency, between these troops and the very same kind of men in the service of the native powers, is by our Author attributed chiefly to discipline, and a perfect army mechanism on the one side, and incurable irregularity, disarray, and defective manual exercise on the other. In this Mahratta war a great deal of valour was evinced by portions of the native armies, especially those composed of Arabs ; but it was all in vain.

It is discipline, together with a quick firing of the flint-lock and field-pieces, which has given us the striking superiority over the natives. It is the steady fire of these that the troops of the native princes cannot face: that regularity of movement, quickness of evolution, and strict and unerring obedience in action, giving union and combination, opposed by confusion, clamour, distraction, and insubordination, must ever secure a commanding ascendency. The natives have no idea of the value of time in military operations; the most frivolous excuses or causes preventing the movements of

their armies; which will always make an active and regular force superior to them. They express their astonishment and the utmost dread at the steady and continued fire of our Sepoys, which they liken to a wall vomiting forth fire and flames The firm and regular

pace, the fist and most necessary part of a soldier's instructions, is quite incomprehensible to them: and in this we again see the almost total change requisite to complete a soldier, as he is not allowed even to use his legs but in a prescribed manner.

Having myself witnessed the inferiority of the irregular infantry and cavalry of the native princes. and the difficulty of bringing them into any kind of order, and also their attachment to their ancient habits and prejudices, it seems almost incredible, that in the short space of sixty years, we should have been able to bring about the total alteration that has been made.'

In tracing the progress of the European military system in India, as the instrument of the progress of our dominion there, the Colonel thus marks the contrast between the situation of the English as at the period just preceding their beginning to form the natives into regular soldiers, and as in 1817.

It is curious to take a retrospective view of an English factor at his desk in 1746, with a pen behind his ear trembling at the nod of the meanest of the Mogul's officers, and treated with the greatest insolence and oppression; with no higher military character under his direction than a peon stationed near a bale of goods: with a jurisdiction not extending beyond a court-yard of a warehouse connected with it; and contrast this picture with the situation of the Company's army in 1817, when 150,000 men, disciplined by British officers, presented the spectacle of as fine an army as any in the world, receiving its impetus of action from a great statesman and general, who held the person of the Mogul as a pensioner on the bounty of his government, wielding the political and military resources of the empire over a theatre of operations in the present campaign, extending from Loudheanah to Guzuraut, in a segment of a circle of nearly 1200 miles. Such are the minimum and maximum of our Eastern empire.'

It seems it is not purely and exclusively a military alteration that the native troops in the English service have undergone. In contempt of all the Anglo-Indian oracles that have pronounced the thing impossible, we have the Colonel here deposing that their punctiliousness in matters of superstition has considerably worn away. The numerous assertors that every thing of this kind was to be eternal, omitted to say,

'What time next week eternity should end.'

Our Author specifies various facts in evidence of this modification of their superstitious feelings. For instance: Thre is not at this day a man of the highest caste, who will not be grateful for European medical assistance, if the medicine be taken from his own vessel, and given him from the hand ' of one of his own caste; a compliance which would formerly