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to the events which were passing in other parts of the Punjab. General Reid had moved down to Rawul Pindee, that he might be in more close and constant communication with the Chief Commissioner. Thither Brigadier Chamberlain had preceded him, to regulate the movements of the column, to the command of which he had been appointed, with the rank of Brigadier-General.*

Nothing was occurring throughout the Punjab that was not at once known to the Chief Commissioner; with every detail of the Peshawur disarming, and the mutiny at Nowshera, the telegraphic wire had kept him informed. The recall of H.M. 27th from the Movable Column to strengthen the trans-Indus district, and to hold Attock, had rendered it necessary to bring H.M. 52d Light Infantry from Sealkote to supply its place. Other portions of the column, the Guides, and the troop of horseartillery from Peshawur, had been pushed on for Umballa; therefore Dawes's troop horse artillery and Bourchier's battery were also summoned from Sealkote to join the column en route at Wuzeerabad. There were three native regiments, also, at Sealkote-the 9th Light Cavalry, the 35th Light Infantry, and 46th Native Infantry. It was

necessary to provide for these, so as to prevent, if possible, their doing any harm. The 35th Light Infantry, and a wing of the 9th Light Cavalry, were attached to the Movable Column, where, under a large body of European artillery and infantry, they were more likely to be kept quiet, while the 46th Native Infantry (of whom Brigadier Brind, commanding at Sealkote, reported more favourably) were left behind with the other wing of the cavalry to hold Sealkote. In the lower stations of the Punjab all was apparently quiet. At Mooltan the 62d and 69th Native Infantry, with the 1st Irregular Cavalry (formerly known as Skinner's Horse), appeared open to reason, and an examination of the suspected cartridges by a committee of native officers and. others from the three corps seemed to have satisfied them. At Jullundhur the Kuppoorthulla Rajah was behaving nobly, keeping the city and district in perfect quiet, or rather seconding the efforts of the civil authorities. The state of the cantonments was scarcely so satisfactory; but of this

more anon.

Among the most cheering intimations received by the Chief Commissioner, at this time, was a letter from the Maharajah of Puttiala (whose conduct throughout has been above

suit or an alarm, there was perhaps a needless haste in punishing, and the friend and foe, or the innocent and guilty, were confounded; but for such acts the ministers of justice cannot be held responsible.

Three names,

*The selection of this officer was made in the following manner : Brigadier Sydney Cotton, Brigadier Neville Chamberlain, and Colonel J. Nicholson, were submitted by Sir John Lawrence and General Reid for the consideration of General Anson, as men, any of whom would be well fitted to take command of the Movable Column. General Anson telegraphed back that he appointed Brigadier Chamberlain (subject to the confirmation of Government); and the rank of Brigadier-General was given him, to insure for him and the column under him an independence of movement, as exigencies might arise. Without this, being in army rank junior to the officers commanding the several stations through which the column might pass, his movements were liable to be perpetually hampered; for not a station could the column have entered without permission from the brigadier commanding; and once having entered it, the column would have fallen under his command, and thus every plan might have been thwarted, and the very object for which the column was formed, frustrated. It was to avoid such a dilemma that the superior rank of Brigadier-General was conferred on Brigadier Chamberlain.

Long as this note is already, we trust the reader-and the subject of the note too -will forgive us for adding a few remarks on the antecedents of the officer thus selected by the Commander-in-Chief, as much was said, and perhaps more felt, at the time, respecting an appointment which gave two years of active service and Indian experience precedence over officers of higher rank regimentally in the corps that composed the column. Neville Bowles Chamberlain was a regimental captain only, of the 16th N.I. (grenadiers), but by brevet local rank " Brigadier of the Punjab Irregular Force," and Honorary Aide-de-camp to the Governor-General. Within

all praise), forwarding a letter he had received from the King of Delhi, calling on the Maharajah to rally round the standard raised by his liege lord.

The following is a translation of this remarkable document :

"To him of noble rank and lordly dignity, our own devoted vassal, worthy of our confidence and favour, the union of benevolence and highmindedness, Nur Inder Singh, Bahadur, the Maharajah of Puttiala.

"Dated the 21st Ramazan. "My life is passing from my lips; come, then, that I may survive;

For if I cease to be, what will become of

you?'

"Of the downfall of this Government, and of the great revolutions in the course of development, which are at the present being bruited about, you have heard from the papers. Relying upon your well-proved devotedness and loyalty towards this our own favour-bestowing family, you are written to, that, with all possible speed, you present yourself at our Court, resembling that of Khusrau, with a suitably-equipped force.

'This matter admits of no delay, for in this extremity

There is neither plan of attack nor way of escape.'

"In such strait, therefore, it behoves you, as you desire the increase

of our power and our welfare, to obey this summons without delay."

How welcome an assurance of the Maharajah's fealty was the transmission of this letter to the Chief Commissioner! It told almost more than the noble way in which, at the first call, he hastened to the support of Government, that he was true to the cause of England. The most wealthy and influential of all the Sikh Rajahs, his conduct would doubtless influence the rest he had openly avowed that he drew the sword for England; and all the rest followed in his train. For not only did the Jheend Rajah throw himself with all his little army into Thaneysur, ready to resist the first surge of the tide of rebellion, should it roll upwards, and the Nabba Rajah concentrate his forces for the prohave said, the Kuppoorthulla Chief tection of Loodiana, while, as we was doing good service at Jullundhur; but many a minor Rajah and Sirdar, who had little to lose, and which should dispossess England of might gain much in a revolution liberally in support of Government, the Punjab, came forward boldly and influenced greatly, no doubt, by the example of the Maharajah of Puttiala. Rajah Tej Singh at once raised a ressala (troop) of cavalry, as also did Sirdar Shumshere Singh Sindhanwalla: half a ressala was raised by Rajah Runbheer Singh Alloowalla;

two years of his landing in India, he found himself with his regiment in the heart of Affghanistan, where he soon distinguished himself; and on the commencement of the Cabul outbreak, was attached to the 1st Irregular Cavalry (Christie's Horse). Six wounds bear witness that in that campaign he bore no idle or inactive part. In acknowledgment of his services, he was appointed to the Governor-General's "Body-Guard," with which corps he was present at the battle of Maharajpore. Then came the Punjab campaign, which added Chillianwallah and Goojerat to the list of his battle-fields. Nor was the peace which ensued a season of ease or quiet to him; "frontier service," for which Gazettes and Army Lists have no place, but which has proved a nursery of so many a gallant soldier, and has given to India men like Edwardes, Nicholson, Lumsden, and many more, was Chamberlain's unceasing occupation. It was only at the close of 1856 that he was threading the defiles of the Koorum Pass, and crowning the heights, which gave him a sight of Guznee, and disclosed the third Pass, which connects Affghanistan with India. Later still -a few weeks only before the events of which we are writing-he was at the head of a small body of his tried "Punjab Irregulars," storming the mountain-fastnesses of the Beloochee Bozdars, and teaching those hitherto untamed marauders that their fortresses were no longer impregnable, and that they could no longer carry on their raids along our frontier with impunity. Such was the officer selected by General Anson to command the Movable Column. His very name acted as a spell on the minds of the Irregulars; and his firmness, yet unassuming courteous manner, soon won the respect of the European portion of the column. Jealousy of such a man at such a crisis was surely too petty a feeling to have a place in the heart of any English officer.

and Rajah Jowahir Singh, though too poor to raise and maintain any force, instantly rallied round him some 700 old retainers of his father's (Rajah Dhyan Singh, so long the powerful favourite of Runjeet Singh), and placed them at the disposal of Government. These were welcome tidings, daily coming in to show that what remained of the old Sikh nobility, though crippled in resources and lowered in position, were ready to throw the weight of their influence into the scale of order. Old Gholab Singh, too, though sinking into his grave, did not forget that the English had raised him from a petty hill Raj to the kingdom of Cashmere, and was no sooner applied to than he placed some lakhs of rupees in the Government treasury, and began to organise a large contingent to swell our ranks in the time of need.

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All this looked well; the Sikhs were clearly with us from policy, if from no better motive. The Punjabee Jats, though they are a fine manly race, and make good soldiers, are not constitutionally warlike, and seemed little concerned in the stirring events around, except when the chance of head-money for some fugitive Sepoy lured them away from their fields. The harvest was providentially abundant, and they had ample occupation in storing it: but a month later (ere the monsoon had set in, bringing with it the second seedtime) it might be otherwise, as many felt. At present in full employment, they gave no signs of excitement or disaffection.

The frontier, however, became again rather disturbed. Rumours there were of warlike preparations in the Swat Valley: these, nevertheless, came to nothing, and the seditious movements of a designing Moulvie along the lower hills, who was soon caught and hung, had no other effect than to produce another change in the Movable Column: it had only crossed the Chenab on the 29th of May, and encamped at Wuzeerabad, when orders came to H. M. 24th Regiment and the Kumaon Battalion of Goorkhas to hasten back to Jhelum and Rawul Pindee.

Thus ended the month of May

in the Punjab Proper. What was passing during this time at Umballa must next be considered; and how the same hand that was moving the Punjab, made itself felt at Umballa also. Although the hot weather was now coming on in its fury, and was pronounced to be most prejudicial, if not fatal, to Sir John Lawrence; although he endured an amount of bodily suffering which now and again drove him to his couch till the paroxysm had passed off, he still held on at Rawul Pindee, spending days and nights in anxious labour that scarcely knew cessation there sat the civilian, with the General's sanction, moving regiments from station to station as emergency arose; calling in levies from the frontier tribes, whom he could best rely on; keeping up constant communication not only with every station in the Punjab, but also with every native chief between the Ravee and the Jumna; thus did he sway the whole Punjab. All eyes were turned to him; and could they but have seen him (as the writer of these pages was permitted to do), surrounded by the kindred spirits he had gathered round him in council, collected, energetic, cheerful, while so many others were losing head and heart, the most desponding would have learned to be hopeful, and the most timid would have renounced, or have endeavoured to conceal, his fears-so little becoming a man and a Christian, surrounded by such signal proofs of God's Providence.

Anticipating by a single day the current of events, we here insert the characteristic address of Sir John Lawrence to the Sepoys in the Punjab, which ushered in the month of June. It might be wanting in some of the more happy touches of his accomplished and lamented brother, but herein spoke the man.

"FROM THE CHIEF COMMISSIONER OF THE PUNJAB TO THE HINDOOSTANEE SOLDIERS OF THE BENGAL ARMY.

"Dated 1st June 1857. "SEPOYS,-You will have heard that many Sepoys and Sowars of the Bengal army have proved faithless to their salt at Meerut, at Delhi, and at Ferozepore.

Many at the latter place have been already punished. An army has assembled, and is now close to Delhi, prepared to punish the mutineers and insurgents who have collected there.

"Sepoys, I warn and advise you to prove faithful to your salt, faithful to the Government who have given your forefathers and you service for the last hundred years; faithful to that Government who, both in cantonments and in the field, has been careful of your welfare and interests; and who, in your old age, has given you the means of living comfortably in your homes. Those who have studied history know well that no army has ever been more kindly treated than that of India.

ever.

"Those regiments which now remain faithful will receive the rewards due to their constancy. Those soldiers who fall away now will lose their service for It will be too late to lament hereafter when the time has passed by ;now is the opportunity of proving your loyalty and good faith. The British Government will never want for native soldiers. In a month it might raise 50,000 in the Punjab alone. If the 'Poorbeea' Sepoy neglects the present day, it will never return. There is ample force in the Punjab to crush all mutineers. The chiefs and people are loyal and

obedient, and the latter only long to take your place in the army. All will unite to crush you. Moreover, the Sepoy can have no conception of the power of England. Already from every quarter English soldiers are pouring into India.

"You know well enough that the British Government have never interfered with your religion. Those who tell you the contrary, say it for their own base purposes. The Hindoo temple and the Mohammedan mosque have both been respected by the English Government. It was but the other day that the Jumma Mosque at Lahore, which had cost lakhs of rupees, and which the Sikhs had converted into a magazine, was restored to the Mohammedans.

"Sepoys,-My advice is that you obey your officers. Seize all those among yourselves who endeavour to mislead you. Let not a few bad men be the cause of your disgrace. If you have the will, you can easily do this; and Government will consider it a test of your fidelity. Prove by your conduct that the loyalty of the Sepoy of Hindoostan has not degenerated from that of his ancestors.

"JOHN LAWREnce,
"Chief Commissioner."

ITALY OF THE ARTS THE CRADLE AND THE GRAVE.

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ART was cradled in the sunny south-in those latitudes where man found himself in Eden-where God gave forth his revelations where heaven itself seems to touch the earth, clothe all things in beauty, and promise all high delight. The language of the earth seemed poetry, and the work and the pastime of man broke forth into art. The same sun which made the earth fertile in fruits made the imagination of man florid in flowers; sunshine laughed within his heart; the blue sky overhead became the canopy to his thoughts, which he led as a shepherd his flocks to pasture in the plain-to gambol on the mountain-side-to rest beneath the shadow of a rock, or beside a shadowy stream. In the south, existence becomes art; and yet that art is nature. What wonder, then, that man should burst into song and dance that his tongue should use

itself to metaphor-that the house for his dwelling, and the temple for his worship, should be dedicated to beauty? We have stood in the temple-citadel of Athens when the sunshine danced upon the distant sea, and moulded by light and shade the marble mountains into massive sculpture. We have seen the same templemount glow in the sunset sky-faint into twilight-and again stand forth to command the plain, when the moon rose above the hills, and all was of so much beauty that, even in a nation's overthrow, nature still lingered fondly in the chosen haunts

weaving for her own delight a poetry, and making out of daily life a beauteous art. In the further south, the sunny imagination of the Arab pointed the arch, and reared the dome. The romance of the Arabian Nights, cast into stone, became, when night was ended, like the

written words, an "entertainment" suited for the day. Imagination took a heavenward flight in the minaret, and fancy, in its subtlety, wove arabesques for mosque or harem, where the Arab, waiting upon Destiny, called on the ". name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful," or, where the victim of southern voluptuousness, art, became his minister to enjoyment. Thus, in Egypt, the tropic sun, taking no delight in desert sands, wandered in search of a kindred fertility, and found in the genius of man an oasis which blossomed in the lotus and the lily.

But it is specially in Italy that art has seemed to us indigenous to the soil. The dying glory has not yet wholly faded from the sky. It is true the sun has set, clouds gather on the hills, and night settles in the plain; but the glory of the day is still remembered, and the twilight hour which now steals so gently over all things, mellows the turbulence of active life into tenderness, as we watch over the expiring moments of one too beautiful to live. The lover of nature or art will do well never to miss a sunset, especially in Italy. In Italy the setting of the sun is expressive of her sunken condition. The lengthening shadows, the rising mists, the confusion of distinct shapes and outlines in the coming darkness— these, with the beauty of that vesper hour, the hour of prayer and love, are all symbolic of Italy in her loveliness and decline. Then the traveller feels how Italy became the cradle of the arts. In Venice he has been gazing on the golden glories of Veronese in the Doge's Palace; and at sunset he mounts the Campanile of St Mark-sees the lagoons a molten fire the snows of the distant Alps flushed with hectic red; and in this triumph of colour he finds the origin of that Venetian art which clothed the earth and man in rainbow glory. Nations perish - art decays; yet these sunset splendours, fleeting as they are with the passing moment, are of all earth's passing shows the most unchanging. The sunset of this present hour is such a one as that when first the Campanile of Torcello knolled the knell of parting day. It has often struck us with wonder that

the land of Italy, after so great calamity and suffering, remains so far unchanged. Mountain districts there are, it is true, which are wildly tossed and tortured as by tempests-symbols of the mob riot, and of that turbulent sea of troubles which raged in the city life of the middle ages. Such bandit nature threw itself impetuously into art in the savage pictures of Salvator Rosa. For the most part, however, the land of Italy reposes in tranquil loveliness, as if gladness, and not sorrow, had been the current of existence. To this hour the pictures of Claude live before the eye,-the clear blue sky— the tender distance the wide plain or valley, fertile with wine and oilthe river flowing gently through the midst and the gracefully-bending ilex giving to the foreground the repose of shade, in which the peasant and his flocks find refuge from the heat of day. Claude, too, might have been but yesterday to this shore of Baiæ, so gently does the sea ripple on the sand-so tender and so pure is the far distance-so wholly do love and beauty still hold possession of the landscape. Thus does the traveller find, whether by sunset or by noonday-in the valley, by the sea, or by the mountain-side-how art in Italy arose into spontaneous birth.

The genius of the people too is tempered by the aspect of this land in which they live. Brilliant as the sky, yet tumultuous as the mountain storm, their life has the beauty of romance with its vicissitudes and plots. Their land a poem, they themselves a picture they live less for the duties of life than to decorate creation. Their costume is that of the stage; their pose and bearing that of the studio. To this people art is no effort, and what in other lands is a forced product, in Italy is thus seen as a spontaneous growth and outburst. It is true that the fire which once burned with so much splendour is now in its expiring ashes; that the entire nation is fallen and in all points degraded, and their art itself, once the greatest of revivals, has in these days reached its last decadence. It is true that impulse, passion, and imagination, which are the soul and very elo

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