College of Fort William was still what Wellesley had wished it to be a nursery of scholars and the promoter of Orientalism, and Lord Minto was a worthy successor of Wellesley. In the brilliant Society of the Capital, Leyden found many of congenial tastes and habits, and many so far advanced in the Sanscrit class of languages, that he was quickened to increased exertion in what to him was almost a new study. For more than a year his health was not sufficiently recovered to allow of his filling any office. A large part of this time he devoted to the compilation of a Dissertation on the "Indo-Persian, Indo-Chinese, and Dekhani Languages," embracing the three classes of tongues which he had studied. We have not been able to meet with it; probably it was never printed, as it was presented to the Council of the College of Fort William, and sent up by them to the Secretary of Government, with a recommendation that its author should be created a Professor in the College. He was accordingly appointed to the Professorship of Hindustani-a language which his previous Persian studies, and his pursuits in South India, seem to have made him master of.

Lord Minto was at this time Governor General, and being greatly interested in, and a liberal patron of, Oriental scholars, and being not only a countryman of Leyden but a fellow Borderer, he proved a kinder friend to him than even Lord W. Bentinck had been at Madras. We do not think that this nobleman has always received justice at the hands of historians and writers upon India. Two circumstances have united to depreciate him-his repressive policy with regard to Missions, and the general moderation and caution of his administration. The former is, we admit, in itself indefensible, but may be at least apologised for by the position which the question of Missions held during the English part of the Earl's career as a statesman, and the traditionary policy on the subject, which at that time was universally supreme in both England and India. Personally no man more admired the Serampore Missionaries than Minto, and no one was more liberal in assisting them in the publication of their translation of the Scriptures with the funds of Government than he. As Sir Gilbert Elliot, he had been one of the most distinguished of that literary circle which attracted all eyes to the metropolis of Scotland in the middle of last century, and as an English Statesman-as President of the Board of Control, he had gained an Indian reputation for himself ere he set foot in the country. The Commons had shewn their confidence in him and appreciation of his character and abilities, by appointing him as one of the managers to conduct the impeachment of Warren Hastings, and he was also to have discharged the same office in

the case of Sir Eliah Impey. Thus the prosecutor of the great Governor General became himself his successor, and learned to modify considerably those opinions, that had led him to take so prominent a part in the impeachment. The peculiar position of political parties at home on the death of Pitt, the collision between the Court of Directors and the Board of Control as to the appointment of a Governor General on the death of Lord Cornwallis, and the odium excited by the supersession of Sir G. Barlow and his removal to Madras, beset the early part of Lord Minto's Indian career with difficulties and misunderstandings. Nor was he to blame in the matter of the Pindaree, Ghoorka, and Burmese wars. These were not only a heritage from former wars, but the necessity of our destiny urged them on, and had he not been checked by the delays consequent on a reference to England, all of them would have been brought to a much more successful and speedy conclusion. His great claims on posterity are, his conquest of the Eastern Archipelago and his munificent patronage of Oriental literature. In this latter respect he well deserves to be named with Warren Hastings and the Marquis Wellesley.

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Such was the man, who, with all the power and patronage of the Governor General, manifested great interest in Leyden. Leyden was too independent a Scotchman to seek for offices. As Sir John Malcolm says-" He never solicited favour, but was raised by the liberal discernment of his noble friend and patron-Lord Minto, to situations that afforded him an opportunity of shewing that he was as scrupulous and as inflexibly virtuous in the discharge of his public duties, as he was attentive in private life to the duties of morality and religion." We regret that we can find no records of his Professorship. Its duties he was well qualified to discharge, and they must have been a source of pleasure to him, for he looked upon everything-money, comfort and health, as subservient to his linguistic pursuits. He lived in comparative plainness; like Sir W. Jones, not a little of his income was spent on his pundits and on the purchase of Oriental MSS.; while he never forgot his duty to his parents at home, to whom he was, like many other sons in India before and since, in the habit of remitting a considerable part of his salary.

He was tempted, however, at the request of Lord Minto to change his office in the College for the somewhat dissimilar one of "Judge of the twenty-four Pergunnahs of Calcutta"* His

* Sir Walter Scott, the firmest of all the friends Leyden left behind him in Scotland, thus writes on this subject to Ellis, "Leyden, by the by, is triumphant at Calcutta-a Judge of all things!-And making money! He has flourished like a green bay tree, under the auspices of Lord Minto, his countryman.

duties here were as much military as magisterial, partaking largely of those of a Commissioner for the suppression of Dacoity. That this should be to him a most congenial employment will not seem strange to one who is acquainted with his early life. In such a pursuit all his Border enthusiasm found vent, and with full zest he entered on duties that were as new to him as they were delightful. As if on some Border foray like his ancestors of old, he chased the dacoits repeatedly out of his own jurisdiction, and restored the peace of the districts around Calcutta. They were then in a very different state from what they are now, and the power of Britain had not then reached the elevated platform on which it now is, and from which a rebellion, unparalleled in Asiatic history for its extent and intensity, has not been able to shake it. On the last occasion of his chasing these freebooters,' as his Biographer terms them, up to Nuddea, he received the thanks of the Governor General in Council. He was afterwards, for some months, also Magistrate of Nuddea, where he was still frequently engaged in bush-fighting in the jungles." In these posts his knowledge of the vernacular availed him much, and he was thus enabled to perfect it colloquially. In the beginning of 1809 he was nominated one of the Commissioners of the Court of Requests in Calcutta, an office which entailed on him harder work than either of those which he had previously filled, and which called forth all his knowledge of the languages in use in Northern India. But with restored health and rising spirits, he was enabled not only to discharge his duties successfully, but to devote himself with renewed zeal to his oriental pursuits. As a member of the Asiatic Society, as the correspondent of Malcolm, Mackintosh, Erskine, and others in India and at home, and as the intimate friend of Henry Colebrooke, at that time President of the Asiatic Society, he was in the very midst of the duties that pleased him best.

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The last mentioned orientalist had a most salutary influence on Leyden, guiding him by his more matured scholarship and Indian experience, directing his studies into channels of utility and accuracy, and preventing him, with his ardent nature, from falling into those errors of rashness in speculation and carelessness in the collection of materials with the help of deceiving Pundits, which so ruined the character of the equally enthusiastic Wilford. It is evident that the short Calcutta period of his Indian life was for him the best. He was then not only the most zealous, but the most accurate and scholarly in his studies, and to Colebrooke must much of it be ascribed. He wrought hard at Persian, Arabic, and Sanskrit, translating largely from all;

SEPT. 1858.

F

he wrote several philological papers, and, while contemplating the compilation of several grammars, certainly completed two -those of the Malay and Prakrit. The list of situations that Leyden filled in Calcutta is completed by that of Assay Master in the Mint, to which he was promoted for promotion it was as to emoluments-two years after. In writing his parents, who were anxious, like Jacob, to see their son once more ere they died, he spoke of probably returning to them, and in announcing his new appointment, thus wrote, "I have laid aside the scales of Justice for those of mammon; and instead of trying men and their causes, I have only to try the baser, but much less refractory, metals of gold and silver." He filled this new office, like the former, not quite two years. * Lord Minto seems to have ever kept him in his eye with a view to advancing his interests.

We come now to the fourth and last period of Leyden's Indian career-to the event which put an end to his life, and blasted the expectations of himself as well as the hopes of his friends-the British expedition under Lord Minto to the Eastern islands. Our readers know how great was the power and influence of the French in South India in the middle of last century, and how, at one time, it seemed doubtful whether they or the Protestant English were to be the civilisers of her millions. Clive shattered her power into fragments, and his successors, and especially the great Wellesley, swept them, with the exception of a few stragglers in the service of native princes, from the face of the continent. Still from their position in Mauritius and Bourbon, and the new power which they acquired by the cession of the Dutch possessions in the Indian Archipelago consequent on the subjection of Holland to their parent country, they had considerable power. Sir Thomas Stamford-then Mr.Raffles was the first to suggest to Lord Minto the propriety of crippling the French fleet in the Indian seas, and stripping France of all the possessions that she then had in these quarters. The French had, moreover, long played the game of pirates, so that navigation in the Indian ocean was rendered dangerous to all British vessels. The merchants of Calcutta were roused by their

In a letter to Raffles he says, "The civilians of the Mint Committee have already discovered me to be a very devil incarnate, and the greatest mischiefmaker in the land. They will be very glad to see the back-seams of my hose at all events." At the time of the fitting out of the expedition for Java, Leyden was of the most essential service in advancing the interests of Raffles with the Governor-General, and thus strove to make some return for all the hospitality of Penang. In the same letter he says: "Indeed, Raffles, he has always talked of you to me, with a kindness very uncommon in a Governor General, and says that he is pleased with thinking he will be able to arrange matters very much to your satisfaction, when he arrives. I am glad that I have been able to keep him tight up to this point.”

JOHN LEYDEN.

losses, the Court of Directors at home felt them not less severely, while the ministry were influenced by the strongest of political motives, to agree to the recommendation that the Governor General had sent home, not only to take Bourbon and Mauritius, but also the whole of the Dutch possessions in the Straits, of The former was soon which they had made themselves masters. accomplished, though Bourbon was afterwards restored to the French.

Minto shewed less than his usual caution in the expedition against the Straits. He was prepared to set out before the receipt of an answer to his recommendation, and when an answer did come, the instructions so limited him, and were drawn up, evidently, in such ignorance of the circumstances and even of geography, that he determined, urged by the advice of Raffles, to annex the whole of what the Dutch had formerly occupied to the British Crown. On the fitting out of the expedition he immediately appointed Leyden to the honorable, and to him delightful, post of interpreter, naturalist, and investigator general into the language, literature, manners and customs of Of all men then in India, the inhabitants of these islands. he was best fitted for this office by his former studies and opportunities when resident in Penang. As the Naval force started from Madras he left Calcutta to join it. After spending thirty tedious days on the voyage, and fifteen at Madras, he set sail. There are few periods in the bye-history of British India so exciting as this, either in romantic adventure or personal exploit. But we must confine our attention to that part of the force in which Leyden was.

From Madras, they went to Penang, and from Penang to Malacca, where he met with his friend Raffles, and renewed that intercourse that had been broken off by his departure from

"During this voyage he gave a striking proof of that rash intrepidity which formed always a conspicuous feature in his character. Two of his fellow passengers, with whom he was upon terms of intimacy, offered to bet with him sixty gold mohurs, that he durst not climb up to the top-gallant-royal of the vessel; a plan having been privately formed to have him bound there until he should purchase his release by paying a fine. Leyden, whose courage was equalled by an unfortunate passion for displaying it, which sometimes made him appear to disadvantage, accepted the wager, and fearlessly mounted to the top; when, perceiving the intended sequel of this insidious joke, he made He hastily grasped a coir rope, a desperate but successful effort to frustrate it. with the assistance of which he threw himself down, though, as it slid through his hands, it cut them most severely. It must be added, that though he had thus more than won the wager, he refused to take the money, but having received a written order for the sum, immediatly destroyed it. Such were the virtuous and strictly honorable principles in which he had been brought up, that he looked upon it as in some degree disgraceful to gain money by wagers, or other species of gaming, or in any way in which it could not be regarded as an equivalent for the performance of useful services."