account of the siege and its details. Previous publications on this subject have commonly partaken more largely of a personal character; in Mr. Gubbins' narrative on the other hand, we discern more of the historical, in combination with the personal, element; and although the author never allows us to lose sight of himself as apparently the principal actor in the scene, we can more easily separate each incident from its hero, and gain a general view of the whole. It would have been well had Mr. Gubbins preserved more of the historical spirit in recounting his tale. Egotism, we can call it by no milder title, is apparent throughout the course of the narrative, too aften painfully so, when the writer by indirectly disparaging others, seeks to add lustre to his own reputation for wisdom or foresight. What Sir Henry Lawrence did for Lucknow, both before and throughout its beleaguerment till his death, has been admiringly and gratefully confessed by all, and we do not think the public will commend or sympathise with that spirit, in which, under the garb of richer approval or palliation, Mr. Gubbins contemptibly contrives to introduce censure of Sir Henry's measures. Apart from this fatal blemish the narrative is as interesting as valuable. The style is free and fluent; the incidents are simply, yet eloquently related, and the attention of the reader is unflaggingly maintained till the end. The events of the siege of Lucknow are now too well known to need recapitulation or resumé here. We will but quote specimens to illustrate our author's style. In description he particularly excels. Take the following interesting picture of the return of Ungud the spy : "Nor could any picture more characteristic of the siege be pre'sented, than one which should represent Ungud just after one of his midnight entrances, recounting to our eagerly-listening ears the events ' which he had witnessed. The low room on the ground-floor with a single light carefully screened on the outer side lest it should attract 'the bullets of the enemy; the anxious faces of the men who crowded 'round and listened with breathless attention to question and answer : 'the exclamations of joy as pieces of good tidings were given out, and laughter at some of Ungud's jeers upon the enemy. More retired would 'be shown the indistinct forms of the women in their night attire, who ' had been attracted from their rooms in hopes of catching early some part of the good news which had come in. The animated and intelligent face of our messenger, as he assures us of the near approach of help, occupies the foreground. All these together form a scene which 'must live as long as life remains in the memory of us all." Or take the animated description of the evacuation of the Motee Munzil: Again let us turn our eyes to the group of officers and men on the left of the mess enclosure. They are standing directly opposite to the entrance of the Motee Munzil from which they are separated 'by a broad high-way. But down this road, sweeping the line that leads to the Motee Munzil, fly thickly the bullets from the Kaiser Bagh, which is distant about 450 yards. There is a pause. Presently the passage is attempted, and European and Seikh, the one in red, the other DEC., 1858. 'with swarthy visage, and a dress of corresponding colour, stooping, 'dart across the road. There they go by twos and threes, racing across the passage, and are lost from sight at the entrance of the building. Thank God! not one has been left on the road; the fire has, we hope, been harmless. But is the Motee Munzil unoccupied? That we can 'not tell. It has been closely watched during the day, and no hostile 'figure has been detected there, but some shots fired from its neigh'bourhood have aroused suspicion that those extensive courts may not 'be wholly empty. Some shots are now fired inside. Ah! there is some work doing! Few minutes elapse, when see! the enemy is 'flying from a postern close by the river bank. There are about seventy-five of them, and as they issue they run for their lives down the 'right river bank. Our men have not discovered them. Ah! now 'they see them and five or six rifles are discharged after the fugitives. One only falls, but he is motionless, and will rise no more. The rest 'take to the river, hastily stripping themselves of some of their clothes. They wade across; but as the water rises about them the fire of our 'rifles increases, and showers of bullets strike the water all along the 'single file of men. They have reached midstream, and now their heads alone are visible. Sometimes some struggling and confusion " may be seen, doubtless where a bullet did its errand, but at last almost all succeed in reaching the opposite bank, and are lost in the orangery of the Hazaree Bagh." The greater part of Mr. Gubbins' volume is of course devoted to the narration of the events of the siege, but besides a simple narrative we have a few disquisitional chapters on the causes which led to the mutiny. In treating this question Mr. Gubbins has disappointed the expectations of many. High official position and long continued intercourse with the native population, it was supposed, should have eliminated more ample and definite information on this point than is afforded in these chapters. That Mr. Gubbins, however, should have supplied but scanty facts in support of the view which he adopts, is natural and excusable. It has been abundantly proved that neither high official position nor long continued intercourse with the natives form the "open sesame" in investigating the causes of a rebellion like the present. The view which is favored by Mr. Gubbins may or may not be correct; evidence pro and con is not awanting, but we doubt whether any fixed decision on the point can be arrived at before the calm which will follow the storm. When men's minds are cooled down, and the country is tranquillized, we may perhaps discover facts which will throw light on the origin of this rebellion-but at present it seems unfair to expect from Mr. Gubbins more than he offers, a probable explanation of the causes which led to its outbreak. Scraps from the Kit of a Dead Rebel. Edited by C. D. L. London, John Chapman. 1858. SUCH glorious nonsense it has never been our lot to meet before, save in the incipient attempts of half-educated school-boys. Poetry is out of the question, but rhyme, reason, grammar, thought, language are all alike wanting. How so respectable a publisher as John Chapman could put his name to such a farrago of rubbish, we do not know. The title is evidently with reference to the events of the day in India, to catch the unwary, and seduce the ignorant into purchasing. Even looking at it in that light, it is meaningless and foolish. Even a laugh cannot be extracted from the genuine crassitude of a work which we have noticed by way of warning all our readers. We blush to write it that the would-be poetaster is evidently an Anglo-Indian. There are three, and but three, collections of words or versification having reference to India: "Reverie in India," "Sketch of a Ruined Hindoo Temple," and "The Fall of Gysopah (southern Maratha country)." From the first, by way of justification, we take the following :- "The night is hot, I cannot sleep, And watch a lean dog through the wide door-pass. Too sad to read, too weak to be cross; Hot and restless and all alone, On my dismal bed in my dismal tent I lie, and unwillingly con the past. To wrench from an exile a banished groan, The Chaplain's Narrative of the Siege of Delhi, from the Outbreak at Meerut to the Capture of Delhi. By John Edward Wharton Rotton, M. A., of Emmanuel College, Cambridge; one of the Chaplains of Meerut, and Chaplain to the Delhi Field Force. With a Plan of the City. London, Smith, Elder and Co. 1858. Delhi and its last siege have found but a poor historian. As the literature of the rebellion grows, the critic inclines to look more at the historical and literary merits of the narratives it produces, than at first, when every tale was easily believed, and every fact surrounded with intense interest, when the mind projected from itself that depth of curiosity and intensity of emotion that filled it, and coloured the outward with its own hues. The writer is not natural. An affectation and cloth-feeling marks every page, and he cannot attend the bed of the dying, hear of the movements of the belligerents, watch the progress of the battle or the siege, or paint the character of the heroic dead, without making you feel, and most painfully, that he is a priest. There is no lack of charity, there is no sectarian bitterness, on the contrary; but the priest appears throughout. In the face of such awful realities as he was living amidst, he might have written as a man, as well as dressed as one, justifying the latter however with eager haste, as though it had been very sinful. That is the true Christianity which is not, as in this book, and in Brock's wretched life of Havelock, ever on the lip, in the features and the dress, but which, independent of and superior to all these, springs out of the heart, and shines through the whole nature, like Edwards' in the life he led in hiding, and the narrative he gives us of it, noticed above. The English Captives in Oude, an Episode in the History of the Mutinies of 1857-58. Edited by M. Wylie, Esq. Calcutta, G. C. Hay and Co., Cossitollah. London, W. H. Dalton. 1858. THIS is a little work which, in its subject and the interesting character of its details, may fairly rank with Mr. Edwards' story of the Rohilcund fugitives. It gives an account of those who escaped from Mohamdee and Seetapore, were for a time sheltered by the Rajah of Mythowlie, were subsequently removed to the Kaiser Bagh fettered, and by want, exposure, and massacre, reduced to the small number who figure as the martyrs of these pages-Captain Orr and his wife and child, Sir Mountstuart Jackson and his sister, and finally only Mrs. Orr, her child, and Miss Jackson. Their life under the socalled protection of the Rajah of Mythowlie, is thus described— "Ladies, accustomed to the usual luxuries of life; two delicate little 'children, the one but three years of age, a beautiful little blue-eyed creature, poor little Sophie Christian, whose thoughts constantly reverted to her mother, and who saddened the hearts of her companions by ever asking them why that beloved mother had not accompanied 'them, the other, Captain Orr's own daughter Louisa, a little older, who bore up under all the dreadful trials and privations to which she was subjected, with astonishing patience and resignation; and lastly four men, already weakened in mind and body. Such was the party constrained to pass day after day during this long interval, exposed in a dismal jungle to the intense heat of the day, only tempered by 'the torrents of rain, which at this season of the year are of such frequent occurrence. Sickness too had commenced to prostrate our people the deadly jungle fever had shown itself, the servants could no longer attend to the wants of their masters, and the ladies were 'forced to cook for the whole party. Small thin coverts, made of the long jungle grass and broad leaves, had indeed been erected as a protection from the rain; but this protection was most partial and ineffectual. A small supply of quinine and of other medicines ' had been obtained from Captain Hearsay; and although it had arrived ' in rather a damaged state, still, most thankfully was it received." Such a narrative as this is almost out of the class of works that should be publicly noticed or criticised. Its own sad tale, and its record of glorious God-supported endurance, are enough. We would only remark that it is, in a literary point of view, very unartistic, and hence deprives itself of much of that objective but valuable aid that even nature gives to the full heart, when it unburdens itself of its sorrows and triumphs. We cannot but feel that, had the narrative เ เ been published as it was taken down from the lips of Mrs. Orr, it would have possessed all that pathos, and simplicity and beauty, of most of which its style and arrangement have deprived it. The record of the ladies' deliverance by the aid of Wajid Ally, and in spite of the cruel bigotry of the Fyzabad Moulavy, appropriately closes the tragedy: "The danger was imminent. From his spies, Wajid Ally learnt that the Moulavy might every hour be expected: no time was therefore to be lost. In this difficulty, Wajid Ally begged of Mrs. Orr to write a note regarding the danger of the position in which she was placed, 'to the address of any British officer; this note he would cause to be 'conveyed to the nearest post. The note was immediately written and 'confided to the care of Wajid Ally's brother-in-law, who, however, had hardly left the place when he encountered a party of Goorkhas under the command of two British officers, Captains MacNeill and Bogle. He immediately explained to them the nature of his errand, ' and led the way to the house. The Moulavy from another quarter was already moving in the same direction. The officers rushed in to the place pointed out to them. Without the loss of a moment, the ladies were placed in a Palankeen. No bearers could be found; but the servants of the officers and some Goorkhas were pressed into the service; and Captain MacNeill, accompanying the palankeen, commenced his hazardous journey to General MacGregor's Camp, leaving Captain Bogle with the Goorkhas to escort Wajid Ally and his family. It must be remembered that Captain MacNeill had to pass through narrow streets entirely devoid of British troops, and about which the enemy were still hovering, and that he might, at every moment, expect an ' attack, or at all events a ball from some hidden assassin. However, he rushed on, stimulating and urging his men to make the most 'strenuous efforts. The Chan Bagh ravine is reached, crossed,-and in a little more, General MacGregor's Camp appears in sight,-onon-swiftly is the palankeen borne along,-the friendly Camp is at length gained and the ladies are saved! It was a joyful, a glorious moment! Kind and cordial was the welcome with which the ladies were received by General MacGregor and his officers, and on the next day, the 20th March, 1858, they were escorted to General Sir J. Out'ram's Camp. A Few Words anent the 'Red' Pamphlet. By one who has served under the Marquis of Dalhousie. Third Edition. London, James Ridgway. 1858. IN the Third Edition of this pamphlet the author gives his name. He is Charles Allen, late of the Bengal Civil Service, and we are sure that a refutation of the famous Red' Pamphlet could not have been undertaken by a better man, at least one more free from all that, in imagination or reality constitutes old civilianism,' in the ordinary acceptation of that term. At the time that the 'Red' Pamphlet was issued it excited, and deservedly so, much attention in every class |