other nations, to be our carriers, and had neither mariners nor shipping. Invasion ensued, and a few years saw Britain only in the character of "one of the brightest jewels of the Crown" of Gelatia !

Now came my dream:-There was a grand Levee at the former St. James's, and the Gelatian Viceroy was receiving the homage and obeisance of the natives. It was a heart-depressing spectacle. The descendants of our Russells, our Pagets, our Howards, Wellesleys, and others, were attending the Levee in lowly guise, and had been detained in their humble vehicles, opposite the vice-regal palace, by a crowd witnessing the punishment of a culprit, a lineal descendant of one of our once leading Ministers, who had been convicted, by the new laws of our conqueror, of charlatanism, and tricks of sleight of hand! I saw them afterwards in the hall of state, poor, dejected, and despised, while the new rulers, with their furred and splendid habiliments seemed

proudly to hold in scorn the humiliation of their vassals.

The sight overpowered me !-my spirit seemed bursting in it's anger: I tried to think it some delusion of the troubled fancy, and to break away from it's unhallowed influence, but a huge whiskered and furred Gelatian seemed to watch and oppress me; at last he rushed fiercely at my breast

when the "Sahib! Sahib !" of my sirdar bearer most happily aroused, and relieved the BENGALEE from the appalling incubus and horror of the Night-mare!

VOL. I.

A A

THE MUD FORT.

Each look'd to sun, and stream and plain,
As what they ne'er might see again;
Then foot, and point, and eye opposed,
In dubious strife they darkly closed.

SIR WALTER SCOTT.

The weather was beginning to be insupportably hot, and canvas anything but agreeable. The face of the Major, commanding the -th Regiment of Native Infantry, was daily growing blackerliterally blacker; much from the effect of exposure to the sun, and from an overflowing of bile, the result of continued neglect to certain warnings and sure tokens of disordered health, which the anxious old soldier was, at this juncture, too busy to attend to. But still much of it arose, too, rom the perpetual Erebus-looking frown,

which protracted ill-humour, vexation, and perplexity, now contrived to fix, as it were, on his marked and weather-beaten countenance. Woe to the unfortunate wight on the rear-guard who by this time might chance to steal into camp before the last creaking hackery of the baggage-train. It was ten to one if the old Major, who had an eye on every thing, did not stalk forth from his double-poled tent to greet him with something like the following.

"Well, Mr. Crump, were you not officer of the day, yesterday?"

"Yes Major," would reply the innocent. "And why the devil, Sir, do you come into camp before the rest of the baggage? May I beg the favor of your betaking yourself to your post again; and if you enter this ground before the last hackery, you shall hear a little more on the subject." "The young dog, would the Major mutter to himself, as he lifted again the

cheek of his tent, and retired under shelter

to his hookah-" I have no notion of his creeping in to breakfast, and my beer left to boil on the road-way for these three hours to come!"

It was no wonder, after all, that the Major was a little out of humour. He had been ordered out, with his whole corps from Benares, just at the end of March; sent away through Azimghur to the Oude territories, and peremptorily desired, long after the hot-winds had set in, to aid his most excellent Lucknow Majesty's aumil, or tuhseelder, or some such respectable native functionary, in enforcing the payment of certain stray lacs of rupees, said to be due by refractory zumeendars to the royal treasury. Now the old Major not only hated being away from his snug well-tattied bungalow near the nullah, at Secrole, at this peculiar season of the year; but he, moreover, detested, as cordially as any officer of sepoys in the whole army, this deputation of himself and regiment, at the beck and