procured on the river from the Dâk office at Berhampore, attracted her attention. A friend was with her, and saw her suddenly hanging over it in mute convulsion. She was not in tears, but there was something awfully agonising in her look. The paper

was snatched up, and in too legible characters appeared, "Died at sea, near Madras, Mary Treville, infant daughter of A. Treville, Esq., Bengal Civil Service, aged three years and some months."

Yet no tears came; they would not come. For days she lay as if stunned by some overpowering blow, and recognised no one. A medical gentleman had been summoned over from Berhampore, and with her kind. friend, who was still on board the Budgerow, endeavoured to hasten on the boat, in the hope of reaching Mrs. Treville's station. They now heard her at times whispering to herself, and murmuring Italian; and if any thing could have added, in the imagination. of those who knew her, to the touching,

nay, too painful interest of the scene, it was the thought of this poor sacrificed and accomplished young creature, thus withered in her prime; her mind too shocked and broken, to present to her the death of her child, the immediate cause of it's ruin, but now murmuring unwittingly and plaintively her last accents in a language, which was evidently associated with some indistinct memory of former happiness. For days they continued to watch the couch of the poor fevered and mindless sufferer; until at length, without a tear, without closing her glazed and swoln eye, she sunk and sunk, till the kind hand of death came coldly and calmly upon her, and brought her to "that peace which the world cannot give.”

THE LATE MARQUESS OF HASTINGS.

Asiam istam refertam, et eandem delicatam sic obiit, ut in eâ neque avaritiæ, neque luxuriæ vestigium reliquerit : maximo in bello sic est versatus.

CICERO.

THERE is nothing depends so much on the mere caprice of the moment, or upon the accidental fitness of the opportunity for its existence, as the excitement and extension of popular feeling. The same events which at one period would pass unnoticed, or at most be acknowledged as holding only a secondary grade in the occurrences of life, are, at others, magnified into circumstances of the gravest importance, and assert louder claims on the attention and sympathy of the world, than would be warranted by the possession of ten times their intrinsic interest. At

home, during the recess of Parliament, and in the period of peace and repose, a case of abduction, or a murder of little more than common atrocity, will fill the newspapers of the united kingdom for weeks; while the hero of the attempt, or the convicted assassin, is paraded before the public with as much pomp of notoriety, as would fall to the lot of the victorious leaders of armies, or the statesman who has wielded the destinies of millions!

It is melancholy to carry this farther, and to reflect that the same capricious disregard of propriety, which at times gives unwonted importance to unworthy events, may also, under some adventitious circumstance of pre-occupied attention, permit the proudest and mightiest claims upon our sympathy to pass away unheeded and unhonoured. was led into this train of thought, by a late calamity and real public loss, which reached us with less of awakened remark, less of avowed regret in it's announcement, and I

I

must add, less of proper feelings, than could have accompanied the mere obituary record of an almost noteless stanger. Would it have been imagined some few brief years ago, would it have been believed when we hailed the return to the Presidency of Bengal, of the conqueror of Central India,the master hand and controller of it's empires-that, ere a few seasons should have intervened,―ere the ploughshare, even in it's peaceful and protected labour, had yet had time to pass over the measureless extent of his victories,-remarks, like these, should be called for, on witnessing the heartlessness and apathy with which the death of our late revered Ruler has been received in the scenes of his triumphs!

It might be unbecoming to offer any. observation on the absence of all public notice in India of the demise of the late Marquess of Hastings. I do not remember to have witnessed any such tribute of respect to other departed rulers, who may have survived.

VOL. I.

K