The history of this plain is associated with the Mahratta kingdom and its supremacy, and to each hill may be attached some historical account.

Proceeding round the edge of the cliff a finer view unfolds itself. When we arrived, the valleys were filled with dense, snowy-white clouds, which spread over the scene as far as the eye could reach, and kept rolling up with magnificent effect till the edge of the rock on which we were standing was lost in a mass like the finest cotton wool; and a sensation of insecurity, and as if we were in a balloon, sailing no one knew where, made us clutch each other, and almost hold our breaths. Here and there the summits of the highest hills rose through the clouds and seemed like islands in the arctic regions.

By degrees the colour of the scene changed to a light grey, and a general thaw commenced; the view unfolding as a panorama, while the mist floated up the valleys, and disappeared like immense cobwebs.

Now we found ourselves at Arthur's Seat; so called from the generosity of a gentleman whose Christian name was Arthur, and who, himself a lover of scenery, and yet, like other mortals, given to hunger and thirst, had erected a cosy shelter, and set a table inside on which to place food for the inner man. There it was, too, when we got down, and we did ample justice to it. Strawberries, peaches, grapes, chicken and ham pie-but why enumerate what our friend had so sumptuously provided? Sufficient unto the day' was the breakfast thereof. Passing through the small hut, and taking a sheep-path down a small slope, we came on to the edge of the precipice, and below us lay the flat plain of the Konkau. A clear drop of nearly five thousand feet did not assist in producing a steady feeling, as we clung to the branches of a tree, and looking over discerned at the bottom a small village almost like a plaything, with minute objects moving about, like ants round their nest. The sacred river, the Sairtree, sprang from the rock at our feet, and, trickling over the side of the scarp, glistened in

the sun's rays as it was lost in spray from a projecting piece of rock.

The valley was intersected by the winding of the bed of the river, and its banks were here and there dotted with dark-looking masses, which from the white streaks of smoke must have been hamlets and villages. To our right stood an enormous mountain, that at one time must have sheltered the handful of the Mahratta army, when besieged by the Mahommedan forces below; and to the left Pertabghur, the fortress and residence of Sivajee, the Mahratta king, and founder of that dynasty, stood out in bold relief. It was at this place that the Beejapore Commander-in-Chief was foully murdered by Sivajee. The history is dwelt upon at length, in the novel entitled 'Tara,' a Mahratta tale, but the facts were briefly these:

Sivajee, the Mahratta chieftain, had been leading a piratical and plundering life for many years, the terror of the plains and the fear of all neighbouring tribes.

The war for his capture had continued for a long season, and at last terms of capitulation were proposed by the lawless chieftain from his fortress at Pertagbhur. The offer was received with favour by Afzool Khan, the chief of the Mussulman army, who proposed to meet Sivajee half way up the hill-side and arrange matters. Sivajee bargained that the meeting should be private, and as little attended as possible, three horsemen being allowed to each of them. The meeting was to take place on a narrow path, where two cannot pass, and at the appointed time the chieftains approached each other. At the first embrace Sivajee, who had armed himself with a wagnuk,' (an instrument like a tiger's paw, with steel claws), tore open the stomach of his adversary, and thus treacherously murdered him. The few followers that accompanied him were slain, and the force rushing out of the fortress easily vanquished and routed the astonished and panic-stricken army of the Mussulman. The tomb of Afzool Khan is shown to visitors, and is kept in repair by the English Government,

as one of the landmarks of the Mahratta dynasty.

After some conversation, and further refreshment, we determined to return and to visit the village of Mahableshwur on our way home. Before leaving we took a farewell view of the magnificent landscape before us, and we were interested by watching the hoverings of a hawk, many thousand feet below, and its occasional dartings at some unfortunate victim. The colour and variety of shading that the surrounding rocks now presented were indescribable, and the abrupt range of bare black peaks, of a singularly wild and savage character, which formed the further side of the tremendous chasm we were looking into, were fearfully grand.

What a powerful agent Nature has in water, thought I; and nowhere could such an idea of its almighty power be formed as in looking at the chasms furrowed out of the trap rock that forms these hills. One valley, extending over thirty miles, owes its origin to the constant trickling of the mountain stream for thousands of years; and the small rivulet that was flowing forth beneath our feet was silently but surely increasing the immense gorge we were contemplating. Surely continual dropping weareth away stone.'

We got to Mahableshwur without any event of interest, and whilst refreshing the horses we visited the temples that have been erected there. From this spot, perhaps the holiest in India, rise, it is imagined, five rivers, all held peculiarly sacred; and it is this small dilapidated settlement that is worshipped as the birthplace of Krishna, one of the Hindoo divinities. Amongst these hills, he is supposed to have played, and sported with his attendant maids.' Temples have been built over the spring and course of the holy water, and the entire village has become a Brahmin settlement. We visited the temples. In the first we found two large tanks, into which the water was conducted in a very small stream

through the body of a carved stone bullock, from its source in the rock. In the upper tank numberless natives were bathing, and washing, and on the stone__ parapets around sat fat and indolent Brahmins, anxiously waiting to receive the offerings of the deluded and ignorant votaries of the shrine of Krishna.

Diseases cured, riches bestowed, life prolonged, and eternal safety and happiness were the supposed benefits derived from bathing in this muddy, greenish, and almost putrid tank, and certain salvation followed the presentation of gifts to those wretched priests devoted to idolatry and the foulest forms of licentious

ness.

The river now disappears, and appearing again some short distance lower down the hill-side, it is ushered through the centre of a second temple, and sent, under the especial protection of an emblem of Krishna worship, over the side of a precipice, many thousand feet deep, into the valley below. At this season the stream is imperceptible, but during the rains it rushes forth to heal and save the Hindoo, and at any rate to cleanse and sanitarily improve their villages and condition.

Both the temples are in a state of decay, and it only adds another proof to the degrading influence of heathenism, that the holiest part of India is so neglected, their temples allowed to fall to ruin, and that the very element sent by the Almighty to benefit and improve mankind is, by foul and filthy use, and contamination, rendered positively injurious and deadly.

At certain seasons crowds of pilgrims visit this shrine, and their wretched condition, unsanitary customs, and overcrowded but underfed state engender disease and death amongst themselves, and spread sickness and mortality around.

Such were the things we saw and did at our Breakfast Pic-nic.' We reached our homes about noon, tired, but improved in health. J. J. P.

I

AM writing with a tremulous hand-not from physical infirmity-not because I dined with Lord E. yesterday and took more than my ordinary quantum of sherry and port. No! I tremble because my mind is much moved by a recent occurrence-Combermere is gone. I had a great regard for Lord Combermere. He was a true English gentleman-brave as a lion, hospitable, straightforward, unpretending. I remember him as Sir Stapleton Cotton. He had just returned from the Peninsula, where, for five years, he had led the cavalry of the Duke's conquering army, and so led it that 'old Douro' asked a favour for him of royalty, though he would not ask one for anybody else, excepting, I believe, his great and good lieutenant, Lord Hill. If Combermere had a weakness, it was for glitter. Le Lion D'Or was the sobriquet he earned. His housings, his appointments, his weapons, his plate, all bore the impress of his passion. To be sure, the gold which had done duty in camp and in many a charge was somewhat tarnished; but the lustre of a well-earned success on the battle-field more than counterbalanced the dull hue of the faded lace. The viscount, among the other rewards showered upon him, obtained the lucrative India command in chief, and there he demonstrated that a cavalry soldier can make a good siege-general, for he took the hitherto impregnable fortress of Bhurtpore, which had so thoroughly baffled Lord Lake twenty-three years previously. Lake thought that the stronghold was to be carried by a coup de main, and he failed. Combermere had the prestige of Hindoo prophecy in his favour, but I do not think that this alarmed the Jâts or led them to relax in their defence. It had been predicted that Bhurtpore would one day be swallowed up by a combeer, or crocodile, and in the similarity of the name consisted the realization

of the prophecy. But my old friend

did not rely upon the agency of 'juggling fiends.' He trusted to good engineering. He advanced by sap and mine, burrowing in the earth until he had got some hundreds of pounds of powder placed beneath two bastions, and then!up rose a dark cloud of dust-a dull roar as of fifty pieces of cannon discharged at once-then down came huge lumps of earth into the ditch. The bugles sound-the forlorn hope of the 14th and 59th foot rush forward, followed by the entire regiments and two or three corps of sepoys; and amidst the thunder of artillery, the clash of scymitar against helm, bayonet against target, the loud hurrah and the war cry of Jât and Pathan, the stormers carry the breach. The rightful heir is placed on the musnud vice the usurper, Dhurjun Sal, and Combermere becomes a name of terror among the ill-disposed native chieftains, and a name of glory among the English. The old aristocratic civil and military servants of the East India Company were proud of my departed friend, and to this hour, I understand, a full-length life-sized portrait of the hero of Bhurtpore decorates the Bengal Club dining-saloon. He left India about 1830, and enjoyed thirty-five years of life, after that, in England. Married three times, he was singularly fortunate in his third wife, a lady of rare accomplishments, loved by all her friends, honoured by our gracious queen. Absence from England for six years prevented my seeing much of the Lion d'Or or Dorée latterly, but I remember him in 1858, gay, graceful, cheerful, spending three or four hours in the House of Lords, then assisting at one of his wife's soirées with a kind word for every guest. He was ninety-one years old then, and yet he was on horseback for four hours a day. He was the last of a great gallery of warriors, all of whose effigies rise up before me at this moment. Napier, Paget, Pakenham, Beckwith, Hope,

Colville, Bradford, Beresford, Halkett, Adam, Vivian, Somerset. Ah! how richly each in his turn embellished a page of our glorious military history! Beckwith was the beauidéal of a rifleman. He also had an Indian command, and was the first general officer that ever foreswore pipe-clay and stiff stocks. He told me that he was surprised the Bombay officers did not all die of apoplexy, for his predecessors, Bradford and Colville, kept up the starch old German system to the last. One of Colville's aides-decamp, now an old general, invariably went about with a stock six inches high, and buttoned up to his throat in broad cloth covered with gold embroidery, while his shoulders bore two monstrous epaulettes. Colville was a good soldier, nevertheless, and had an eye for the slightest defect in a manœuvre. I remember hearing him, at a review, tell a serjeant to make a half face to the left,' just to fill up a slight gap at the corner of a hollow square. Bradford (Sir Thomas) was a singularly handsome man and earned his advancement by drilling the Portuguese caçadores. The tall figure occupies a conspicuous place in the well-known engraving of the Peninsula Heroes. Paget, who preceded Combermere in India, postponed the great Indian mutiny some thirty years by his summary destruction of an entire regiment of refractory sepoys. He saw the terrible danger of half measures, and shot down a few hundreds to save the lives of many thousands and secure the happiness of millions. Yet there were not wanting pseudophilanthropists who termed the stern operation of military law a massacre! Adam (Sir Frederic) spoke with a strong Scotch accent. One day, when inspecting a regiment, he noticed that the tuft of a soldier's chaco was missing. The man was an Irishman and a bit of a humorist. Where's your feyther (feather), my mon?' asked Adam.

He's in Ireland, your honour,' was the prompt reply, rebuking the singular pronunciation, unconsciously-or possibly consciously. Napier (Charles) detested Adam, and

spat at his government of the Ionian islands. Napier had a sharp wit as well as a courageous heart and a sound judgment. He it was who dubbed the Ladies L- lemonade and orangeade. Both had red hair, and one was as sour of temper as the other was amiable.

But a truce to military souvenirs. No grognard of the Empire can be more garrulous than myself when the soldiers of Wellington's 'Peninsula army' come upon the tapis.

Wandering a week or two since in the Kensal Green cemetery, perhaps connecting many recollections of departed friends with some uncomfortable thoughts of the near future,

"Though forward I cannot look, I tremble and fear,'

I came upon the bust of poor Tom Hood, the magician, at whose pleasure we were made to laugh or sigh. Yes, indeed; he sang the

Song of the Shirt,' and many other songs of grave and gay import. I met Hood in France, I think some twenty-five years since, or more. He had been obliged to seek a quiet retreat from the relentless persecutions of the monied interest. After his departure, one of his publishers, a little old man whose coat, wig, and general get up' bespoke the ci-devant jeune homme, told his clerks to deny all knowledge of Hood when people called with bills. Hood heard of this and sent over a pasquinade which (suppressing names) ran somewhat after this fashion:

'For a season or two, in the columns of Puff,
I was reckoned a passable writer enough,
But alas for the favours of Fame!
Since I quitted my seat in G-t M-h Street,
My decline in repute is so very complete,

That a C-n don't know of my name. Now a C-n I knew, of dimensions so small, He seem'd the next neighbour to nothing at all, Yet in spirit a dwarf may be big:

But his mind was so narrow, his person so slim,
No wonder that all I remember of him
Is a little boy's coat-and a wig.'

I think Albert Smith gave me a copy of these stinging verses. Poor Albert! the delight of the circles in which he moved, the good son, and brother, and friend. When I first met him he was a 'gatherer

Going back to the days of the Regency, just before the death of George III., and following up my reminiscences to the accession of William IV., a galaxy of bright stars cluster about my memory's waste. Tom Moore, Tom B. Macaulay, George Canning, James Silk Buckingham, Maria Foote, Mrs. Siddons, all belong to that epoch. Macaulay was just feeling his way. He had written his paper on Milton in the Edinburgh, and had made a good anti-slavery speech at Exeter Hall. The Whigs were delighted at such an accession to their strength, just as Toryism had reached its culmination, and Lord Byron was about to be proved a false prophet. Macaulay was grand on the Reform question and the India Bill, and great was his reward. He was sent out to Bengal in 1834 as President of the Law Commission appointed to draw up a code for the special benefit of the mixed population of the East Indies. There he led a very retired life, seeing but little company, rarely appearing among the patrons of local institutions, and heaping up money for a rainy day, and material for his wonderful articles on Clive and Warren Hastings. His practical experience of law was of the smallest. told me that he never was engaged in more than one case. He defended a woman arraigned on a charge of stealing chickens, and procured for her a conviction! Nevertheless, the Penal Code which he originated was conceived in a spirit of stern justice, and after a lapse of thirty years came into beneficial operation. Macaulay wrote his review of The Life of Sir James Mackintosh,' when in India, and Napier, the editor, excised several pages. The unpublished lives would be worth

He

something now! Macaulay died worth 80,000l., leaving England the richer by gems of literature which will be prized as long as the AngloSaxon is spoken and read.

It was, I think, in 1826 that I was introduced to Mr. Canning in Paris at a party at Lord Granville's. The extreme simplicity of his costume was a subject of surprise among the courtiers of Charles X. He wore no orders, no ribbons, no decorations of any kind which could distinguish him from the meanest French pleb. But the grandeur of his carriage, his glorious head and fine clear eye, made him conspicuous above all the embroidered emigrés and marshals of the Empire who had forgotten Napoleon in their zeal for the new régime. But the French people had not forgotten Le Petit Caporal; and when the Polignac ministry took courage and allowed the exhibition and sale of pictures and busts of the usurper,' every shop window was full of these and other souvenirs; in one day thousands were bought with avidity. The little bronze copies of the Vendôme column were the favourite memorabilia. I recollect Raikes remarking to me, as we strolled along a galerie, that, unless the Bourbons were very blind (they had learnt nothing and forgotten nothing') they would discern in the revived enthusiasm of the people the germs of a discontent which would, sooner or later, fructify into a new revolution. Four years afterwards, les trois jours and their barricades realized his prediction. Canning's conversation was very agreeable and unreserved at Lord Granville's table. If my memory is not very treacherous, he said, when some one remarked that, according to Lord Eldon, the British Constitution was dead- Yes, as dead as Old Mother Hubbard's dog. She went to an undertaker's to provide for his funeral obsequies, and when she came back "the dog was laughing." And the British Constitution will continue to laugh for centuries to come. It may be moribund now and then, but a little galvanising sets it fairly on its legs again.'

6

There is no more pitiable object